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The keyboard shortcuts in Aperture 2.0 are terrific.
For example, I'm looking at a photograph here in thumbnail mode and I want to see it a little
bit bigger. I just hit the V key, V as in view, and I
get a larger rendition of the image with thumbnails below,
and I go, "Well, I want something even a little bit bigger."
Strike V again, and the thumbnails go away, which leaves more real estate for a bigger
picture, and they go, "No, no that's not the shot I want
to work on," so then hit V again, and I'm back to thumbnail mode - same thing with F.
If I want a full screen view of that image, I can hit the F key, and it brings me right
into full screen mode. I can take a very detailed look.
That's what I thought. Hit F again, and I'm back into thumbnail mode.
We also played with the keyboard shortcuts over here in the Inspector.
By hitting the W key, I was able to tab through the various parts, the various tabs of the
Inspector without a problem, so these keyboard shortcuts are terrific,
and they're built right into the application, but what if you wanted to have your own keyboard
shortcuts, or if you wanted to modify one or two of the
keyboard shortcuts that Apple has created in the default set?
In Aperture 2, you can do that. You can actually make your own keyboard shortcuts.
Go up here to Aperture, and I'm going to pick from the commands, Menu, Customize.
What I'm presented with is the default set. This is the set that Aperture is using right
now for my keyboard shortcuts, and if I wanted to find zoom, I could type zoom in up here,
and it shows up right down here, zoom viewer, which is the Z key, one of my favorite keyboard
shortcuts. Let's say that I did not like Z, and that
I wanted a slash instead, I could do that, and the way to do it - first,
you can't modify this set right here, and that's the way Aperture looks at these keyboard
shortcuts. They look at them as sets, so the default
set is owned by Aperture, and I guess they want it that way so that if you go wacky crazy,
you can always come back to the default set, and everything will be okay, but if you want
to change some of these keyboard shortcuts, then all you have to do is create a duplicate
of this set, and then you can have all sorts of wacky fun, and I'm going to do that right
now. I'll go up here to default, and I'm going
to duplicate it, and it's going to ask me to give it a name,
which I will happily do, and let's make it Derrick's Shortcuts.
Now that I've created a duplicate set, I can just create all sorts of mayhem and you see
that here's the default set. Oh, by the way, in default, you get to pick
your language, and then here are mine, so then now for Z, for instance,
instead what I want to do is I really want to have the slash.
All I want to do is click on the function that I want to use and then hit the key that
I want to change it to, so right now zoom is Z. I'm going to hit the
slash key. Down in the corner here, that has a question
mark above it, but I mean hit it on the actual physical keyboard,
and what it does is it creates a new function or a duplicate of that function with the command
that I want, so I have it both as a Z and as slash, and
I could leave it that way. In fact, let's save it right now, and then
I will go ahead and close it, and then let's go back to this image here.
Let's say that I want a closer look at this area right here.
I'll hit that slash key, that new keyboard shortcut, and sure enough, it comes right
in as a zoom, and I hit it again and it goes back.
Well, let's try the Z key. Does the Z key still work?
It does indeed, so now what I've created is that I can zoom in from either end of the
keyboard. I have my slash key and my Z key.
Now let's go back to our commands here.
Go back to customize. I'm in Derrick's Shortcuts.
If I decide that I only want one command for zooming, because I will confuse myself or
maybe people that use my computer, and I want to get rid of the original one,
all I have to do is click on it, hit the delete key, and that will take it away, and now when
I save, I'd save this command, and come back to the
application. I'm going to hit the Z key, and nothing happens.
You get that delightful sound. Let's do it one more time just for fun.
Oh, I'm sorry; your Z key no longer works, however, if I hit my slash key, oh, 100%.
If I go, "I miss having that and I liked it," so I'm going to go back to Commands, Customize.
I think by now you're probably catching on to how this works.
Zoom viewer. I'm going to hit the Z key.
Now we're back in business, so you hit the actual, physical key on the keyboard when
you want to set a keyboard command. Now I'm going to go ahead and save this.
I'm going to close it. Now you can switch among sets, and you can
actually create sets, and export them, and share them with your friends.
You can actually trade them like baseball cards if you want, because if you go here
to commands and you'll see that we have customize, which is where we've been, but if I want,
I can go back to the default set, and I'll hit my slash key that I hit before
that in my Derrick Custom Set is a zoomer, and I get that delightful sound.
However, if I hit Z, which is the default, it zooms in. So I have control over that here
and I can export sets. Let's go back to shortcuts.
Mine - we're going back to my set. Okay, now look at this.
If I come up with the ultimate keyboard shortcut set, then I can export that and I can give
it to you, and you can import it by using this command
here, and have my keyboard shortcuts. This is just a lot of fun, and I think for
people that use the keyboard a lot while working in Aperture,
which I hope that's the direction you're going, because it really speeds things up, and I
can't underline that enough. It really speeds things up, but now we have
no excuse, because if you didn't like what Apple gave you, you have your own.
You can create your own, and then you can even share them with your friends, and that
sounds like just a lot of fun.