What do the badges in Apple Aperture mean?

I get asked this quite a lot, and I have to admit it took me a while to figure it out and get comfortable with what all these little icons mean. Apple calls them badges, and they do serve an important purpose in your photographic workflow.

The Aperture manual has a description of some of them, but unfortunately not all. By the way, you can find the manual by going to Help>Aperture User Manual. Then just do a search for 'badge' or go to page 291 and you'll find it. This may seem obvious, but so many people have asked me how to get a hold of the manual that it's worth repeating. You do not need to download it from Apple as it's included in the Aperture install.

Anyway, I've put together the table below as an explanation of what each badge (or icon) means, and where it appears in the image.

Badge/Icon	Description	Where
	This means adjustments have been made to the photograph. This badge will appear whenever you add any adjustment from the adjustments tab. It basically lets you know that you've already done something to the image. A version with only one slider is sometimes used, but it means the same thing.	Lower Right
	This means the photograph has keywords attached to it.	Lower Right
	This means the photograph has been edited in an external editor. Whenever you select "Edit with..." and choose an application (ie. Photoshop) or a plug-in (ie. Dodge & Burn, Nik plugins, etc.)	Lower Right
	This means the photograph is referenced. That is, the master file (or original) is not stored within the Aperture library, but it's somewhere else and Aperture is only referencing it.	Lower Right
	This means the photograph is referenced, but the master image is offline. This will happen if you have the masters in an external drive and it's not attached to the computer.	Lower Right
	This means Aperture expects the photograph to be referenced, but cannot find the master. You may need to re-sync.	Lower Right
	This is the rating you've assigned to the photograph. It goes from 1 star to 5 stars. If the photograph is unrated it won't have a badge, and if it's been rejected it'll have an 'X' instead of stars.	Lower Left
	This badge will tell you how many photographs are contained in a stack.	Upper Left
	This is also for stacks, but it tells you you're looking at the second image in a stack of 3. It will appear, for example, within a smart album where not all images in the stack are visible. Imagine a smart album where the filter is 3 stars or more. If only the second image in the stack is a 3 star photograph, while the others are 1 star, you'll see this badge.	Upper Left
	This badge will appear whenever the image resolution is too low for the book or webpage you're trying to create. the badge appears in the image within the book/webpage, not in the thumbnail	Upper Right
	This badge tells you the photograph is the album's pick. It's useful when you have, for example, a stack of 3 images. One Black & White, one Full Color, one Color Monochrome. If you do 3 albums, one for B&W's, one for color shots, etc, you can "pick" the one that goes into each album from the stack.	Upper Center
	This badge tells you the number of times the photograph has been used within a book, web journal or light table	Upper Right
	This one doesn't seem to be documented anywhere and a search in Google doesn't show any answers. The badge is a little globe or world and it's used for images that came from a MobileMe gallery. For example, if you export a gallery to MobileMe, then delete the original image from your Library, and then sync the MobileMe gallery again, Aperture will know the master is missing from the Library and will pull down the jpeg from MobileMe with this badge.	Lower Right

So, with all this information you now can easily tell that the thumbnail at the beginning of this post shows the photograph:

1. Has been rated 4 Stars.
2. Has been edited in an external editor (Dodge & Burn plugin in this case!)
3. Has had adjustments made within Aperture
4. Has keywords assigned
5. Is the second image in a stack of 2.
6. Is the album pick (for a book)
7. Has been used once in the given book, web journal or light table (it's in a book in this case)

Hopefully that helps!

UPDATE: Thanks to ideaslinger for pointing out what the last badge means. I've done a few tests and updated the description accordingly.

Comments

[ideaslinger]

The little globe icon means that it was synced in via a MobileMe page. So if you uploaded something on the run to MobileMe... or if you happen to send stuff up from one Aperture library and then sync down from another (you can do that in the MobileMe prefs tab inside of Aperture) then you'll end up with all those pics coming into your library with the globe badge - means it came from the net.

[gabe]

@ideaslinger: thanks for that. Although I don't understand how it could've happened. I do upload to MobileMe galleries a lot, but have never pulled anything back to my library. And I only have 1 Aperture library with all images managed by Aperture. Also, there's only 1 image in my library with that icon.

[gabe]

Quick update. I did some tests and figured out how it happened. I uploaded a gallery to MobileMe, but then deleted the master image from my library. When I synchronized the gallery again Aperture pulled down the missing image with that badge. Makes perfect sense now! I had deleted the master because it was an edited version (ie. edited with an external editor, so it becomes a new master effectively), and I worked on a new one. Thanks for clarifying!

[caroline]

Also if other people add photos to your mobile me albums Aperture will download them and give them that world icon.