Batch Changing Options in Photos 5, macOS 10 10.15 Catalina

If we have taken a lot of photos at the same place and the same time with the same camera, we want occasionally to apply similar adjustments or metadata to a batch of photos at once.

Some batch processing is possible, if we select the thumbnails of several photos at once.

Batch Changing the Look of a Photo

Have a look at the "Image" menu in Photos, after you select multiple photos. Some basic tools are still available, even with multiple photos selected.

• We can change the orientation of all selected photos or flip them.
• We can auto enhance them all at once, without having to open the editor. This will automatically adjust the colours, the exposure, and the contrast.
• And even better, if we do not like what we are seeing after adjusting the photos, we can revert all selected photos at once to the original with "Revert to Original".
• For some external editors the "Edit with" command will open the selected photos together in the external editor, for example in Preview. For other external editors only the first selected photo will open.
• For RAW&JPEG pairs we can batch change the original from RAW to JPEG or back for all selected photos at once with "Use Raw as Original". This used not to be possible in earlier versions of photos.
• "Reprocess RAW" is only available after a software update that has changed the raw support for the camera model.
• For Live Photos we can toggle the Live Effect on or off for several selected photos at once with "Turn on/off Live Photo"

What is still not possible from the Image Menu, when viewing the thumbnails, is lifting and stamping adjustments. We have to be in the Editor to be able to copy the adjustments with ⇧⌘C and to paste with ⇧⌘V.

Batch changing the Metadata:

Some Metadata can be changed for a batch of selected thumbnails as well.

From the Image menu:

• We can correct the clock set in the camera or change the timezone with "Adjust Date and and Time". The date and time will be shifted for all selected photos by the same offset.
• We can hide the location for all selected photos or revert a manually assigned location with "Image > Location".

If we select several thumbnails together and open the Info panel with ⌘i, we can batch change some of the fields in the Info panel by editing the entries:

• We can set the titles of all photos to the same title.
• We can set the descriptions of all photos to the same description.
• We can add additional keywords by typing into the keywords field or using the keyboard shortcut assigned in the Keywords Browser.
• We can assign the same location for all photos by typing the latitude and longitude in degrees to the "Assign a location" field, or the name of place.

What we cannot do directly is batch changing the titles or descriptions using formatted presets, like we could do in Aperture or iPhoto. For this we have to write an Apple Script.

You can find some examples for Apple Scripts for batch changing metates in this user tip:

Thematic Index to Photos for Mac related user Tips. (look at the section "Scripting Photos").

For example:

Script: Lift and Stamp all Metadata from one Photo to All Other Selected Photos

There are many more ...