thedatadude

Q: Where are photo file names?

I've "titled" many, many photos in iPhoto by changing the filename (e.g. "DSC_2254" --> "On vacation in Hawaii"), but there appears to be no option in Photos to show the filename. So none of my "titles" appear. Am I missing something?

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014), OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on Apr 9, 2015 7:56 AM

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Q: Where are photo file names?

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  • by Allison Sheridan,

    Allison Sheridan Allison Sheridan May 17, 2015 11:37 AM in response to Old Toad
    Level 1 (10 points)
    May 17, 2015 11:37 AM in response to Old Toad

    Ok, this is getting weird. I just tried it from an album and it errors out.  Tried it from Photos and it errors out.  Tried it from All Photos and it worked.  So Jay gets it to work in Photos but not All Photos, you get it to work in Albums but I can ONLY get it tow work in All Photos.

     

    Or, there some other factor randomizing the results?

  • by Jay Deitch,

    Jay Deitch Jay Deitch May 17, 2015 12:01 PM in response to Allison Sheridan
    Level 2 (210 points)
    May 17, 2015 12:01 PM in response to Allison Sheridan

    You'll have to re-read my post - it doesn't work for me in "Photos" either.  It does work in "All Photos" under Albums but not in any other album.  So the only place I can get it to work is "All Photos" and it appears you have the same experience.

     

    -Jay

  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad May 17, 2015 12:30 PM in response to Jay Deitch
    Level 10 (140,898 points)
    Photos for Mac
    May 17, 2015 12:30 PM in response to Jay Deitch

    Which of the scripts are you using?  File Name to Title, fFile Name to Title wo Extension, Batch Change Title With Padded Numbers or Batch Change Title With Date, Desc and Padded Numbers.

     

    They all work in for me in albums in the sidebar.  You might try launching Photos with the Command+Option keys held down and repair the library.  Then try again.

  • by Jay Deitch,

    Jay Deitch Jay Deitch May 17, 2015 1:04 PM in response to Old Toad
    Level 2 (210 points)
    May 17, 2015 1:04 PM in response to Old Toad

    I've only tried two: one to batch change the titles to a text entry and the other changes the title to the file name.  Both only work in "All Photos."  I just repaired the library and get the same result - the scripts still only work in the "All Photos" album.

     

    Jay

  • by Allison Sheridan,

    Allison Sheridan Allison Sheridan May 17, 2015 1:04 PM in response to Old Toad
    Level 1 (10 points)
    May 17, 2015 1:04 PM in response to Old Toad

    Ah sorry Jay - my bad.  At least the fail makes more sense now.

     

    Old Toad - I am using BatchChangeTitleWithNumbers.  I deleted all of the Services I'd been testing, quit Photos, and logged out and back in.  Then I re-downloaded BatchChangeTitleWithNumbers and reinstalled. Because my Photos library is GIGANTIC (380GB) I hesitated to rebuild before testing. I reopened Photos and it still works in All Photos but not in an album I created.  Note that my albums are inside folders. 

     

    I then bit the bullet and am now rebuilding my Photos Library. I'm currently singing the Jeopardy theme song to myself while I wait.

  • by Jay Deitch,

    Jay Deitch Jay Deitch May 17, 2015 1:18 PM in response to Allison Sheridan
    Level 2 (210 points)
    May 17, 2015 1:18 PM in response to Allison Sheridan

    Remember when IBM's Watson won Jeopardy?  Perhaps Watson could figure this out for us.

     

    -Jay

  • by Jay Deitch,

    Jay Deitch Jay Deitch May 17, 2015 1:26 PM in response to Jay Deitch
    Level 2 (210 points)
    May 17, 2015 1:26 PM in response to Jay Deitch

    I just created the script you posted on May 13 that creates titles from text with sequential numbers (text-01, text-02...).  It also only works when the photos are selected in "All Photos."

     

    -Jay

  • by Allison Sheridan,

    Allison Sheridan Allison Sheridan May 17, 2015 1:42 PM in response to Allison Sheridan
    Level 1 (10 points)
    May 17, 2015 1:42 PM in response to Allison Sheridan

    The singing has stopped, but I'm still stuck.  I can prove now, however, that there's a random effect.  Just in case you guys can see something I'm missing, I made a little video.  One caveat - I made a couple of tiny tweaks to the script while I was waiting for Photos to rebuild. I changed the default to 2 instead of 4 digits, I made the digits precede the text, and I fixed a minor typo (instead of o.k it now says OK).  That shouldn't have affected my results. What you'll see in the video is:

    1. It worked in All Photos
    2. It worked in an album
    3. Then it didn't work in an album

     

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/57192/batch_change_problem.mp4

  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad May 17, 2015 1:51 PM in response to Allison Sheridan
    Level 10 (140,898 points)
    Photos for Mac
    May 17, 2015 1:51 PM in response to Allison Sheridan

    I save all of my scripts as applications and put them in the Scripts folder

    Safari001.jpg
    That menu is enabled in AppleScripts Editor's preferences:

    AppleScript Editor001.jpg

     

    You might want to try saving it as an application and see if it will work in the other sections of Photos.

  • by Allison Sheridan,

    Allison Sheridan Allison Sheridan May 17, 2015 2:20 PM in response to thedatadude
    Level 1 (10 points)
    May 17, 2015 2:20 PM in response to thedatadude

    I feel like I'm taking so much of peoples' time but this created an all new error. I did as suggested and re-created the script as an application and saved it to the Scripts folder inside ~/Library.  First time I ran it, it renamed the FIRST photo in an album but not the second.  Second time I ran it, it failed immediately without renaming any of the files.

     

    script_error.jpg

  • by Jay Deitch,

    Jay Deitch Jay Deitch May 17, 2015 3:31 PM in response to Old Toad
    Level 2 (210 points)
    May 17, 2015 3:31 PM in response to Old Toad

    HI OT,

     

    I made a copy of the script to convert the title to text with a sequential number as an application and saved it in the scripts folder:

     

    Screen Shot 2015-05-17 at 5.27.39 PM.png

     

    The result is the same - it works in the "All Photos" album, but not in another album.

     

    Thanks for all your help with this.

    -Jay

  • by Rajje,

    Rajje Rajje May 19, 2015 2:39 PM in response to thedatadude
    Level 1 (10 points)
    May 19, 2015 2:39 PM in response to thedatadude

    I had a huge iPhoto library where all image titles were set by naming the files before import. None of these titles were migrated to Photos.

     

    I solved the problem with a different approach. I dug into the database files of iPhoto and Photos. They have a relation called RKVersion which stores all information about images, including name, file name and UUID. In iPhoto, all versions have a name attribute, but after the Photos migration, only a few of my images had them. According to an Apple support article, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204478 , only user-defined titles are migrated. That information seems to be correct, since the very few titles that were migrated for me, were ones I had set in iPhoto instead of by naming the files. I tried to find any sort of "user-defined title" attribute in the iPhoto database, but without any luck. Maybe someone else can find it and if so, that attribute probably just needs to be set to True for all images before the iPhoto library is migrated and then all image titles will be migrated - including those that are equal to the file name.

     

    Anyhow, I wrote a Python script that goes through the databases of the old and new libraries and tries to find matching UUIDs. Where it does, it copies over the image title from the old to the new. Unfortunately, many UUIDs are changed in the migration, so for me it only found matches for 37 % of the images. Therefore, I added a function to the script that sets all remaining titles in the new library based on file names. All file extensions are excluded and titles are only created if current titles are empty. The script also lets you run only one of the two functions if you want. The script took just a couple of seconds to add titles to 15 000 of my images.

     

    The script makes a backup of both databases before running. I have tested it but not thoroughly, so proceed with caution. Feel free to expand it or improve it. And please respond if you find a way to mark titles as user-defined in the iPhoto database, since that would be the real solution instead of this workaround.

     

    ----------

     

    PhotosTitleSetter

     

    Migrates image titles from an iPhoto library to a Photos library. Can set titles based on file names if no old titles are found.

     

    Instructions:

    Make sure to quit both iPhoto and Photos

    Download the PhotosTitleSetter.py script from: https://github.com/Rajje/PhotosTitleSetter

    Open a new Terminal window

    Type "python " including the space at the end

    Drag the script to the Terminal window and then press the return or enter key

    The script will run and display further instructions

     

    ALWAYS have several backups of any important files. Make especially sure to back up both photo libraries before running this script. The author of this script takes no responsibility for any damage on any files or for any of the actions of this script.

  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad May 19, 2015 3:25 PM in response to Rajje
    Level 10 (140,898 points)
    Photos for Mac
    May 19, 2015 3:25 PM in response to Rajje
    had a huge iPhoto library where all image titles were set by naming the files before import. None of these titles were migrated to Photos.

    You could have saved your self a lot of work by using the Applescript/Automator workflow created by léonie and posted in the Photos for Mac User Tips.  It is called Photos for Mac: Batch Changing the Titles to the Filename.  It gets the file name of each photo selected and enters it into the Title field below the thumbnail. 

  • by R C-R,

    R C-R R C-R May 19, 2015 3:47 PM in response to Old Toad
    Level 6 (17,633 points)
    May 19, 2015 3:47 PM in response to Old Toad

    Old Toad wrote:

    You could have saved your self a lot of work by using the Applescript/Automator workflow created by léonie and posted in the Photos for Mac User Tips.  It is called Photos for Mac: Batch Changing the Titles to the Filename.  It gets the file name of each photo selected and enters it into the Title field below the thumbnail. 

    Except that léonie's & any other similar methods based on Applescript are often slow or unreliable for large scale changes & rely on what appears to be a somewhat buggy Applescript implementation in this first version of Photos.

  • by e2photo,

    e2photo e2photo May 19, 2015 7:37 PM in response to R C-R
    Level 2 (170 points)
    May 19, 2015 7:37 PM in response to R C-R

    I loaded a test Aperture 3.6 library into Photos.  All of the titles are empty.  But I am not aware that Aperture ever used 'Titles'

     

    Seems to me that one should have a choice to display file name or title, but I will have to study why a single file should have a title  and a filename.  Not persuaded there is much value to two things describing the file.

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