Recovering IPTC locations, people, etc. into iPhoto

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Recovering IPTC locations, people, etc. into iPhoto

I used to use iView Media Pro to catalogue my photographs, until it was bought and ruined by Microsoft as "Expression Media". (By ruined I mean it crashes all the time and there is no longer any effective technical support.) I spent a lot of time organising my tens of thousands of photographs. I have a large library of photographs tagged with people, locations (city, state, country), events, scene, subject matter, and so on. All of this metadata is stored in the images IPTC tags according to the IPTC standard.

Unfortunately, when I import these photos into iPhoto, it's all lost. I already have the names of all the people in my photos. I already have the cities, countries, etc. It took a lot of time to do. How can I recover this information into iPhoto's catalogue?

MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Aug 30, 2009 2:22 PM

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Answer 1

RPTB1 Author

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Aug 30, 2009 2:30 PM in response to RPTB1

Incidentally, Spotlight clearly knows all about this metadata, since I can easily find all the photos containing a person. If I used the "mdls" command line utility, I can see all the IPTC data. Also, if I open any of the images in Photoshop and show the file info, all the IPTC annotations are present. It's just that iPhoto ignores them when determining faces and locations.

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Answer 2

Yer_Man

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Aug 30, 2009 2:32 PM in response to RPTB1

Where did you add the Faces data? There is no IPTC convention for Faces, and iPhoto has no way of reading someone elses Faces data - or exporting it.

Regards

TD

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Answer 3

LarryHN

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Aug 30, 2009 2:38 PM in response to RPTB1

AS far as I know iPhoto has no way of importing "faces" data - you can import Keywords I believe

Places data is not the the IPTC data - it is in the EXIF data and if you have lat/long info in the EXIF fields and iPhoto set to look up places automatically it will come in just fine

You can use EXIF viewer to inspect your files prior to importing to see about the GeoCoding - http://homepage.mac.com/aozer/EV/

LN

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Answer 4

RPTB1 Author

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Aug 30, 2009 3:47 PM in response to Yer_Man

It is not faces data, it is people data. It is simply the list of people featured in the photograph, without the locations of their faces. It was added using iView Media Pro's "people" annotation. It shows up in, for example, Graphic Converter's "People" list in the IPTC window. Spotlight also finds it (as kMDItemContactKeywords metadata). So clearly it's not completely unknown, even if it's not in the IPTC standard.

Message was edited by: RPTB1

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Answer 5

RPTB1 Author

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Aug 30, 2009 3:45 PM in response to LarryHN

I have IPTC places data. The IPTC annotations include an "origin" which includes a location, city, state, country. For example, I have photos tagged as being taken in regions of Tokyo. This is not GPS data and does not appear in the EXIF data of the photos, which were taken years before geotagging existed.

It sounds like I might be able to somehow look up the lat & long from the IPTC data and add it to the photos, then import them into iPhoto. But would this work for photos already imported? Otherwise I'd have to trash my entire library and start again.

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Answer 6

Old Toad

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Aug 30, 2009 3:50 PM in response to RPTB1

iPhoto doesn't read or use hardly any of the IPTC metadata that's available in an image file. The only fields I've found that it uses are the Title (Headline in iView) and Keyword.

As far as EM, I've been using EM since its inception and it run beautifully in Leopard and now Snow Leopard.

If you want iPhoto to read and use more IPTC send a feature request to the Apple developers via http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphoto.html

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Answer 7

LarryHN

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Aug 30, 2009 4:07 PM in response to RPTB1

Although making changes in the iPhoto database is risky - always be sure you have a couple of good current backups - if you add Lat/Long to existing photos in the iphoto database you can select them in iPhoto and right click (control click) and rescan for location information

LN

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Answer 8

RPTB1 Author

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Aug 30, 2009 4:28 PM in response to Old Toad

Thanks. I've already sent them suggestions via the feedback page.

I'm just curious — when do you think the "inception" of EM was? I was using iView in the mid 1990s on classic Mac OS. I think it was a really well refined cataloguing product. After Microsoft got hold of it it became really unreliable for me, so that I refused to pay again for the product in order to get EM 2. Basically, I felt the broke my software then wanted me to pay to get a fixed version. I'm glad EM is working for you.

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Answer 9

RPTB1 Author

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Aug 30, 2009 4:48 PM in response to LarryHN

When you say "the iPhoto database" do you mean the SqPhotoInfo table of the iPhotoMain.db Sqlite file? I have quite a bit of experience with SQL so I'm quite happy hacking around in there.

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Answer 10

Old Toad

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Aug 30, 2009 6:11 PM in response to RPTB1

I started using it in the early to mid 90's and then just kept up with it after retirement. I frequented the iView forum and when MS bought it out was asked to be a beta tester for EM. They had some problems at first, the biggest that being part of MS handcuffed them as far as getting things done efficiently. But they prevailed and it's working pretty well for me.

Granted the new EM forum is a joke, no where near as efficient and workable as the iView forum was so I don't visit there very often.

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Answer 11

RPTB1 Author

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Aug 31, 2009 2:14 AM in response to Old Toad

Why thanks Old Toad. You give me some hope for EM 2 after all. I will take another look at it. I feel iPhoto's cataloging is both nifty (works in a cute way) but at the same time noddy (only good as a toy). My experience with Apple in general is they don't know how to make scalable software.

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Answer 12

Yer_Man

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Aug 31, 2009 2:56 AM in response to RPTB1

My experience with Apple in general is they don't know how to make scalable software.

Not much experience then, I guess. Aperture, Final Cut Studio, Filemaker etc etc.

Iphoto is focussed on the domestic user with a point and shoot camera.

Regards

TD

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Answer 13

RPTB1 Author

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Aug 31, 2009 4:42 AM in response to Yer_Man

A mere 21 years.

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Answer 14

Yer_Man

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Aug 31, 2009 5:01 AM in response to RPTB1

And in that time you've found scaling issues with the Pro level software?

Regards

TD

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Answer 15

RPTB1 Author

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Sep 1, 2009 6:25 PM in response to Yer_Man

I really do not want to get into an irrelevant discussion about this. There are two things wrong with what you say. Firstly, most of the software you list was not made by Apple. Secondly, staying relevant, I found Aperture had no scalable way to work with IPTC metadata either. That is, no way to bulk process large numbers of photographs with anything more than keywords. But yes, most of the Pro software that Apple has bought in is reasonably good. Most of the consumer stuff has been very poor indeed. I mere 1000 photos used to render iPhoto inoperable. I am still struggling with Mail consuming 100% of one of my CPUs 100% of the time "updating smart mailboxes". But you can find my other threads about that if you're interested.

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