exporting faces as meta data?

There is no standard for "faces" - to add it to a photo for other use select all photos of a person's face and assign their name as a keyword - then export using the option to "include title and keywords"

This will add them to the IPTC data for use by other programs

LN

Yes - iPhoto is a database and to have the complete data you have to export it - that is what pulls it all together into one place for external use

Is there no way to just add the data (keywords) and then just update the original file?

Yes - export

Once you export and use it, you can delete the exported version

LN

iPhoto stores any metadata you add in the iPhoto database. There is no way to edit the original file. Even if you export the original file you cannot write metadata to it. You can write metadata to any jpeg or tiff file when you export only.

Regards

TD

but does that mean I have to export the photos, in effect duplicating them, in order to get jpegs with meta data attached?

There is no standard for "faces" - to add it to a photo for other use select all photos of a person's face and assign their name as a keyword - then export using the option to "include title and keywords"

This will add them to the IPTC data for use by other programs

*YES - you have to export*

not sure what you are finding confusing about this

LN

iPhoto is a database and to have the complete data you have to export it - that is what pulls it all together into one place for external use

As long as you are using iPhoto then all of your information is there - for use with other programs then you have to export the photo - once you use it you can delete the exported version - there is no advantage to keeping it nor is there any advantage to importing it to iPhoto and deleting the old original

LN

the answer is exceedingly simple

iPhoto is a database and to have the complete data you have to export it - that is what pulls it all together into one place for external use

No matter what you want or how many times you ask the answer is the same

EXPORT!

LN

Yes you do have to export the photo which does create another copy, but only temporarily - once you use them then delete the duplicate - or if you do not want the iPhoto copy then delete it is iPhoto

As to stupid - not at all - that is the way all databases work - if you want to use your addresses from contacts you must export them - etc etc etc - databases by definition are databases and do not have all of the data in a serial file - to get everything together you simply have to export it

The fact that iPhoto is a database is what makes it so powerful - in fact it is brilliant IMHO


LN

No - it is brilliant - you are misusing it - you are using a database program and want a file management program - rather than complain about the program you choose which works the way it works - you need to search out ad find a file management program to use

iPhoto is what it is and you can choose to use it or not - but you can not change it nor will complaining to the other users here help anything -- you can make suggestions to Apple - iPhoto menu ==> provide iPhoto feedback - but in this case the odds of success are extremely unlikely since the "feature" you want is the opposite of what iPhoto is designed to accomplish - it is not a file manager nor is it a photo viewer - it is a photo management system using a SQL database

LN

Because iPhoto is a database all this metadata is stored in the central db file. Why? because it's much faster to search that single file than to have to do brute force searches of thousands of other files. Also, as your Library can contain up to three different versions of the file, which ones should it write the metadata to?

Also, because of the way iPhoto is integrated throughout the OS, that metadata is available throughout the OS, and so, no need to write it back to the file.

If you want to use your files in a space that doesn't integrate with iPhoto (for instance, on a Windows OS) then you have to export from iPhoto anyway - and in the proces can choose

a: what version to export (original or modified)
b: write the metadata to the file on export.

So, in summary. iPhoto does not write the data to the IPTC (and it would be the IPTC, not the Exif) because there's no need to (because of the way the app integrates with the OS) and, should you want to use the photos outside of the 'ecosystem', then you can write it to the file as you export.

So there is no waste. And iPhoto should be a database. Without that db most of the features of the app would either be woefully inefficient or not work at all.

Regards

TD