Recover original files from Photos app, including original filenames?

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Level 1

14 points

Recover original files from Photos app, including original filenames?

Photos Version 5.0 (141.19.150) Catalina Version 10.15.4 (19E287) on a late 2013 iMac.

As I began preparation for setting up an automated rsync backup of the family photos I have run into a very disturbing aspect of Photos under Catalina: The original files in the library have been renamed to gibberish. ( In /Users/XXXXXX/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/originals)

By 'gibberish' I am meaning that to a human they are gibberish- "544BC43A-890E-4B4E-B05B-93066C4596A7" as a filename means absolutely nothing to me.

Why does the 'as-taken' filename matter so much to me?

1) While I like using Photos because of it's 'Apple ecosphere' aspect (pics are available on any Apple device), I don't like relying on Apple to safeguard my files. I lost a ton of stuff a bunch of years ago to an iPhoto migration, and won't let that happen again. My 'whole computer' backups are one way I backup, but I also want to have some redundancy for my family pictures and movies, as they are irreplaceable.

2) I need to back these images and movies up in a format that is NOT dependent on Apple's software. In the event of a system failure and I don't happen to have a few thousand dollars handy to buy a new Apple computer... I'll need the files stored with useful filenames to be able to use them in another OS environment.

3) They're MY content, MY files, and nobody (no software prompt) asked me if I wanted to rename all 71,500 of my files to meaningless strings.

4) For the same reasons that you don't want MS Word renaming your document to some gibberish string - it's not useful or desired, and can render a file unfindable.

In reading through many posts in the Apple Discussions about this renaming 'feature', I understand that I may be able to "Export Unmodified Original..." the entire library to a destination drive from within Photos and thereby recover the original filenames.

This is no small task for me, if it's true.

There are just under 70,000 images and a bit under 1500 videos in my library.

Exporting it all may take days, or weeks, if the 'normal' speed of exporting is what will happen. (By 'normal' I mean the usual amount time it takes to 'export' a single image of about 1.5MB from Photos to the remote HDD).

I am also concerned about application failure/crashing while undertaking such a huge task. I have had iPhotos (away back when) and then Photos (since switching to it years ago) sometimes behave erratically - where it's failed/crashed/locked up during some basic task or another. If it did so during an export of the entire library, I'd have no way to establish the last 'successful' export and begin again there. I'd have to restart the whole export.

Can anyone here in the Discussions advise me about this possible strategy of exporting to recover filenames, or tell me if there is a better way to recover all of my filenames?

Really want to resolve this, and am feeling quite sorely abused by Apple here.

What a complete PITA this is.

Posted on May 17, 2020 5:01 PM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

197,279 points

May 18, 2020 2:38 AM in response to Nixt

And you really need to save the original image files with the original filenames, because the renamed filenames do not allow you to sort the photos chronologically. The original names are much more useful, eve the names created by the camera. For videos the filename may contain the capture date, for image files the filename will show you a short camera specific prefix and a running number, so we are able to sort them in the sequence the have been taken and separate them by cameras, if the original filenames have been preserved.

This problem has been around since Catalina first came out last year. Apple fixed some problems with the handling of filenames, but the main problem remains: How Photos 5.0 on Catalina Manages original Files and Filenames

You could speed up the export by exporting to a locally mounted volume and copy from there to your remote volume. Why does it need to be a remote volume?

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Answer 2

Nixt Author

Level 1

14 points

May 18, 2020 12:07 PM in response to léonie

Hi léone,

Since installing Catalina about six months ago I have had no idea that Photos has been doing this since. The only reason I discovered the issue at all is because I rearranged our network backup drives (4 Macs in the household, 2 of the Time Machine backup HDDs are on an Airport Extreme, and I needed to upgrade storage as the kids were running low), and wanted to create some redundancy of backups for my family pics and movies.

Since storing the redundant pic/movie backup on the same physical disk as the OS or the Time Machine backup would not actually be redundant physically, a new drive was put on the Extreme to hold the photos and home movies.

Since Time Machine is already backing up my iMac(including the Photos library), I wanted to copy JUST the photos and videos out to yet another HDD. Y'know, so if Apple's stuff craps the bed I haven't lost the most important stuff on the iMac. When starting to set this up I discovered the naming issue.

So I guess I could export to the local drive, and then copy over to the remote drive... but that then doubles the time needed, more or less. I wanted a simple backup, not a series of long processes...

Since posting the above, I've discovered some potential solutions on GitHub - where people with way more coding skill than I have (easy to do) have experienced the same issue and gotten ticked off enough to have done something about it. I'll post in this thread if I end up using any of them. Have to learn how to use Python before I can try them though.

Also have a call in to Apple support, and bumped up to the 'engineers' there. I await word back from them and will update this thread when/if they get back to me. I asked specifically if any command-line switches were available to make Photos copy the original out before processing it into the library with a new name, or if the copy operation can be automated by altering the importation Automator script found in the Photos package.

Terrance,

Have you done any large-batch exports? I'b be keen to know where your failure point was (how many at a time before failure.)

And 'secret back door': How well do you know command-line commands for Photos and it's components?

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Answer 3

Yer_Man

Level 10

163,788 points

May 18, 2020 12:24 PM in response to Nixt

Have you done any large-batch exports? I'b be keen to know where your failure point was (how many at a time before failure.)

From Photos? none. But I have from iPhoto and Aperture and it was about gaining confidence. I started at 1k and worked my way up to 5k at a time. (Rounded numbers - taking them to the nearest Event/Project). Disk space is a key issue for you. And no, exporting to a local or USB disk and then copying across a network will be faster than exporting across a network, in my experience.

And 'secret back door': How well do you know command-line commands for Photos and it's components?

I have perfect knowledge of these things, if you use the word perfect in the way the current incumbent of the Oval Office does.

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Answer 4

Nixt Author

Level 1

14 points

May 18, 2020 12:54 PM in response to Yer_Man

Terrence:

LOL to the Oval Office reference. So glad I'm over here in New Zealand. Thanks for the other feedback.

While I'm admittedly a dangerous noob at using Terminal, AppleScripts, and other related ways of making the computer do stuff from text commands, I am willing to claw my way up a learning curve to get what I want...

General:

So up to 5K at a time was do-able for at least one person in related software.

Any other readers of this thread, please post if you've done large exports and let me know what your safe max was.

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Answer 5

Yer_Man

Level 10

163,788 points

May 17, 2020 11:32 PM in response to Nixt

The only solution is to export in smaller batches. Don't try the whole thing at once. There's no other way, no secret back door. And yes, exporting 70k images will take time.

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Recover original files from Photos app, including original filenames?

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