Description field not exporting from Photos

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Level 1

8 points

Description field not exporting from Photos

Photos 5 for Mac is not exporting Description when I choose that option. I'm exporting to JPEG and choose to export Title, Description, etc.

Photos Version 5.0 (141.19.150).

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015).

Mac OS Catalina 10.15.4 through 10.15.6 have all had the same problem.

I did some exploration:

My husband has the same versions of Photos and MacOS. He tried exporting a random photo from his Photos library after adding a Description and the Description was included in the exported JPEG and recognized in Preview.

BUT -- when I had him import a photo from my camera (Canon PowerShot A1300), add a Description, export 1 photo, and open in Preview, the Description was not exported. We both created a Keyword and a Title -- those and a location were included in the exported JPEG successfully.

Another oddity. My husband learned that one can drag a picture from Photos to the Desktop. I tried that and found something that is odd. IPTC has a substructure for Artwork objects in an image. See https://www.iptc.org/std/photometadata/specification/IPTC-PhotoMetadata#artwork-or-object-in-the-image-structure

The jpeg created by dragging to the Desktop had the description I had created in Photos in an IPTC field for Artwork Content Description. This is of no use to me, because that field is not recognized in the next stage of my usual workflow, which is to use Preview to reduce the image size and then upload a group of photos to a site that needs the IPTC Caption/Description field.

Note: This is the same problem reported in https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251545333

MacBook

Posted on Sep 13, 2020 6:49 PM

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Answer 1

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Old Toad

Level 10

208,529 points

Sep 14, 2020 10:46 AM in response to swanQapple

You are using essentially these export settings, right?

Boot into Safe Mode (How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support) by booting with the Shift key held down and try exporting there to see if the problem persists. Reboot normally and test again.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing some system cache cleaning, volume verifying and directory repairing.

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Answer 2

Old Toad

Level 10

208,529 points

Sep 14, 2020 10:07 AM in response to swanQapple

How are you checking the Description field in the exported image file? Try using Preview to check the IPTC fields.

Dragging a thumbnail to the desktop only give your the preview version of the image that Photos creates for general viewing.

This is what you should see in Photos:

And this is what yo should see in Preview:

If you're not getting that thenas a test launch Photos with the Option key held down and create a new, test library. Import some photos and test to see if the same problem persists during export. Does it? (This tells us if the problem is limited to your current library or is more wide spread)

Then try exporting from your original library again and test with Preview.

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Answer 3

swanQapple Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 14, 2020 2:20 PM in response to swanQapple

I rebooted in Safe Mode and saw exactly the same behavior for exports from Photos -- using the test library I had created earlier following your instructions. And restarting normally, I still see the same situation.

Thanks you for helping to rule out sources of the problem.

Perhaps I should point out that last year everything worked fine, at least during the summer, which is when I do most captioning of photos I take. I can't pinpoint exactly when the problem started, but an export from August 2019 was fine.

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