Big Sur Photos does not export image Titles as metadata

It will be a long wait for a fix. I just installed the current Beta version and it is still not fixed. Photos is including the description and the location, but not the title, when exporting JPEGs. I would copy the title to the description before exporting. The description I currently more important on Apple devices than the title, because iPhones with iOS 14 and iPads with iPadOS 14 can show the description of a photo but still not the title.

I am using this Apple Script to copy the titles to the descriptions: Script: Batch Change the Description to the Title plus the Current Description (Caption)

SnowEgret wrote:

I am having the same problem -- title, keywords & caption do not export with photo in spite of checkbox.

That's a know bug with Photos 6.0. Tell Apple about the bug via Feedback - Photos - Apple. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

A workaround has been found by user léonie:

1 - export the image as a tiff file with the checkboxes checked to include all of the metadata.

2 - convert the tiff file to a jpg and it will retain the IPTC metadata within the file.

Not convenient but works.

I have also had this problem since 11.01, and it is not fixed in 11.1. I've send feedback through the link (and have been filing bugs in Feedback Assistant since the betas). It's an incredibly frustrating regression in functionality.

A good idea, but that would be a problem, if the title is very long or does contain characters that are not alphanumeric, like commas. It may be causing problem in the Finder. And the original filename will be lost. At least I would prefix the title with the original filename.

Big Sur Photos.app 6.0 exports .tif Title, Captions and Keywords OK to both IPTC and XMP tags:

exiftool -a -G1 -s export.tiff
[IPTC]          ObjectName                      : Title text.
[XMP-dc]        Title                           : Title text.
[IPTC]          Caption-Abstract                : Caption text.
[XMP-dc]        Description                     : Caption text.
[IPTC]          Keywords                        : Keyword 1, Keyword 2
[XMP-dc]        Subject                         : Keyword 1, Keyword 2

But it exports only the Caption text and puts it in the AFAIK wrong 'IFD0:ImageDescription' tag (that Preview.app however manages to display):

exiftool -a -G1 -s export.jpeg
[IFD0]          ImageDescription                : Caption text.

Exporting unmodified originals with IPTC as XMP exports the updated metadata Dates, Titles, Captions, Keywords, locations as a sidecar file:

exiftool -a -G1 -s export.xmp
[XMP-exif]      GPSLongitude                    : 31 deg 8' 6.36" E
[XMP-exif]      GPSLongitudeRef                 : E
[XMP-exif]      GPSHPositioningError            : 1 m
[XMP-exif]      GPSLatitudeRef                  : N
[XMP-exif]      GPSLatitude                     : 29 deg 58' 36.84" N
[XMP-exif]      GPSDateTime                     : 2020:12:22 09:31:56Z
[XMP-dc]        Title                           : Title text.
[XMP-dc]        Description                     : Caption text.
[XMP-dc]        Subject                         : Keyword 1, Keyword 2
[XMP-photoshop] DateCreated                     : 2010:10:16 17:19:13+03:00
[Composite]     GPSLatitudeRef                  : North
[Composite]     GPSLongitudeRef                 : East
[Composite]     GPSPosition                     : 29 deg 58' 36.84" N, 31 deg 6' 6.36" E

Those can be easily joined with GraphicConverter (it currently copies the tags to old IPTC that Photos.app 6.0 needs and also new XMP that Photos.app 6.0 ignores. It also copies the modified dates apparently from the 'XMP-photoshop:DateCreated' tag):

GraphicConverter > IPTC/XMP menu > XMP Sidecar File > Copy into JPEGs, TIFFs, PNGs, webp, HEICs

Or via exiftool (IPTC and modified date would need additional options):

exiftool -m -P -overwrite_original_in_place -ext jpg -tagsfromfile %d%f.xmp .

<sigh>

Exporting photos using BIG SUR using JPEG - with titles and all info. Start with PHOTO TITLED = PANNA COTTA TART - IMG_7838.JPG with date, etc. EXPORT IMPORTS with title, but JPEG is PANNA COTTA TART (14).jpeg. I tried TIFF also, same result. I presume that these exported photos will be useless in the future without an accurate JPEG. ALSO, in the course of doing this export of several thousand photos, 1,476 photos were not exported for UNKNOWN ERRORS. BEFORE all this I made the unwise decision to move all my photos to the iCLOUD. I lost hundreds of photos in that process also. APPLE spends to much time MAKING INSIGNIFICANT CHANGES THAT WE DO NOT NEED and FAILS to make SIGNIFICANT changes that we need. SORRY, this is years of pent up frustration over photos and other APPLE "improvements".

Exports are ‘hit and miss’.

Some images export metadata including keywords. Other images lack the information.

Very frustrating!

Can’t trust Photos. This after trying to recover images and metadata from old iPhoto files!

ray

Ray Postuma wrote:

Exports are ‘hit and miss’.

Can’t trust Photos. This after trying to recover images and metadata from old iPhoto files!

ray

Your iPhoto Library may include images and videos in a legacy format, that Photos 6 on Big Sur cannot handle at all. You may need to convert images in a legacy format to format supported by Big Sur.

No, this is not a matter of some kind of legacy format. This is a problem of Photos app. I have raw images produced at about the same time with the same camera (GH5S) and when I export some images to JPG keywords and titles are included and with some images are not. The most painfully visible is this when I create an album to be sync'd to iPhone - some images get sync'd with caption and keyword and some are not. On random basis. Imagine 1000 animal images where caption and keywords include their name. I would like to be able to see in the image details on iPhone to see the name of the animal. And have this album sync'd. Not possible today. Some images get metadata exported and some won't. On random basis. Already burned so many hours with testing. Checking what's get on the iPhone using viewExif - some images get title, caption and keyword within their jpeg and some won't. Apple software development needs to step up really. Outrageous.

As of May 8th 2021, none of the export options work on my M1 Macbook Air with the latest Big Sur 11.3: jpeg, tiff or png. The exported images have the day of the export as their metadata, which is a big nuissance. I have edited a lot of raw images and I would like to replace them with smaller files, e.g. jpeg. This implies exporting them with full metadata (date of capture and location), deleting the originals and importing the exported versions. This would allow Photos to preserve its structure and Memories suggestions.

P.S. exporting "unmodified original" also doesn't work. For example, when exporting a picture from August 14th 2011, it gets exported as April 14th 2021 and no location. So, only the day of capture is exported. Extremely weird.

I am having the same problem. When I export a photo as JPEG, the title is no longer included. I have to export the photo as a TIFF to include all metadata.

I have filed a bug report, and hope it will be fixed. you may also want to do the same: Feedback - Photos - Apple

This issue has been present since Photos 5.0 and Catalina: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250940547

Dan Jones wrote:

Is Apple working on a fix?

We don't know as we're only end users like yourself. We can only hope. In the meantime keep telling Apple about the problem via Feedback - Photos - Apple