Exporting Photos with metadata

It seems to be currently very buggy, when I try to download from www.icloud.com . I tested with a few edited versions and had incorrect results in all cases.

• For photos, that have been edited with a photo editing extension (Luminar AI), clicking the checkmark "most compatible, including edits" resulted in the download of the edited version returned by the editing extension. The download has been a JPEG without keywords or any titles and captions.
• For photos, that have been edited by applying adjustments in Photos, the download of the edited version resulted in downloading the original HEIC file, no adjustments applied, the IPTC metadata titles, captions, keywords missing.

It has been different previously, before the current update.

Yes, use your Mac to export the photos.

Hi

If you drag/drop from photos, it will only transfer the current preview - which as you've found may be lower resolution and quality.

To export properly from photos you need to use file>export or file>export unmodified original.

The first will add keywords and other metadata added in photos. The second won't, but can include them in a separated "side car" file with the option "export IPTC as XMP" selected.

The unmodified originals do not contain the keywords we add in Photos. The keywords are a part of the edited versions. When we duplicate photos in Photos we can create different versions with different meta data, like keywords, locations, titles, dates. Keywords are syncing with iCloud Photos, but when you download from iCloud you have to download the edited version, not the original to include the keywords.

With file>export - are you always selecting the option "full size"? If so then it *will* output a full size image unless there is a serious problem with your setup. You can also change the quality setting for jpg images (as a percentage) but this only impacts the compression (and hence file size), not the resolution.

When you do file>export, then the full size original must first be downloaded from iCloud (this is one of the ways of forcing a download on a machine with optimised storage).

It is possible though that full iCloud might disrupt normal behaviour. As might not having an internet connection avaialbel - though then photos will normally tell you it can't complete the operation because it needs internet.

The keywords are definitely syncing with iCloud Photos. I am syncing several Macs with different system versions with iCloud Photos, and when I add keywords on one Mac the are appearing on the other Macs. My iPhone and iPad, also syncing with iCloud cannot show them, as iOS does not support keywords, but when I search for a keyword on my iPhone or iPad the photos will befound.

Which system version do you have installed? On Big Sur I had a problem, that exporting as a JPEG did not include the keywords and I had to export the edited versions as TIFF files to save the keywords.

Do your keywords survive, when you export as TIFF? I did not mind this bug so much, as I wanted the edited versions converted to HEIC any way, and as Photos does not offer to export as JPEGs, I needed the intermediate TIFF anyway.