Modifying original metadata of photos inside photo library

Photos is preserving the originals exactly as they are. There is no tool in Photos to modify the original files in any way. If you change metadata directly inside the originals folder in Photos, Photos will ignore these changes and not update the versions. It may even cause Photos to lose the connection to the originals.

You should not modify the originals inside the library package.

To modify the metadata tags of originals the only safe way would be to export the originals from photos, change the metadata with an external editor, then delete the previous version from Photos and reimport the modified original.

But - there is always a but - there are programs that can write metadata to the originals and inform Photos that the update has been made.

HoudahGeo will do this for geotagging, and it's new big brother Photos Workbench can do it for some other metadata.

https://www.houdah.com/?lang=en

I forgot about HoudahGeo being able to modify the Photos Library, I am always using it before importing to Photos. I still did not upgrade to the current version of HoudahGeo, so I am not sure, if it will work with my Shared iCloud Photos Library.

Question:

When you write the geotag data into

the metadata of the file in photos, does that get transmitted to the

images in the iCloud Photos library?

Here is the answer from Houdah:

Last I checked, Apple Photos down not sync changes to images files back to the

cloud. It considers iCloud Photo to hold the "truth" and the photo on

your Mac to be a cached copy. When you enable the option to "optimize

storage" your local copy becomes disposable. Apple Photos may delete the

local file - even when you changed it to add metadata - and think it

safe to later replace it with a download from the cloud.

That is the reason why I recommend iCloud Photos users to tag their image

files before importing these into Apple Photos. That way the metadata is

included with the initial upload. You can use Apple's Image Capture app

or HoudahGeo to import photos from your camera to a folder and later

import form there into Apple Photos.

Metadata you add to the Photos library (e.g. through HoudahGeo's "Notify Photos Library") does get synced to iCloud.

Keith Barkley wrote:

Question:

When you write the geotag data into

the metadata of the file in photos, does that get transmitted to the

images in the iCloud Photos library?

Here is the answer from Houdah:

... ...

That is the reason why I recommend iCloud Photos users to tag their image

files before importing these into Apple Photos. That way the metadata is

included with the initial upload. You can use Apple's Image Capture app

or HoudahGeo to import photos from your camera to a folder and later

import form there into Apple Photos.

That is what I have been doing all along.

Metadata you add to the Photos library (e.g. through HoudahGeo's "Notify Photos Library") does get synced to iCloud.

Very good news!

Thanks a lot, Keith!

It does both, if you want it to:

You're welcome. 😊 Good Luck!

I will ask on the forum.

Thanks a lot, Keith.