Metadata captions not exporting with photos

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Level 1

43 points

Metadata captions not exporting with photos

I need to export photos with captions embedded in the metadata for photojournalism needs. Mac Photos provides this option and it’s super accessible, but unfortunately whenever I add a caption and export the photo (yes, captions is “check marked” on export) the captions are not exporting with the photos. I have used multiple different metadata readers, and none of them are reading the captions in the photos that I am exporting. Why is this? It’s incredibly frustrating.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.7

Posted on Jul 25, 2023 1:13 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Matti Haveri

Level 6

19,574 points

Jul 26, 2023 12:16 AM in response to scottmbolt

Are you using Big Sur? If yes:

"Photos is simply currently not writing the metadata to the JPEGs right now. You can see this in the Inspector in Preview, when you check an exported JPEG in Preview (Tools > Inspector), while the TIFFs are showing the metadata.

When you select all exported TIFFS at once and open them together in Preview, then select all imaged in Preview, you can export them all together as JPEGs and convert them this way with one export command. That is one extra step, but you will have JPEGs with embedded the titles, keywords, locations."

"A workaround is to export TIFF or PNG. Or export unmodified originals with IPTC as a sidecar .xmp and combine them with other apps like GraphicConverter or exiftool."

Export Title, Keyword, and Caption - Apple Community

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Answer 2

markwmsn

Level 6

16,715 points

Jul 25, 2023 8:42 PM in response to scottmbolt

When I try that, I see the caption shown by Preview's Info window as the IPTC field labeled Caption/Description and the TIFF field labeled Image Description. It does not show up as an EXIF field in Preview.

What field are you expecting?

I'm using Photos 8.0 (560.0.110) in macOS Ventura 13.5 (22G74) to test this. What version are you using?

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Answer 3

Old Toad

Level 10

215,076 points

Jul 26, 2023 9:51 AM in response to scottmbolt

The latest Big Sur update is 11.7.9. If you're not running that you should update your system to it and see if the export will include the caption:

This screenshot is from Preview as mark and Matti pointed out previously.

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Answer 4

scottmbolt Author

Level 1

43 points

Jul 26, 2023 7:07 AM in response to markwmsn

When using Photos and launching the “info” tab, there is the caption area. I type a caption in and export the photo, with hopes that SmugMug and Flickr will automatically read the caption in the metadata, and then apply it. I hope this makes sense. Unfortunately the caption never is viewable after export.

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Answer 5

scottmbolt Author

Level 1

43 points

Jul 26, 2023 7:01 AM in response to Matti Haveri

Yes I am using Big Sur, I guess that’s the issue?

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Metadata captions not exporting with photos

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