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What happened to my metadata??

I was going through my photos on my MacBook Pro and noticed that all the information that I painstakingly have put in since October 2022 (keywords, captions, titles, descriptions) has DISAPPEARED!! I have Ventura 13.3. I am hoping the information is all still there, just hiding somewhere. Has anyone else had this issue? At least all my photos are still intact... All my photos prior to Oct 2022 are fine. What happened in October 2022 that might have caused this to happen??


MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 13.3

Posted on Dec 26, 2023 4:54 PM

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2 replies

Dec 27, 2023 12:06 AM in response to tipsam

That is weird and this is the first time I have heard about this kind of issue.


Where is the Photos library stored? It should be stored on a APFS or MacOS Extended -formatted volume (external disks with Finder Get Info > "Ignore ownership" selected). Non-mac formats like exFAT are not supported and might cause corruption. Photos saves metadata edits to the library's database, not to the original images.


FWIW I add metadata to the originals with GraphicConverter and then import them to Photos.

Dec 27, 2023 7:01 AM in response to tipsam

As Matti Haveri says, that's surprising and it's crazy! I think that the first thing I would do is select a few of the pictures and use File>Export>Export Original to get the original pictures back in a folder in Finder. Then I would check those originals to see if they had their metadata intact. I, too, use GraphicConverter for that, but you can open the pictures in Preview and use the Inspector Tool to look at the Exif metadata. Also, there are tools like ExifTool Reader that you can get from the App store. Since it's an original, your additions won't be there, but you can see what is.


Are the metadata in the original? If so do the same with File>Export>Export xx Photos to see if the metadata survives in the edited pictures.


And... do you have backups of your Photos Library?


This is so curious-- let us know what you find.

What happened to my metadata??

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