Lossless "export" of images with embedded metadata?

Thanks for the rapid reply, LN. I guess this confirms my fear. I tested the export on a number of photos, and not only are the files being re-compressed, but the file sizes are also increasing by 2x to 4x. I will acknowledge that it will probably be difficult for me to see the lowered quality, and that file sizes are not such a big deal in the new era of relatively inexpensive storage, although quadrupling the size of 20,000+ photos can have an impact.

However, it just seems like there must be a method to simply embed the new metadata into the original file, rather than this clunky kludge from a company that prides itself on elegance. Sarcasm aside, I thought I remembered seeing a third-party program that could do this at some point a few years ago, and I was hoping somebody would know where to find it.

I think the program I was thinking of might have been ExifTool, but I am not sure it is suited to do what I want or that I am capable of accomplishing it even if it is.

I know somebody who owns Aperture, and I cannot recall seeing any sort of option to export "Original plus added metadata" when I looked at the export options. Could you provide instructions?

There are two other third-party tools that I re-discovered, which were able to embed the metadata in the original files: Phoshare and iPhoto to Disk. I think they are a bit more user-friendly than ExifTool (not all command line stuff). However, it came as no surprise to me that, in the most recent versions of iPhoto, Apple has apparently eliminated sharing of metadata with third-party applications, so the developers of those programs have abandoned them. I have faithfully (like a lemming or sheep, I guess) "upgraded" my iPhoto libraries whenever the dialog box comes up. Now I have learned that the above-described tools will no longer work on my libraries.

This is one of the prime reasons I have decided to switch to Windows after 20+ years on the Mac. Apple's OS and software updates over the past few years always mention the rather insignificant improvements they introduce, but they always fail to reveal all the functionality that is removed. The removal of Sync Services from Mavericks was the last straw for me, but there have been a series of other dumbing downs of their software and/or introductions of incompatibilities. Ironically, Apple seems to support and maintain the compatibilty of their software that runs on PCs better than their stuff on the Macs!

Over the past year, I have had substantial instability with Safari and Firefox. Constant pinwheels, gobbling up GBs and GBs of real and virtual memory, and incessant hard drive access. Five open windows in Safari using 1 GB of real memory and 3 GB of virtual memory...seriously? All of that combined with the fact that Macs are so expensive means it's time to move on. Sadly, my work PC is vastly easier to deal with and less expensive than my home Mac, which was not the case in the past. Sorry for the rant, but I want to run, not walk, away from Apple at this point, and I just need to figure out the last few methods necessary to escape their closed ecosystem.

<Link Edited By Host>

Thanks for the follow-up Terence. Unfortunately, while the Aperture "File>Export>Original>Include IPTC" approach does add the caption/description information to the exported file, it does not seem to add the location (geographical coordinates or place name). From what I can figure out, iPhoto stores in its separate database both the coordinates and the place name I have assigned to each photo. Aperture is aware of the coordinates (found under Info>GPS), but, correct me if I am wrong, it does not seem to be aware of the place name! In any case, it seems that Aperture does not consider any of the location data manually entered into iPhoto to be IPTC-based metadata worthy of export! UNACCEPTABLE, APPLE!

My use of the term "recompressed" was simply meant to convey that the metadata was not simply being appended to the original compressed JPEG image file, and that in order to include the metadata directly in the iamge file, iPhoto insists on modifying the actual image. Correct me if I am wrong, but, when the original photo is taken, information is lost during the lossy JPEG compression routine carried out by the camera. Then, when iPhoto exports the photo with the metadata, it presumably transiently decompresses the JPEG, and then applies its own lossy JPEG compression routine, so more image information is lost (what I am calling "recompresed"). Based on some preliminary testing, iPhoto is converting my original ~2.5 MB files from my 8 megapixel camera into 6.3 to 6.9 MB files that, by definition, have less accurate image information than the original. TRULY PATHETIC!

With regard to the third-party applications, one of their primary goals was to do just what I want--add metadata to the original file without modifying the image itself. And statements by the developers indicate they stopped developing, because Apple was making changes that made it impossible for them. The following is from the Phoshare developer:

In October 2012, I made the difficult decision to no longer actively develop Phoshare. The limitations introduced by iPhoto 9.4 no longer make it a very attractive tool...Phoshare had a good run, but it has gotten to the point where it is becoming increasingly challenging to keep up with new versions of iPhoto and Aperture. With iPhoto 9.4, the amount of data shared with other applications has been greatly reduced, and some features have already been lost...Keywords are completely gone. That is a big loss for Phoshare with iPhoto because iPhoto itself has no options to save metadata into the image files...The information is still there, but only in the internal iPhoto/Aperture database. No API or documentation to these database tables are provided by Apple...I have transitioned my own photo library form iPhoto/Aperture to Adobe Lightroom some time ago, and no longer use Phoshare myself. Adobe Lightroom can be configured to save all your work into the image files automatically, so you don't even need a tool like Phoshare to liberate your work.

And the following is from the iPhoto to Disk developer:

In the latest iPhoto versions, Apple prevents third party apps from accessing keywords. Consequently, iPhoto To Disk is not able to export keywords anymore...The unified library format shared between iPhoto and Aperture is not supported.

I stupidly clicked "OK" when I was asked to update my iPhoto library to the unified format.

Oh, and you could have read those quotes directly from the developers, but a "Host" of this forum conveniently deleted the links I had provided in my original reference to them.

Well, I can't rule out the possibility that the developer of iPhoto LIbrary Manager may be more resourceful than the other two developers at accessing all of the iPhoto metadata. I was just going by what the other two developers stated as their reasons for abandoning development of their tools. I would be happy to use iPhoto Library Manager to solve my problem, but it appears that it will not work. It seems to be able to transfer photos and associated metadata between iPhoto libraries, but it seems only to handle the metadata through the separate iPhoto database file--not by embedding it in a file with the unmodified JPEG.

OK, you don't like the simple term "recompressed" to describe what iPhoto is doing when I export, and the file size changes from 2.5 MB to 6.9 MB.I think this is a purely semantic argument. What term would you use? Would you acknowledge that iPhoto is compressing the images with its own JPEG algorithm, and that it is doing that on a file that was originally compressed by the camera's JPEG algorithm? Would you acknowledged that, if I repeatedly exported the same file from iPhoto that it would gradually reduce in quality the larger the number of iterations? Then, would you acknowledge that the initial exported file, despite being 2.8x larger than the original, is of lower quality than the original? The bottom line is that I don't want to almost triple storage requirement, the streaming bandwidth, etc. of my photo library for no good reason.

There are a number of programs that can embed additional metadata into files that do not modify the original JPEG (e.g., ExifTool). However, with 20,000+ photos, I can't do them one-by-one. I need an automated method. Your suggestion of using the Aperture>Export>Include IPTC data, while a good suggestion, does not seem to do what one might expect. Inexplicably, the GPS data does not seem to get exported with the file. I have no beef with you...I just want to solve my problem, and I would be very grateful if your expertise in the area could help. Thanks.

I have done a bunch of additional testing, looking at various pieces of metadata and how they are handled by iPhoto and Aperture and the various export options. It seems to be an odd mix of idiosyncrasies.

Metadata manually entered into iPhoto that I wish to export:

• Date and time
• Title
• Description
• Keywords
• Place name
• Place GPS coordinates

Three ways to export the file along with newly embedded metadata, plus a special case where only the metadata is exported:

• iPhoto: Export > File Export > JPEG, Title and keywords/Location information both checked (changes images)
• Aperture: Export > Versions > Original Size (changes images)
• Aperture: Export > Original > Include IPTC data (typically does not change images)
• Aperture (special case): Export > Metadata (does not change images)

Date and time

For the older photos on which I had to manually enter date and time information through the "Adjust Date and Time" menu item, I always selected the "Modify original files" checkbox. I believe this caused iPhoto to directly write the information to the EXIF portion of the original image file without modifying the image itself, so it travels with the file automatically no matter how the export is done. If iPhoto did this for the other metadata, rather than only storing it in a separate database file, then I would not have this problem, but alas, it does not.

Place name

None of the export options seem to enable export of place names, so it seems I will lose the 50 or so names I have entered no matter what I do, although there may be a way to link photos to the same location in the Windows program based on their having identical GPS coordinates.

Aperture Original export

Aperture Original export does not seem to alter some images, and it can embed Description and Keywords as IPTC fields. However, it substantially changed the size of some of my images (far more than could be accounted for by adding a tiny bit of metadata), so I am not sure it is really leaving all images untouched. More importantly, it does not seem to embed Title or GPS information. So, it seems like the most useless option.

Aperture Versions export

The Aperture Versions export, unlike the Aperture Original export, does include the GPS information, but, like Aperture Original export, it does not include the Title. And, like iPhoto export, Aperture Versions export modifies the original image, albeit with much lower inflation in file size. This also seems like a relatively useless option.

iPhoto export

iPhoto export includes all of the relevant metadata types (Title, Description, Keywords, and GPS). However, it alters the images by compressing them again and substantially increases the file size when Maximum quality is selected. Stepping down to High quality is closer to the original file size. This is better than the useless Aperture options, but it is the lowest option, as it seems silly to have to re-make 20,000+ JPEGs rather than just changing the metadata portion of the files.

Aperture Metadata export

The Aperture Metadata-only export is intriguing. Like iPhoto export, it includes all of the relevant metadata types (Title, Description, Keywords, and GPS), even though neither of the other Aperture exports seem to support all four (Versions lacks Titles, and Original lacks both GPS and Titles).

Best potential solutions

The Aperture Metadata approach seems like the best bet. The key is getting that data embedded into the original data files. I am hoping that ExifTool can handle the metadata files and batch modify the originals.

The other alternative, as suggested to me by the ExifTool developer, is to do the iPhoto export, then use ExifTool to extract the new metadata from those files and modify the originals. I just have to figure out if/how this will all work, and I will have liberated myself from the iPhoto quagmire.

Some other things I discovered that may be useful to others also wishing to liberate themselves from the iPhoto quagmire, and perhaps Apple in general:

• The Aperture Versions export actually saves the iPhoto Description separately in two metadata locations--IPTC>Caption-Abstract and EXIF ID0>Image Title/Description. iPhoto and Aperture Original leave the EXIF ID0>Image Title/Description as the default camera value, which, in my case, is the manufacturer name. Aperture Metadata saves it as "Caption".
• iPhoto saves the iPhoto Title as IPTC>Object Name, and Aperture Metadata saves it as "Version Name".
• All three export options save iPhoto Keywords as IPTC>Keywords, and Aperture Metadata saves them under "Keywords".
• The GPS coordinates are exported as EXIF GPS IFD by both the iPhoto and Aperture Versions export (stored in four separate fields: North or South Latitude, Latitude, East or West Longitude, Longitude). The Aperture Metadata-only export includes just two fields (Latitude and Longitude) with the hemisphere information appended to the end of the coordinates.