Where are photo file names?

Leonie - i am probably missing something obvious here, but i created your Service. It shows up in system preferences, but i cannot get it to appear in Photos. says no relevant services.

anything to do?

I took your Script, as shown, and dragged it into Automator. In Automator I choose Service as the selected option. At the top of automator, I selected NO Input and Photos as the application. I then saved the Service. When I opened Photos, I selected 4 Photos that were untitled and ran the Service. Nothing happened. I unselected the photos, and ran the Service. As I understand the code, I should have gotten a warning message telling to select some photos. I got no such warning. What am I doing wrong? Do I have to change the code you provided in some way?

As written it should work in Script Editor. I think I had to make some minor changes to make it work in Automator but offhand I don't recall what they were. I'm not at the Mac just now so I cannot check. Worse, as I started adding in all of my photos the script became erratic and now won't even work with a single file. 😟 I've a feeling more RAM might help but there is possibly a better way to manage the selection of objects.

tt2

So now I'm facing this issue too - I only updated to Yosemite last week (I mainly held off because of the initial issues people had with Photos), El Capitan a few days ago, and Photos today. And I've just discovered most of my what-I-used-to-call titles have disappeared in Photos. I think they were all filenames-as-titles in iPhoto although I haven't carefully checked that yet.

Is the advice given earlier in this thread, about using léonie's script, still considered the best way forward for fixing this? I haven't spent the time puzzling together how to use it yet, but before I start examining AppleScript I want to make sure there hasn't been an easier or more appropriate way developed since then. Remember I only just started using Photos today so it's still pretty easy for me to change something in iPhoto and, er, re-do an import or whatever that was.

Thanks!

Hello Léonie,

Sorry to bother you, i have been reading all this link and i´m having the same problem you are talking about. But my problem is that i´m not familiar with any applescript and English is not my mothertongue, it´s spanish...so i´m having problems to follow your script...i don´t know if i should copy and paste everything or try to understand each step. Could you put me all this in more simple words?

Thank you for reading, i would understand if you wouldn´t answer me, thank you anyway, at least i understand what is wrong with the issue of my photos without titles

I tested the script on my iMac yesterday and also nothing happened, but was able to debug a little using display dialogue to see why. It seemed that "ifnot (exists (title)) then" was not executing properly. I think this was because an apple support guy had me mass change the titles in all my photos to "test". I later mass changed the titles back to nothing. But I think the mere act of mass changing them to "test" created the title attribute. When I mass changed the titles to nothing, the title attribute remained. In other words - not (exists (title)) - was false, even though title was empty, so that line of code didn't allow the title to be set to the filename.

I then created the script again exactly from leonie's directions on an older MacBookPro at home, and it worked perfectly. I think this is because the titles on these photos truly did not exist. Could it be that your titles look empty, but the title attribute exists?

You could change the script the way leonie shows to force the filename into the title regardless of if a title is there or not.

Or you could change "ifnot (exists (title)) then" to something that also checks if the title is empty rather than just checking if it exists. I don't know apple script syntax so I can't say how to do this. We run into this issue at work on different programming platforms and databases - An attribute may appear to be empty, but it still exists.

Sorry, I missed your question here. It is not a good idea to add to a long discussion. I usually only look for posts that do not yet have an answer. But I am glad you found a working version of the script.

the titles to my photos that i imported in to "photos" are not showing up and i have the meta data 'title" checked. they are showing in the info. i also tried to do the service Automator apple script that was in an older post about this. it does not work.

any help would be greatly appreciated!

marianfromsugar land - I can totally understand the frustration. You can get the file names to show up under the image using the automator script that Leonie posted. If you accidentally batch changed the titles (like I did), the script will have to be tweaked a little, and that tweak is also documented in Leonie's post. If you have problems post again with specifics and I'm sure people will help. Or you could start another topic.

I think the new Photos app and what Apple is trying to do with family sharing and syncing across iCloud is really cool and kind of ground breaking. It has become a new Photo Distribution platform for sharing.

That being said, in my opinion, it just doesn't have the horse power right now to be a serious alternative to a DAM like Aperture. Hopefully over time it will. Remember - this app is not even a year old - it is very young in it's development. I am going back to Aperture and will wait another year or so to see if Photos gets better. If not I'll move to another DAM. In the mean time I'm going to explore using Photos for finished projects only to share with my family over iCloud. That's the real strength of Photos.

what do you mean by "batch changed" when using the script? could you actually post the script i need to use in your reply? here is the one i have been trying to use and i get and error. also when i go to photos, services, the only choice is "service preferences". the script in there is already "checked". so not sure what i am doing wrong!!

on run {input, parameters}

tell application "Photos"

activate

set imageSel to (get selection)

if imageSel is {} then

error "Please select an image."

else

repeat with im in imageSel

set title to the name of im

if not (exists (title)) then

set the name of im to the filename of im

end if

end repeat

end if

end tell

end run

This problem has been an issue for many users, and is the topic of several long threads, like this one. Apple had many useful features in iPhoto (such as copy file names to photo titles, which it did automatically). Most of those features were removed from Photos, and replaced with less useful ones. For example, I want to sort by photo title, which is the same as the file name. Photo does not allow me to copy file names to titles, and only sorts by file date or the date the picture was taken. I have 14,000 photos from film cameras; the photo date does not exist, so Photos sorts by scan date -- less than useless. Users have created scripts, such as the one a few messages ago, that does this job -- it takes about ten lines of code. It would seem an easy feature to add to Photos, but there is no evidence that it has any priority at all. The main reason why I upgraded to El Capitan, is that these discussion threads suggested that Apple would upgrade Photos to include sort options. Well, I upgraded, and no sort options exist.

Copying file names to title names, and providing sort options is not "professional" use, it's basic use. I am grateful to Apple for providing this for free, and would be willing to pay for sorting options, which were included in iPhoto for free. Charge money if you have to, but we really do need a suite of sort options.

This is why this thread is 13 pages long! With all due respect to Apple, sometimes it seems like valid and widespread user needs and suggestions receive no attention for months, years, or perhaps ever. It would not seem difficult to include a 10-20 line script to end these discussions. It's a low-hanging fruit....

Personally, if Photos included a set of sort options, including a "light table" that allows a matrix of photos to be dragged to better locations, and that sort list be used for future "slide shows", Photos would receive 5+++ stars from me. Without it, it's much less. The best option is for anyone interested in this problem to send a feedback note to Apple requesting these sort options. The more feedback, the better -- and maybe, maybe we'll get what iPhoto had.

alaz0 wrote:

Apple had many useful features in iPhoto (such as copy file names to photo titles, which it did automatically).

That isn't quite correct. iPhoto does not automatically copy file names to photo titles. It just automatically displays the file name (less its extension) if the photo's title field is missing. This has caused a lot of confusion over the years, leading many iPhoto users to believe they are the same thing.

Interesting. In prior threads, the idea of displaying vs. copying was missed, or I missed it.... Thank you for the correction! That does explain a few things.

ALSO, I found that I was in error in Photos not sorting by Title - it does, (at least in the current Photos 1.2, El Capitan). In the opening page of Photos, click on an Album name, View, Sort and select sorting by title. My apologies for my frustrations. It was not obvious to me from the Apple instructions.....

Now if I can figure out how to use a photo editor of my choice, I'd be all set.... :-)

- Andy

alaz0 wrote:

My apologies for my frustrations. It was not obvious to me from the Apple instructions.....

No need for apologies. There are a great many things about Photos (or for that matter, about iPhoto) that are not obvious from the documentation Apple provides.

To see the keywords below the thumbnails you could invest into PowerPhotos.

Perhaps that's an answer for me. In my engineering work, I do very little editing of my images. I am more about organization and being able to see the keywords under each thumbnail.

If I'm not interested in editing anything, wouldn't I just launch PowerPhotos to find the image I am after? And NOT use Photos at all?

As you may know, iPhoto HAD the ability to show Keywords under thumbnails for the first 10 years of its existence. Apple eliminated this capability a couple of years ago which prompted me to switch to Aperture. Once again, I am chasing keywords under thumbnails. "Lyn" does this, but I like to stick with Apple stuff whenever possible.