Where are photo file names?

3. Taking a step back, I think that there is a good solution to this dilemma. For the images without metadata, many filenames contain some metadata information (mine have year, month, subject (sometimes) and location (city, state, country) and time sorted index. For example: 201505-SailingBostonMA-001.jpg. Some of my oldest images, I can only guess at the decade. I'm sure that there are as many file naming conventions as there are people.... I think that the best solution is to write a script that will convert filenames of a defined format, into the metadata of individual images. The order of time of the legacy image can be set by using the sort index (e.g., each sequential image is one minute newer than the last). While the metadata would not be accurate by today's standards, it would be good enough for legacy images.

Take a look at one of the Applescripts in the Photos for Mac User Tips. There's one what will give you this type of title: YYYY-MM-DD-xxxx-01.jpg. The date is the short date format you setup for your Mac in the System/Language & Region/Advanced/Dates preference pane. The text is whatever you want and the sequential number can have as many padded zeros as needed.

FWIW I prefer to use apps so I have Automator or Applescript create an application which I put in the Scripts folder that is accessible from the menu bar.

The Script Folder button in the menu bar is activated in the AppleScript Editor's General preference pane:

Just food for thought.

Photos can show the title below the thumbnail, but not the keywords.

To see the keywords below the thumbnails you could invest into PowerPhotos. It is a great companion to the Photos.app, just like iPhoto Library Manager used to be for iPhoto. The recent version of PowerPhotos can show you your Photos Library and you can select, what you want to see below the thumbnails, the filename, the title, the keywords. or the date.

You can display the photos as a thumbnail grid or as list, with the metadata in column view. And the beauty is, you can browse your Photos libraries without launching Photos. You can scan for duplicates, and you can move photos between libraries.

Only, it takes a rather long time to open a large library. I'm waiting for more than a minute for my iCloud Photo Library of 40000 photos to open in PowerPhotos. So I keep it running.

Fat Cat Software – PowerPhotos

The Trial version is free.

For example: The keywords as a subtitle:

Or the keywords in List View in PowerPhotos:

Use this Applescript from the Photos for Mac User Tips to write the file names of selected images to the title field for those images: Photos for Mac: Batch Changing the Titles to the Filename.

You can download a compiled version of the Applescript as an application from this tutorial; P01 - Applescripts from Photos’ User Tips Compiled as Applications

The idea that you have to Get Info for every picture is unrealistic, it's cumbersome and time consuming.

If you keep the Info panel open, you just have to select a different photo and the Info panel will display the metadata. just keep it open.

Using Get Info, I copy the filename into the Search panel and NOTHING.

That should not happen. There is something wrong.

If an image is in your library, search should find it by the filename.

For example, searching for IMG_6547.JPG produced the JPG file:

but there appears to be no option in Photos to show the filename. So none of my "titles" appear. Am I missing something?

No, you're not missing anything. However, there is a way to get the file names to be displayed in the Title field underneath the thumbnails. Here's how:

1 - use the View ➙ Metadata menu option and check all of the metadata options.

2 - select the photo you want to have the file name entered into the Title field (don't do the entire library at once as the script could time out) and run ones of these two Applescripts from the Photos for Mac User Tips:

Script: Batch Changing the Titles to the Filename w/Extension

Script: Changing the Title to the Filename without Extension

You can download a compiled version of the script as an application from this tutorial site: P01 - Applescripts from Photos’ User Tips Compiled as Applications

Could I make this as a suggestion for your next update?

Apple personnel aren't there. We're all users like yourself. Tell Apple what missing features you'd like restored or new features added in Photos via https://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html.

You can display the file name or special title under the thumbnails with the latest version of Photos, V. 1.5.

as there are workarounds for the missing batch change feature:

1 - go to the View ➙ Metadata menu option and check all of the metadata items:

Next use one of the Applescript from the Photos User Tips to batch change the title to a variety of formats. This is one: Photos for Mac - Batch Change Title to Text w/Padded Sequential No.

You can download a compiled version of the script as an application from this tutorial site: P01 - Applescripts from Photos’ User Tips Compiled as Applications

NOTE: the process is rather slow so keep the number of photos to process to around 1000 at a time. It might take a minute or two for each batch so exercise patience.

If you want the file name under the thumbnail image here's how to achieve that:

1 - go to the View ➙ Metadata menu option and check all metadata items.

2 - go to the Photos User Tips section and download the AppleScript Script: Batch Changing the Titles to the Filename w/Extension.

You can download a compiled version of the script as an application from this tutorial site: P01 - Applescripts from Photos’ User Tips Compiled as Applications

3 - select about 1000 photos at a time and run the AppleScript.

If you want the file name under the thumbnail image here's how to achieve that:

1 - go to the View ➙ Metadata menu option and check all metadata items.

2 - go to the Photos User Tips section and download the AppleScript Script: Batch Changing the Titles to the Filename w/Extension

You can download a compiled version of the script as an application from this tutorial site: P01 - Applescripts from Photos’ User Tips Compiled as Applications

3 - select about 1000 photos at a time and run the AppleScript.

BTW --everyone is talking about "Moments" I have Photos 2.0 & there is NOTHING called "Moments".

Click on the Photos album and you'll see each moment. Click on the left arrow in the upper left hand corner and it'll take you to Moments with titles:

Try one of these two:

1 - go to the  ➙ Force Quit menu and relaunch the Finder. Then check to see if the unzipped file is visible.

2 - boot into Safe Mode, Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode, and check the location where the zipped file was unzipped.

This is what should happen:

I've not had much luck with services. I've created a folder in my Documents folder for the apps and add them there. I then added the folder to the Dock as show here:

For me it's much easier and quicker to get to the apps and activate.

Sadly, when you go to the Apple Feedback site, there is no option to give feedback on Photos.

Photos is part of MacOS X and not sold separately, so the feedback form to use is this:

Apple - Mac OS X - Feedback

Notice that "Add a Title" appears. The title (filename) was "Ann in Tennessee Shirt" in iPhoto and it appeared under the photograph. In Photos 1.0, however, it does not appear. One has to copy "Ann in Tennessee Shirt" and the paste it into the "Add a Title" field. Can you imagine doing this for thousands of photos?

That is clearly a bug.

The titles are supposed to be transferred, even if .jpg is part of the title.

Please file a bug report. Either use the feedback form or - more involved - the bug reporter: Detailed and Effective Bug Reporting | Apple Support Communities

léonie wrote:

I experimented a bit, and with Apple Script we could make it a bit simpler, directly in Photos: This will save the installation of exiftool and the necessity to export the files. This way the lossless workflow will be preserved.

Great work, léonie! You should make that into a user tip. 🙂

I'm curious. Have you tried this with a large number of images selected? I ask because while I was experimenting with Photos' Applescript support, I wrote a script to add a keyword to every item in its library. I wrote about that in Anyone scripting Photos.app yet? in the OS X technologies forum because I noticed that (I think) Photos takes a brief amount of time to add keywords, & without the delay I added to that script it ran faster than Photos could handle & produce errors.

The mechanism for handling keyword additions is probably different from replacing an empty title with a non-empty one, but if anyone finds that your script chokes with lots of images selected (or mods the script to batch change all the images at once) the fix might be to add a delay, although of course that will mean the script could take a long time to run.