Where are photo file names?

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.

Chris Lyons wrote:

On a related topic, I tried deleting the newly created filename-as-title and tried the script again. Does not work. Its almost as if once a title is created and then deleted the script "sees" a title and won't overwrite it. Do you have any ideas as to a different script that would erase a previously created title ?

That is exactly what happens. The details are in this post but the bottom line is you need to modify the ifnot (exists (title)) then line of the script as follows:

ifnot (exists (title)) ortitle = "" then

This should fix that problem.

I searched the Photos help, but it only describes the file formats it can export, but not the file formats it can import. with all he supported RAW formats the list of filename extensions will be pretty long, if yu look at the list of supported cameras:

OS X Yosemite: Supported digital camera RAW formats - Apple Support

Inverseroom,

I've been having problems getting a script to work to batch change the titles (see batch title change in photo version 1 ). I saw your comment, above, about selecting the "All Photos" album instead of the Photos tab. I tried it and it worked with the batch change script!

Thanks for the observation,

Jay

Bah, nothing is ever easy. That works fine if you run the script from the script editor, but If I try to wrap it up as part of an automator action in the way that léonie has shown in Script: Batch Changing the Titles to the Filename w/Extension then the use scripting additions clause won't compile, but tell me... end tell seems to work. 😕

tt2

turingtest2 wrote:

Bah, nothing is ever easy. That works fine if you run the script from the script editor, but If I try to wrap it up as part of an automator action in the way that léonie has shown in Photos for Mac: Batch Changing the Titles to the Filename then the use scripting additions clause won't compile, but tell me... end tell seems to work. 😕

Like I said, I really don't understand what's going on with this. Part of my problem is I haven't kept up with the newer additions to the AppleScript language like use statements, so for instance I thought that unless an app had its own scripting library term that could conflict with a StandardAdditions one (like "offset" in the StandardAdditions String Commands suite), there was no need to explicitly declare which terminology to use.

But the current Apple Control Statements Reference doc says this:

If a script uses

use scripting additions

, AppleScript may optimize scripting addition commands, sending them to the current application instead of the current target (

it

) when it does not change the meaning to do so. For example, random number does not need to be sent to another application to work correctly, and will always be sent to the current application when imported with

use

. Without a

use scripting additions

command, AppleScript must use a less efficient dispatching scheme, so explicitly declaring them is recommended.

... so that may not still be true, but since Photos has no "offset" command of its own, maybe it is just a bug in Photos' Applescript implementation that is causing these weird "silent" errors that do not halt the script ... or something. 😕

I did find something that might (partially, maybe, dubiously) explain why the script won't compile wrapped in an Automator action at http://macosxautomation.com/mavericks/usestatement/01.html. If I understand it correctly, it says that if a script contains one or more use statements, then the script must include one for scripting additions. I realize you were doing that, but perhaps it might compile if you added a use application "Photos" statement to force it to use both?

Old Toad wrote:

turingtest2:

I modified the script from your last post (which doesn't show up for me here - was it pulled for some reason?) to add several other extensions:

set exclude to ".jpeg.jpg.mov.png.tif.tiff.psd.nef.dng.cr2" -- Extensions to exclude from the image titles

set include to ".cr2" -- Extensions to include in the image titles

I've tested it with psd, nef, dng and cr2 files successfully. It didn't work with the .cr2 files unless I added it to the first line.

V1.3 should be here: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Where are photo file names?

Do you mean you needed to add .cr2 into the exclusion list before it would be force added by the inclusion list? That shouldn't be necessary but I just tried a little test and ran into the issue R C-R has mentioned about sometimes needing to close and reopen Photos to get current data from the database.

tt2

Your script does nothing because you set the title to the name of the selected image ("im" in the script repeat loop) & then tested for it not existing in the "if not (exists (title)) then" step. Because of that, it will always exist (even if the name is the empty text string "") & the name won't be changed.

You might try léonie's Batch Changes in Photos for Mac: Change the titles to a Given String Automator service -- it looks like it does what you want without the need for any modifications.

I had a huge iPhoto library where all image titles were set by naming the files before import. None of these titles were migrated to Photos.

I solved the problem with a different approach. I dug into the database files of iPhoto and Photos. They have a relation called RKVersion which stores all information about images, including name, file name and UUID. In iPhoto, all versions have a name attribute, but after the Photos migration, only a few of my images had them. According to an Apple support article, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204478 , only user-defined titles are migrated. That information seems to be correct, since the very few titles that were migrated for me, were ones I had set in iPhoto instead of by naming the files. I tried to find any sort of "user-defined title" attribute in the iPhoto database, but without any luck. Maybe someone else can find it and if so, that attribute probably just needs to be set to True for all images before the iPhoto library is migrated and then all image titles will be migrated - including those that are equal to the file name.

Anyhow, I wrote a Python script that goes through the databases of the old and new libraries and tries to find matching UUIDs. Where it does, it copies over the image title from the old to the new. Unfortunately, many UUIDs are changed in the migration, so for me it only found matches for 37 % of the images. Therefore, I added a function to the script that sets all remaining titles in the new library based on file names. All file extensions are excluded and titles are only created if current titles are empty. The script also lets you run only one of the two functions if you want. The script took just a couple of seconds to add titles to 15 000 of my images.

The script makes a backup of both databases before running. I have tested it but not thoroughly, so proceed with caution. Feel free to expand it or improve it. And please respond if you find a way to mark titles as user-defined in the iPhoto database, since that would be the real solution instead of this workaround.

----------

PhotosTitleSetter

Migrates image titles from an iPhoto library to a Photos library. Can set titles based on file names if no old titles are found.

Instructions:

Make sure to quit both iPhoto and Photos

Download the PhotosTitleSetter.py script from: https://github.com/Rajje/PhotosTitleSetter

Open a new Terminal window

Type "python " including the space at the end

Drag the script to the Terminal window and then press the return or enter key

The script will run and display further instructions

ALWAYS have several backups of any important files. Make especially sure to back up both photo libraries before running this script. The author of this script takes no responsibility for any damage on any files or for any of the actions of this script.

had a huge iPhoto library where all image titles were set by naming the files before import. None of these titles were migrated to Photos.

You could have saved your self a lot of work by using the Applescript/Automator workflow created by léonie and posted in the Photos for Mac User Tips. It is called Photos for Mac: Batch Changing the Titles to the Filename. It gets the file name of each photo selected and enters it into the Title field below the thumbnail.

Old Toad wrote:

You could have saved your self a lot of work by using the Applescript/Automator workflow created by léonie and posted in the Photos for Mac User Tips. It is called Photos for Mac: Batch Changing the Titles to the Filename. It gets the file name of each photo selected and enters it into the Title field below the thumbnail.

Except that léonie's & any other similar methods based on Applescript are often slow or unreliable for large scale changes & rely on what appears to be a somewhat buggy Applescript implementation in this first version of Photos.

e2photo wrote:

All of my Aperture images have Version Names in the Photo Info Box which are identical to the filename.

By default the filename will be substituted for the "Version Name" (which, as léonie said is equivalent to the title) in Aperture, just as in iPhoto. But it isn't actually a title, just something both apps do that obscures the very real difference between the title of a photo & the name of the file it is stored in.

R-C-R... I am absolutely sure you are correct, BUT why force me to use 'Titles' when the filename is sufficient for my purpose. Why not give me the option to display the information most useful to me?

Consider the broader question: Why would you not want to take advantage of the benefits of global metadata standards that are already in wide use & will only become increasingly more important in the future to make possible new ways of using & managing all the info in your photo files?

Filenames are not stored in photo files like titles & all the other IPTC/XMP/Exif metadata. They don't even tell you or the operating system where a file is stored -- for that, the full pathname is required. Together with the restrictions on filenames & pathname lengths in different file systems & operating systems, there is no guarantee they will be preserved or even usable if the file is moved, copied, or uploaded to anything not using the OS or file system of the original storage device.

IOW, they are neither very portable nor future-proof. Sooner or later, any organizational method based on them will fail to support new features built into new applications, at least some of which you probably will not be happy about being unable to use.

But, considering all of that, if you still want Photos to obscure the difference between filenames & titles, let Apple know about it, using the form at https://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html. Chances are not that great that they will add that but it can't hurt to request it.

Hello Léonie,

I'm trying to use the script you wrote here Script: Batch Changing the Titles to the Filename w/Extension

But I get an error message...

I'm using a French MacOS. Maybe is there something to change in the script due to localization?

Thanks

I just want to manage and view my own photos on my own computer.

Ok - that is what iPhoto does - actually quiet well

I can't sort,

You can sort - you just have extremely limited sort options

I can't organize my images

Sure you can - you have an automatic organization with Moments and you can organize with as much detail as you want using Keywords, albums and folders

I can't find help on anything

Photos has a decent Help section - have you used it? What is missing form it that you need?

but how to share my images

Click on the Share icon - the rectangle with an up arrow in it - lots of share options there - if wha you want is not there check in the system references under extensions and enable the ones you want

point me to the menu item with the same name

No idea what you want there

Can I get iPhoto back?

No need - it is not gone - it is in your Applications folder - use it (you need version 9.6.1 - if you were not up to date see Can't Update iPhoto because it is not available in the App Store

As to an alternative - nothing else comes close in overall capability for the price - LightRoom is a much more powerful system at a much higher price - Media View is another people have posted

Most of your complaints are incorrect so Basically you need to calm down, learn Photos and ask specific questions giving details or you need to find and use a different package - and no one can do that for you - you have to do it

LN