Where are photo file names?

But every one I checked did. That was about 50 out of 289 photos, including some with jpeg, png, psd, & even pct extensions, so if there really is a bug, I strongly doubt it is directly related to filename extensions.

That is a thorough examination!

I still do not see clearly what is going on.

I simply tested with a new iPhoto Library, imported two new photos, that never had metadata assigned, changed the title in iPhoto's title field by adding a prefix to the full filename with extension. I added a third photo, where I removed the filename extension from the title field.

When I migrated this test library to Photos, only the last photo did show a title, the other two not.

léonie wrote:

I still do not see clearly what is going on.

Neither do I. It would probably be a lot easier to figure out if iPhoto made a clear distinction between filenames & titles, but since it doesn't do that I had to resort to using a script just to get a good idea of which was which.

Because of that, & a few other vaporous, non-definitive clues I have noticed, I am beginning to suspect the problem is in iPhoto rather than Photos, but I don't know where that might be or any idea about how to test that theory because I don't (apparently) have any photos with 'real' titles that did not show up in Photos.

It's all very frustrating!

Nice. I use a referenced library with all image processing done before import to an application, but this is pretty cool. I added a piece to strip out the file extension but it works great. Handy to fix any issues. Thanks! :-)

I'm curious. Have you tried this with a large number of images selected?

Thanks, R C-R. No, I have not yet migrated a large library, so I could only test with a hundred photos in a test library. That worked well. I'll have to look at the OS X technologies forum, it seems, to look for more Photos Scripts.

I like your script. How about a User Tip?

léonie wrote:

No, I have not yet migrated a large library, so I could only test with a hundred photos in a test library.

That should be more than enough to tell if the script needs a delay, assuming you selected that many for one run. If it didn't error out with that, it should be fine as is.

I like your script. How about a User Tip?

I'm not sure how useful my script would be, at least in its present form. There is also the delay thing to consider: I don't know if the delay time would have to be adjusted for slower Macs or larger libraries, & I don't have any good way to test for that.

I thought this script would solve my problems - but I can't seem to get it to install as a service - at least, when I check Photos>Services it doesn't show up.

I get as far as creating a new service and dragging the "run apple script" action to the workflow. I then paste in your script. However, at that point, my screen doesn't look like your clip - I don't see the "Service Receives box in Photos App" and the other options I see at the top of your clip. (I do see the Run Apple Script Box as in your clip.) I think that is why when I save it (I chose my desktop) it never makes it to a Photos service. I'm missing something fundamental here. Any idea of where I went wrong?

David

Update: I got this to install as a service, but when I run it, I get an error "AppleEvent handle failed". I don't see any other diagnostic information about the error. I'd really like to get this script to run!

David

I was getting the same "AppleEvent handle failed" with my script; I ended up just catching the error and setting a counter to loop through the items again.

I also found that using selections from a smart album didn't work very well; selections against static albums worked with much fewer of those handle failures.

Yep, figured that out. I did try the step mode and get the error immediately. I have to play with it more. I have 2200 images that were named in the filename (they are scanned images of art) that I need to get into the title. Goring forward, I can manually add titles - but I would like to fix the images already scanned in.

David

I got it to run - it seems to help if I don't select too many images to process. I tried this first stepping through the script in the Automator - but now the service also seems to be working. I have no idea why it started working - I changed nothing in the script itself.

I'll have to try this on my wife's art.

Thanks for the suggestions and help.

David

DRedfearn wrote:

I got it to run - it seems to help if I don't select too many images to process.

I have tested it with no more than about 80 images selected at a time. I haven't seen any errors but it does take quite a bit of time to run, maybe 1/4 second per image.

Is there any way to know if Apple will fix this and provide an easy way to copy the file name into the description field? I have tens of thousands of photos and each has a unique file name that both organizes (by title) and describes each photo.

I got my wife's 2200 image library "titled" in about 5 minutes. I started with a few images, and keep increasing the number of images processed - and it did several hundred at a time without any problems - and pretty quickly too.

I ran into two issues:

(1) The first couple of times you try to run the service script, it fails with an error. Restarting the computer seemed to fix that.

(2) I have an administrator account and my wife has a normal user account on her iMac (I am trying to keep her safe). I originally created the Photo Service in my account - and it didn't show up in her account. I recreated it in her account, and it runs fine. I haven't seen anything that says how to create an service for all user account - which would be a handy option.

Thanks again for this very helpful fix.

David

Virginia Vail wrote:

Is there any way to know if Apple will fix this and provide an easy way to copy the file name into the description field?

None of us know what Apple will do but it can't hurt to send them feedback about this & any of the other things you would like to see Photos be capable of doing.

Old Toad wrote:

I just ran it on my 4700 photo library and it completed the task in about a minute or so. Was faster than I expected.

How fast is the Mac you used to do this? My 1/4 second per file estimate was a crude one, based on what I saw while using my iMac (a 2.9 GHz Intel Core i5 2012 model) to process batches of no more than 100 or so images at a time, with Photos in the foreground. I did notice there was a lag before the first title appeared, & after that they appeared more quickly in groups of around 8 or so images at a time.