How do I recover photo names?

Question

How do I recover photo names?

When I drop my photos into their Events, I title (name) the photos. I start their names with a YYYY/DD/MM format (so they automatically sort by date). As I am dealing with a lot of old photos (scans, etc.), I do not want to use the date the photos were added to Photos, but want the pictures to sort according to their naming scheme. This worked GREAT in iPhoto, and I had thousands of photos named (and auto-sorted) in this way.

When I upgraded Photos, most photos in my Events lost their titles (though file names remained the same). Everything is out of order now, and the photo names are only accessible if I seek-out the file names for each one. Individually. Thousands of them.

To further complicate this, not all of the Events suffered this change - only some of them! A few of the Events still show the photo names as I had originally entered them (in iPhoto).

How do I recover the names/titles of the photos and make them display in Photos the way they did in iPhoto?

Thanks for your help.

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on Apr 27, 2015 9:46 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

léonie

Level 10

194,723 points

Apr 27, 2015 9:53 AM in response to ClassicalWhit

iPhoto would show the filename as the title of a photo by default, but Photos does not do that. To see the titles below the photos in Photos, you have to copy the filenames to the title fields. That is a lot of work to do manually. I write a little Automator workflow to do that automatically for selected photos, you can try it out:

See this user tip: Script: Batch Changing the Titles to the Filename w/Extension

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Answer 2

Apr 27, 2015 7:17 PM in response to léonie

This seems to be EXACTLY what I am looking for. I will try it when I get home this afternoon. THANK YOU!

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

194,723 points

Apr 27, 2015 7:17 PM in response to ClassicalWhit

Good luck 🙂 Post back, if there are problems running the script.

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Answer 4

Apr 27, 2015 7:34 PM in response to léonie

I have tried running the script in both of the formats you had posted with "return input" as the next-to-last line (your screenshot), and also without "return input" as the next-to-last line (the text of your instructions). I only get syntax error messages:

I downloaded your document.wlfow from your Dropbox, but it will not open when clicked.

Any suggestions?

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Answer 5

léonie

Level 10

194,723 points

Apr 27, 2015 11:12 PM in response to ClassicalWhit

The error message "please select an image" should only appear, if you did not select some images in Photos before running the script and the selection is empty.

First select the images in Photos (the individual images in the album or moment, not the album)
Then run the service or press the "run" button in the workflow in the toolbar.

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Answer 6

Aug 3, 2015 6:42 PM in response to léonie

Though I never got back to you, your help was PERFECT. Thank you for walking me through these steps and for providing me with the solution I needed! Have a GREAT life!

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Answer 7

léonie

Level 10

194,723 points

Aug 3, 2015 11:32 PM in response to ClassicalWhit

You're welcome 🙂 Glad it worked.

You may want to have a look at PowerPhotos (Fat Cat Software – PowerPhotos). It is a great helper to browse a Photos Library with all kinds of annotations below the thumbnails. There is a free trial.

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