Keywords in Photos: am I alone?

I am a heavy Photos user with 20,000 photos (non-professional) in my library. I've spent hundreds of hours editing, re-dating and keywording my pictures in Photos (and iPhotos before that). I had a very rough transition from iPhotos to Photos, randomly lost some pictures, lost random meta data. I'm running the current version of iOS and have been to the Apple store dozens of times trying to address all the inconsistencies in my Photos library. They have tried everything short of the nuclear option of wiping Photos and re-installing it new, not from a back-up, which is likely corrupted. This option is not feasible for me given I would lose all the work I've given to this labor of love. At this point, I'm just hoping someone smarter at Apple will address these glitches so I can save my sanity.

I'm coping with the loss of functionality in Photos as I wait patiently for features to be restored (batch changing titles, bulk date changing to one date, etc.) In the meantime, keywords are giving me fits. Keywords that I delete do not disappear and show up in searches. I have four keywords called "4 star" that all have different photos in them. I can sometimes manually put the various "4 star" batches of keywords into one "4 star" keyword, but a new keyword is frequently re-created. In other words, it's a manual fix sometimes, but only temporary. As per the issue of keywords not really deleting, the fact that the keywords duplicate like tribbles makes the problem even worse. I have at least a half dozen duplicate keywords at any given time. The replicating keyword snag does seem to be most prevalent with the "star" keywords that were formerly just Stars, but there are plenty of other duplicated keywords.

My question is: does anyone else have any of these issues, and if so, have you figured out any work-arounds? I am beyond frustrated. I've gone full-Apple and full-Photos for this project and I can't abandon it now. Any other chronic issues with Photos?

P.S. I've also submitted this to Apple Feedback but am not holding my breath.

iMac, iOS 9.1

Posted on Dec 4, 2015 10:59 AM

18 replies

CoyJen Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 6, 2015 12:39 PM in response to léonie

Is this something I could undertake with Apple at the store? Can you tell me a little more about how it would work? If the keywords I created in Photos (though I swear some of the keywords that keep reappearing I created in Photos) aren't attached to the original files, would I lose other edits I've made to those photos? Do I have to know what the old keywords are? I could certainly start keeping a list (or perhaps look at the iPhoto library??)

léonie

Level 10

200,525 points

Dec 6, 2015 1:42 PM in response to CoyJen

The first thing to do would be to install exiftool. You can download it here:

http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

Run the installer.

The documentation for exiftool is here: http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/exiftool_pod.html

What you need is the command

exiftool -keywords=

This command is typed into the Terminal

for example

exiftool -keywords={} mytestpicture.jpeg

will replace the list of all keyword in the file mytestpicture.jpeg by an empty keywordlist.

The risky part is the following. You would have to track down your original image files in the Masters folder and remove the keywords on these files in place. Make a backup copy of the Photos library. And then find someone who can help you with the Terminal part.

CoyJen Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 6, 2015 3:46 PM in response to léonie

Thank you! I have an appointment on Wednesday at Apple to see if we can do the Full Monty. I really appreciate your insight!

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Keywords in Photos: am I alone?