Changing Description of multiple photos

Did you use the Enter key after entering the description? If not try again (maybe in a test library) and this time hit the Enter key.

One user, kkkttt, in this topic - Photos info description has a glitch - found that using the Enter key limited the description to just those photos selected. Give it a try and report back.

NOTE: I was able to test it an it works. Without the Enter key all photos in the window get the description but with the Enter key only the selected photos.

It still does not explain why I have also seen the problem, as I have always used return to enter the descriptions.

There must be an additional, different effect, that can change the focus of the Info panel, while we are still entering metadata.

But kkkttt's fix is showing that two features in Photos are combined a deadly combination:

• If the Info panel is open, it will automatically switch to the selected photos , if the selection changes.
• If the mouse pointer leaves the Info panel, the current edits will be immediately applied, even if we did not finish editing and do not want it to happen.

I'm still searching for a mechanism, that changes the selection in the background while we think we are only working in the Info panel.

One possible mechanism could be dwell control in Sierra. I had it initially enabled and then forgot about it. With dwell control enabled we can move the cursor simply by moving our eyes, if we hold down a key longer than usually.

I am in the same boat, but as many, it is difficult to replicate and put your finger on the problem. I have 'successfully' (i.e. by accident) changed 400 genealogy photos, all with descriptions full of who was in the photos :-( I note that Faces is also behaving badly by putting additional people in the Get Info box that aren't actually on the photo. I have just done multiple 'Repairs' (Option-Command on Photos startup), and things have superficially improved, but I am far from confident things are really working. Just to endorse what everyone is saying, this is fundamental to Photos; without this sort of basic metadata functionality, you may as well just have everything in folders…

I feel your pain about the genealogy photos.

I have figured out not a fix, but at least something we can do to minimize the destruction. If you select a group of photos (say all those in an album or folder) and choose "export," set the export quality to be the smallest size and lowest resolution, and check the boxes for including the title, description, and locality, your photos will export in a more or less thumbnail form but with the metadata available under Preview, and you can save that somewhere without taking up a lot of room. If for instance you had done this with your 400 genealogy photos before the havoc, you could, with some effort, recall the metadata for each photo and copy it back in. This would be super tedious and I really would prefer something that would export all the metadata as a spreadsheet, but it's better than losing all the data with no recourse.

I can't understand why Apple is not addressing this. It's a ghastly feeling to have all that work destroyed in a single click.

Janet

Leonie's suggestion is a much easier and better work around

I am selecting the photos I want to Batch Change, enter ⌘N for File > New Album, then click the button "Add xxx photos to new album" and can simply click ⌘A to select all photos in the album and change the descriptions. Then I delete the album.For my purposes it is easier than trying to find the photos again in the moments.

LN

Hi Larry,

My suggestion didn't have anything to do with a batch change. My issue is archiving the existing Descriptions and Titles so if you inadvertently batch change them as noted in this forum, you haven't lost everything irretrievably. Thanks though.

To archive the metadata you could also export the original versions with an XMP sidecar file. This will store the IPTC metadata like keywords, titles, descriptions. When you reimport the originals or edited versions with this sidecar file present in the folder, Photos will set the metadata from this file. I include these sidecar files when I save the originals to my backup drive to have a backup of the original files.

Thanks, Léonie, I had to go educate myself on what a sidecar file is, but I get it. Your way of backing up the metadata is more complete and better than mine, except that exporting originals with IPTC metadata XMP files would take a lot of memory room, and I suspect a lot more time, than my "export as small" solution. I learn a lot from these forums, and I hope people find these ideas some help.

except that exporting originals with IPTC metadata XMP files would take a lot of memory room, and I suspect a lot more time, than my "export as small" solution. I learn a lot from these forums, and I hope people find these ideas some help.

That is true.

I just find it essential to keep a backup copy of the original file from the time I imported the photos to protect my library against JPEG corruption. Since I keep backup copies of all originals anyway in addition to the regular Time Machine backups, I switched to exporting the originals with the accompanying sidecar files. The first version of Photos on Yosemite could not read them, only write them, but Photos on Sierra can read them, and makes it very easy to export and reimport the originals with metadata attached.

Some good suggestions; tx. The real lesson (which I sort of know, but don't want to accept) is that Photos can't be seen as 'No. 1' top copy, it is merely a sharing and publishing facility and one needs to keep the archive and top copy somewhere else (E. g. Lightroom) that is robust and reliably constant. Not news I want, as it is only recently I have finished the transition of 30,000 photos from Aperture to Photos.

Photos is a free app, so I do not expect it offer the elaborate advanced features of a professional photo DAM like Aperture. But I nevertheless migrated my libraries to Photos because I like the ease it integrates with other Apple applications and I finally can keep my Photos Libraries in sync across multiple Macs. And with Photos 2.0 I am pleasantly surprised how far I can get with working in Photos alone. I do not need so much editing tools because I like to get the photos right directly in the camera, so I do not need many adjustment - just a bit straightening and cropping, white balance and perhaps lightening the shadows a bit. For haze removal, inpainting, or perspective correction I use photo editing extensions. Batch changing is still problematic, but i do not mind too much, because I like to write scripts.

As the Description of a photo is core functionality of any photo software (free or otherwise), I would have expected it to be fixed by now. My discussions with Apple went cold so presumably there is nothing more that can be done.

I hope not. This bug is dangerous, because it can wipe the metadata from thousands of photos and force us to restore the library from a backup, then wait for weeks for the new upload to iCloud.

I tested this issue yesterday again in the current version of macOS 10.12.4 beta and it changed again 2000 photos from the current search, not only the selected photos.