Batch rename photos in Photos in Sierra

There are several user contributed Applescripts to batch change the Title field under the thumbnail of each photo. First go to the View ➙ Metadata menu option and check all options:

Next use of of these AppleScript to rename the Title as you desire:

Script: Changing the Title to the Filename without Extension

Script: Batch Changing the Titles to the Filename w/Extension

Script: Batch Change the Titles to a Given String

Batch Change Title to Text w/Padded Sequential No.

Batch Change Title to Capture Date-Description-Padded Sequential Number

The scripst compiled as an applications can be downloaded from this tutorial site: P01 - Applescripts from Photos’ User Tips Compiled as Applications

There are other scripts available at the Photos for Mac User Tipspage.

If you click on the links I provided you will be taken to the user tip that describes the AppleScript and you can either copy and paste the script into Script Editor (on all Macs) and save as a script, workflow or app. Or you can download the scripts as an application to use after selecting which photos you want to change the description to.

You should assemble the photos you want to batch change into an album and change the description there.

I tried to batch change with Finder and they change all of them for the same date ( today ) not when the photos were created..extremely disappointing. All my photos since digital have my name, date created, and imaf ge file and number . I have reimported some in Aperture as I kept it on my old laptop but when i reimported into photos , the title name was empty .

I really do not understand why it is so hard for Apple to give us back the batch rename we had in Aperture. Finder does an half job. I am a photographer that has sticked with Photo for convenience but now I just have it !!

We are in 2017 and we cannot batch change a picture name with the date it was taken !!! really

I would be embarassed to even post some scripts !! I am 67 years old, takes around 10, 000 photographs a year and finally realised that I need to switch from this nonsense.

Steve must be turning around in his grave !

Florence jean MBA, Inf

This is about Photos and reading that there is an easy way to batch change name of pictures with Finder in all these discussions and magazines 's articles ( because Photos cannot do it ) .

What Finder does is easy: it does not put the creation date of the picture, it puts on all your pictures chosen by Finder the date that you are changing it and the time ( with seconds ) . The pictures have all the same time ( and same second ) . I still cannot believe that Apple did this. What were they thinking. Where are these programmers ?

I have read all the discussions about this hoping for a solution that I must have overlooked . I realised that there are a large number of peoples with the same frustration.

I will write to few expert magazines and see what they think and how can we complain directly to Apple. I understand that this forum is to help us, so I am sorry !

Florence Jean MBA, inf

Photos can do it and if you are using Photos you can not do it using the finder - you can never make any changes to the structure or content of the Photos library using the finder or you will damage the library and lose data

This forum is to help you with using the Photos for Mac application

glad you have an MBA (and an inf what every that is) - that is certainly very impressive as I only have a BS EE - but your school did not do a great job of teaching critical thinking - but then I did take time to learn how to use photos and use it correctly and therefore have no problems with it

LN

I really do not understand why it is so hard for Apple to give us back the batch rename we had in Aperture.

...

We are in 2017 and we cannot batch change a picture name with the date it was taken !!! really

Aperture has been discontinued, And apple made it quite clear, that there will be no replacement for Aperture. I have given up any hope, that Apple will provide a decent photo application for the professional users in the near future.

With Photos we have an application that will work seamlessly both on handheld devices like iPhones and on Apple computers. and the target audience are clearly casual hobbyists, without too much knowledge about photography. Photos has been improved during the two years since it has been released; the photo editing extensions are adding editing power. But the support for metadata is still extremely poor. We can neither display them conveniently nor easily change them, and also the support for batch processing is nearly not existing. It is like the developer team for Photos simply does not expect the users to want to maintain photo libraries with more than 100000 photos. There are no easy workflows to deal with large Photos libraries. And the few metadata we are able to apply to our photos, cannot be used conveniently. There is no list view to compare metadata, titles and descriptions cannot automatically be used in slideshows, books, or other projects, we cannot even display the GPS coordinates.

I would be embarassed to even post some scripts !!

Maybe, but since I am going to the trouble of creating scripts to for my own needs to get access to the photo meta data that the developers like to keep hidden, and to make it possible to batch change them, I like to share them with the community. Someone might profit from them.

I invested a lot of time into scripting Aperture too, even given aperture's great support for batch changing.

Old Toad...YOU ARE A LIFESAVER!!!! All your applications are awesome!!!

Apple should pay YOU....

I didn't create the scripts. That was done by user léonie. I just converted them to apps and made them available.

Programming scripts is fun 😁

Do you have a question about the Photos app? This forum and this thread has nothing to do with anything in the finder - you can not use the finder on Photos stored in the Photos application

LN

I love you. Thank you, thank you.