No to Apple Photos - Introduction
How to make sure your photos are digitally safe for a 100 years - continued
If you have been using Apple Photos you want to stop doing so, get your photos out of it or at least be aware of its limitations. The major ones being Apple cannot be depended upon to keep it working or maintain the current features. It has limited metadata support, it only embeds the metadata in a file when exported which recompresses a file so loosing quality. The next section will work through a process of getting your photos out of Apple Photos into a folder structure that makes sense and usable by other software.
This covers how to export full quality photos out of Apple Photos with metadata to folder/album structures. The aim here is to export all your original photos with any descriptions, titles, keywords and people to separate folders that follow the same structure as the albums you have in Apple Photos. This means you will loose any edits you have made and the photos should only reside in one folder to minimise duplicate photos.
If you have spent a lot of time editing your photos, you can export these as well and decide to keep the original and edited versions. Here we are concerned with the originals. Backup first.
In Apple Photos
1. If possible, go through organising photos so they are not in multiple albums. So, if you have your photo of “Pete Smith” in a album called “Pete Smith” and in the “Christmas” album, try and have it listed just in one album. If you can’t do this, or you have the same photos in many places, don’t worry too much, but it is much better to have your photos in just one Album if it is easy to do.
2. Correct headlines, comments and faces. Remember you can shift select and command (apple key) select multiple photos, get info on the photos and edit them together in one action.
3. Correct your existing keywords, but Don’t create any new ones yet. If you only used a few, get rid of them. They can be used better in other software. If you have already made good use of them, then keep them.
4. Use Smart Albums to find: No descriptions, Edited photos, Referenced photos, No Title, Not in an album. This will help with the points above.
5. Select your Albums one at a time, select all the photos in your Albums and create a new keyword with the Albums name. For example you might have a folder called Animals and within that folder you have albums for Cats, Dogs and Other Creatures. So for cat photos you create keywords for Animals and Cats. For dog photos you create keywords for Animals and Dogs. So the photos all have two or more keywords. Our “Pete Smith” example above may have keywords for both “Pete Smith” and “Christmas”. It is very important to get this correct and shouldn’t take long.
6. In Apple Photos, select Photos (just under Library - top left hand corner), select all your photos (Edit / Select all).
7. Select File / Export / Export Unmodified Original . . .
8. Export IPTC as XMP, Use File Name, Subfolder Format None / Export to a new folder called something like “Apple Photos Exports”.
9. If you have extensively edited your photos, you might want to do an Export of those photos by creating a Smart folder to find them and export them to another folder.
Note:
During my first attempts with this process I exported the photos one album at a time to separate folders. I found this extremely tedious and Apple Photos was extremely unreliable. You are better off using the Keywords method above where keywords represent Albums and Folders.
Apple Photos should have exported all your original photos with XMP metadata sidecars for each file to your nominated folder. It will have dealt with duplicate names to make sure all the files were properly exported. Do check to make sure all the photos were exported as I found Photos unreliable in my testing.
The XML files doubles up on face names which Apple Photos adds to the keywords. This is annoying, but doesn’t matter as other software ignores the double ups. If you are particular, you can use Graphics converter or a spreadsheet to fix the problem. We will be making Metadata edits below.
Graphics Converter (GC)
Here we will be using a program called Graphics Converter that has amazing abilities with metadata.
1. You will need to download, install Graphics Converter (GC). Go to:
https://www.lemkesoft.de/en
2. Use the Browse option to open the folder of photos you exported from Apple Photos.
3. Select all the photos in the folder (command key a).
4. Go to the menu with the clipboard icon / XMP Sidecar file / Copy into JPEGs, TIFFs, . . . HEICs:
This will copy the side car metadata you exported from Apple Photos and embed them into the original photos.
5. Check the Get Info (command i) in GC to see if there is a Headline. If not, we can use Apple Numbers to fix this later by copying the Object Name/Title field to the Headline field.
6. Get info on the first photo. Setup copyright, caption writer information. This will be a template when we work in Apple Numbers. While here note if there are duplicate keywords and close the Get Info window.
7. Photos adds names to the keywords, but doubles the names as it does so. Select all your photos and select the clipboard icon / Keywords Field / Remove duplicates.
8. Select all your photos, select the clipboard icon / Export IPTC/XMP into CSV. Export this to the folder holding the photos. You now have a spreadsheet readable file with all your metadata.
Optional
You may find it helpful to download a summary of some EXIF data. I used this to identify the camera used in the photos which help me work out the photographer.
1. Select MetaData icon.
2. Export Summary as CSV, but you might want to first select what goes into the summary report by using Define Summary.
3. I set it to show the camera details and the date the photo was taken which can sometimes be different to the creation date.
Apple Numbers or any Spreadsheet
Here you can use any spreadsheet to edit and manipulate the metadata. My instructions are for Apple Numbers.
1. Open the exported CSV file in Numbers. Double clicking on the file may or may not open it in numbers. If it doesn’t, do a get info and set Numbers up as the programs to open .csv files.
2. Fill down Caption writer and make corrections,
3. Copy the Object Name/Title to the Headline field. Photos uses the Title field instead of the Headline field. Adjust as required.
4. Fill down “by line” (photographers name), “by line title” (photographer, staff photographer), credit & source.
5. Optionally you can copy the names in the keywords to persons. So names are in both the names and keyword fields. I have found most software can’t look at the names field, so that is why this is optional.
6. Copy and paste the contact details.
7. Enter copyright information and make any other adjustments.
8. Export the finished file as a CSV. Rename it to something like “Import to GC”.
Note:
Although you may have the copyright on the photos, this doesn’t mean you were the photographer. If you are in the photo, then unless it was a selfie you weren’t the photographer. This is quite easy to fix in Bridge.
Graphics Converter
We now have our CSV file with the corrected Metadata ready to import back into our photos.
1. In Graphics converter, select all your photos, select the Clipboard icon / Import IPTC from csv. This imports the adjusted metadata CSV file back into the photos.
2. Check the work by opening the Get Info window and look at information for a few photos.
Optional
You can use GC to rename all the photos, so instead of being say _DSC0130.JPG, you could change it to say 2015_0001 and increment the index. Browse and open the relevant folder. Select File / Convert & Modify and work from there.
What Next? What options do we have?
Ideally you want to avoid using Apple Photos, but its ability to easily allow a photos to be in multiple albums is very useful. We should avoid any DAM (Digital Asset Manager) that locks us in. Having our metadata safely locked into our files means we can use Apple Photos, but by taking care to avoid its limitations.
Apple Photos
Here is a possible way to safely use Apple Photos.
1. Run through the process above.
2. Create a new Apple Photos Library
3. File / Preferences / set it to reference the photos. This means it will no longer import photos, but leave and reference them in their original folders. Note that you cannot use icloud.
4. Create a album or folder - call it originals
5. Import your metadata corrected photos into the Originals album or folder.
6. Remember you can have multiple Apple Photo libraries - hold Option as you launch to be given a choice.
Picktorial
This program looks very like Apple Photos without the limitations and would be a good alternative. Their free version would be more than adequate, while their paid version is even better.
https://www.picktorial.com
Adobe Bridge, Lightroom & Reinstating your Apple Photos structure
Learn how to use Adobe Bridge. You will need to sign up with Adobe, but you don’t need to pay for Bridge. Read the manual and look for training videos, but learn it now. If you have Adobe Lightroom you might want to keep with it, but it does require a paid subscription. Lightroom allows photo editing, Bridge doesn’t. Lightroom creates a central database of the photos you have imported into it. You can have multiple databases. The databases don’t require the photos to be present on the drive and will ask for it when and if needed. Bridge relies on the files being on your drive.
You can use the keywords you created in Apple Photos and Bridge's filters combined with it's Move to Function to recreate your Photos album structure.
Notes
After you have learned Bridge or similar, here are some things worth knowing.
Make a Metadata template in Bridge with your details, enter headlines and descriptions. If you intend coming back to work on the photo put something like “working” in the headline field or use the ratings so it is easily to filter work in progress.
Use Templates, Folders, Favourites and Collections with Bridge. Collections are like Photos Albums. This can help mimic Photos folders and albums.
Setup and Methodology
This is my idea for an ongoing workflow to handle new photos as you take them.
Import and open your photos in Bridge
Apply Meta Data template
Set a Review or To Do colour rating
Rate and Delete the bad photos
Add Headlines, Descriptions & keywords - if the photos are similar you may use a metadata template to save time. You can apply meta data to groups and folders of photos together
Move photos to appropriate folders
Create Collections
Rename the photos to something like the headline date and number
Sharing Photos in Adobe Bridge
If you have two computers, I’d suggest keeping your photos on an external drive which is regularly backed up. Each time Bridge runs it will update its Cache of files and does this fairly quickly, but if you want to share collections from computer to computer you will need to take some additional steps that are well described by Adobe.
Summary
How to safely leave Apple Photos
Apple Photos
Organise your folders, albums, descriptions, keywords and titles.
Export all your original photos with XMP sidecars
Graphics Converter
Import the XMP sidecars into the photos
Get info on a few photos
Insert a copyright notice on the first photo. Option g creates © symbol
Remove duplicate keywords
Export the metadata out of the photos as a CSV file
Numbers
Open the CSV file
Make your edits
Export a new CSV
Graphics Converter
Import the adjusted CSV file into the photos
Check your work
Adobe Bridge
Organise your photos
If required, use the Move to function based on the keywords to recreate a folder structure similar to the albums you had in Apple Photos.
Please contact me with any corrections, comments or thoughts.
James Clarke