PC user needs help writing metadata that Apple will read

[giggles]

Hello!

I'm looking for help writing metadata that I've added in Windows to photos so that a Mac can read. From what I can figure out, Apple either uses different fields or is mean. The background of the project is this... My Pop's is 88 yrs old and is the sole care provider for my Mom, who has advanced Alzheimer's. He loves his photos and memories. In hopes of bringing some smiles to his face, I took a copy of all his old photos and have spent the past 6 months restoring the images, face tagging, GPS tagging, and adding notes. He has almost 600 photos from the 1910s-1950s that someone else digitized a while back. I used the Photo Restoration feature in Photoshop to restore the photos (I'd never used Photoshop before, that was a big learning curve). TagThatPhoto for face tagging. Windows Explorer to add Tags, Titles, Comments and Subjects. And XnView to add GPS coordinates. My pop's has a Mac and uses Apple Photos. I have a PC. I sent him a couple of photos as teasers to get him excited, but instead, he was focused on the missing metadata that I had promised.
I'd really appreciate some help writing/copying the metadata that I've worked so hard on to the whatever fields Apple likes/reads. 

Thank you!

[StarGeek]

Windows Explorer to add Tags, Titles, Comments and Subjects.

This is most likely the source of your problem.  Windows will write data to non-standard, Windows only tags. 

My suggesting going forward is to use something like Adobe Bridge, which is free, to write the metadata, as it will write data in compliance with the IPTC standards.

A step up from Bridge would be to use a Digital Asset Management (DAM) program, such as Lightroom (paid) or DigiKam (free).  These programs will allow you to enter data and it will be saved to standard locations as well as make it easy to find your images.

Use the command in FAQ #3 to look at the locations for the data.  The tags that start XP* (which is different from XMP) are likely the sources you want to move.

But this isn't going to be everything.  Windows should have written to some of the standard tags and those should have shown up in AP.  You'll want to find an image in Apple Photos that has an example of the data you want to show up.  Or if you can, use Apple Photos to write some data and again, use the FAQ #3 command to see where it is looking for the data.

Finally, if you're files are PNGs, then you need to know that metadata support for PNG files is lacking for most apps.

[wywh]

A few days ago I finally fixed all images my son had taken in the army and edited with Windows gear.

macOS 12-13 Monterey-Ventura Photos.app displays 'IFD0:ImageDescription' instead IPTC/XMP so my later additions done with GraphicConverter.app to the Captions were not read by Photos.app and it insisted reading the old IFD0 descriptions even when some of them were empty (I later learned that GraphicConverter has an option to update also 'IFD0:ImageDescription' when updating IPTC/XMP).

Previously I had fixed images where the Photos.app image time was "0.00" even though it was correctly in 'ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal' which I regard as the golden standard for images. Root of the problem was that 'IPTC:DateCreated' was missing its 'IPTC:TimeCreated' counterpart or missing time in 'XMP-photoshop:DateCreated' if "IPTCDigest is not current".

I also spotted some .jpg and .png images that missed 'ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal' but with my workflow Photos.app correctly grabbed it either from 'MacOS:FileCreateDate' or 'IFD0:ModifyDate' which was present in those Nexus 4 .jpg panorama images.

I fixed those with (thanks to StarGeek and Phil!):

Code Select Expand

exiftool -m -P -overwrite_original_in_place -if '$IFD0:ImageDescription' -IFD0:ImageDescription= .

exiftool -m -P -overwrite_original_in_place -if '$IPTC:DateCreated and not $IPTC:TimeCreated' -IPTC:DateCreated= -IPTC:TimeCreated= .

exiftool -m -P -overwrite_original_in_place -if '$Photoshop:IPTCDigest' -Photoshop:IPTCDigest= .

exiftool -m -P -overwrite_original_in_place -if 'not $XMP-photoshop:DateCreated=~/ \d\d:\d\d:\d\d/' -XMP-photoshop:DateCreated= .

exiftool -m -P -overwrite_original_in_place -ext jpg -ext png -ext tif -if 'not $ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal' '-AllDates<FileName' .
Movie dates, locations, captions and keywords is another matter.

- Matti

[giggles]

Thank you both for responding! @wywh, the commands you provided were helpful and insightful. It was precisely the sort of logic & solution I was looking for. If there are others like that that fix other differences between tags (title, description, keywords, etc), I'd love to hear more.

I borrowed a Mac Mini and imported 12 test images to Apple Photos. I'd never used a Mac before, so I have no idea if my approach was correct, but here's what I did.

A. Created my sample set of photos

• Took 12 test photos and updated the metadata of each one via a different method (Windows, XnView, Mylio & TagThatPhoto).
• Made three copies of the photos and processed one set with Mylio, another with TagThatPhoto, and another first with TagThatPhoto and then with Mylio to see how each software modified the data (I had the software scan the photos and then write to the photos, but I never manually changed any data).

B. Viewed all the photos in various applications and noted all the fields and contents in a spreadsheet.

• PC: Windows Explorer -> "File Properties"-"Details"
• Apple: Photos (imported using File>Import) -> "Get Info"
• Apple: Preview -> "More Info"
• Mylio desktop app (a photo manager/viewer that I've been testing out)

C. Compared the results.


My takeaways from this painful exercise...

• I was surprised & relieved by how much data was read by Apple Photos. It was more than I expected.
• Both TagThatPhoto & Mylio modified some of the data when they scanned the images and then wrote back, even though I didn't modify anything. I didn't see that coming....

I'm flying out to visit my folks on Thursday, and I plan on taking a USB drive with all these photos. My safety plan is to add all the names of the tagged faces to the keywords/tags and to add all the data to the filename.

I still welcome any & all advice on how to approach adding metadata that is agnostic to all systems, as my next project is organizing my mom's old photos... *sigh*

[wywh]

I should add that those errors were quite rare but might be irritating.

I use GraphicConverter ($40) for usual maintenance (rename via exif date or vice-versa, captions, keywords, locations, ratings -- some other options in the attached screenshot) and exiftool for special tasks and fine-tuning.

I guess those tags should be agnostic to all well behaving apps:

Code Select Expand

exiftool -a -G1 -s -n image.jpg
[System]        FileModifyDate                  : 2000:01:01 12:00:00+02:00
[ExifIFD]       DateTimeOriginal                : 2000:01:01 12:00:00
[GPS]           GPSLatitudeRef                  : S
[GPS]           GPSLatitude                     : 36.6101
[GPS]           GPSLongitudeRef                 : W
[GPS]           GPSLongitude                    : 66.91515
[IPTC]          Caption-Abstract                : Caption
[IPTC]          Keywords                        : Keyword 1, Keyword2
[XMP-dc]        Description                     : Caption
[XMP-dc]        Subject                         : Keyword 1, Keyword2
[XMP-xmp]       Rating                          : 4
- Matti