Need to copy file names to Titles for Apple Photos sorting

[Gary Small]

As I’m sure everyone knows, Apple Photos disabled sorting by file names and requires the use of “titles” which unless I am very misinformed is an obnoxious PITA that could only come from the minds of the Apple (juvenile) geniuses.

Does anyone have a process to copy file names into the xmp Title field as a batch? I did see an Automator script online that probably USED to work, but does not work (for me) in macOS Tahoe. I will investigate (via forum post) if this can be done in Photo Mechanic…but GEEZ…what was Apple thinking?

thanks

gary

[Kit Laughlin]

Joining this thread to see where it goes! I have never used Photos, so this is news to me.

[Gary Small]

So it turns out that I CAN do this with the photos OUTSIDE of the Apple Photos library using Photo Supreme, Graphic Converter (already tested both) and “probably” Photo Mechanic. So THAT would mean exporting out all the photos from the library, doing the process, then re-importing into AP -OR- simply delete the library, do the thing externally, then re-export the (mainly raw) files out (again) to compressed HEIC or JpegXL and then re-import into a blank library…either way a huge PITA.

I’d much prefer to do it inside the library, but it may not be possible. It appears that Nitro also follows the same requirement in a Photo Library window, where it clearly does NOT in a folder view.

So definitely hoping for some enlightenment.

thanks

gary

[Kevin Yank]

I use the open source OSXPhotos to do this as a batch process on the photos in Apple Photos (no export, re-import required). Here’s my blog post on the subject.

[Nik Bhatt]

Nitro doesn’t offer a file name sort because the Photo Library does not provide that as a sort order. Nitro *could* sort in whatever way it wants, but I found that offering non-standard sorts causes severe performance issues with larger libraries.

[Gary Small]

So thanks to Kevin for alerting me to OSXphotos, which I will take a look at (eventually) and also for Nik’s reply, which makes sense, but if I read it correctly would possibly work in Nitro, but not CHANGE the titles that would still be needed in Apple Photos.

So if anyone else is interested, my research put me on to Photo Workbench (https://www.houdah.com). For about $30 (US) it does exactly what I need.

The process (for me) is to go one folder at a time (I organize by year), select all photos in the folder, click on the “Change Titles” menu at top of page, Method is Name Format, select File Name from elipse symbol and click “OK”….DONE and FAST!

I need to do some work anyway in my AP library and will use Nitro’s Flagging (mostly reject) to thin things out, but having the folders actually sorted by the same file structure as in the Finder is a major help.

Shame on Apple for this seriously dysfunctional way of sorting, but I guess it creates opportunities for the independent developers.

gary

[BenB]

@Gary (and others)
Ha been a bit busy so I just now saw this post. In the past I converted an automator script to a “service” inside Apple Photos. Just tested it and still seems to work in Tahoe. Copy filename to title. Works for batch as well
I will dig in coming days a bit further to see if It can be transferred to a shortcut. If there is an interest.

[BenB]

Update to my previous post. Apple Shortcut does not support this functionality. So for this to work you need to stay with Automator/AppleScript an place that as a service in Apple Photo’s. Probably it is possible to have a shortcut to ”call’ for the AppleScript. But that does not make much sense I think.
Best regards
Ben

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