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How to export photos with metadata

I'd like to export images from the MacOS Photos app. Although there are several ways to do this, none of them seem to satisfy these fairly simple requirements:


  1. Capture any edits made to the photo.
  2. Capture title, description and any keywords as IPTC metadata.
  3. No loss of image quality or unnecessary re-rendering.


This is what I've tried:


  1. Drag and drop from Photos into a Finder window.
  2. Export [N] Photos ...
  3. Export Unmodified Original ... with IPTC as XMP.


These are the corresponding results:


  1. The photo description is captured in the ArtworkContentDescription field of the IPTC metadata, but title and keywords are lost. The photo appears to be re-rendered, even when it was never edited in the Photos app.
  2. Check the box to "Include Title, Keywords and Description" and the description is still lost (though title and keywords are preserved). There are options for low, medium, high or maximum JPEG quality, but there is no option to preserve the original quality, so the photo will always be re-rendered, even if it has never been edited. This means choosing between some loss of quality or an unneccessary increase in file size.
  3. Any edits made in the Photos app are lost. Metadata is preserved, but in a separate file, which is sub-optimal.


I'm stumped. Before I go looking for third party tools, does anyone have a better solution?

Thanks in advance!


iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Jun 7, 2020 4:20 PM

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Posted on Jun 7, 2020 4:26 PM

It can't be done. But I wouldn't worry too much about the quality. It's inherent in how Jpegs work. When you export the app creates a new Jpeg (not a reduced version of the original) with your photo within so there's no generational loss.


Exporting the unmodified original means just that. It's unmodified.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 7, 2020 4:26 PM in response to Epiktistes

It can't be done. But I wouldn't worry too much about the quality. It's inherent in how Jpegs work. When you export the app creates a new Jpeg (not a reduced version of the original) with your photo within so there's no generational loss.


Exporting the unmodified original means just that. It's unmodified.

Jun 7, 2020 4:38 PM in response to Yer_Man

Thanks! I agree the loss of quality is not serious, but it seems gratuitous to create a new JPEG even when the original is unmodified. I analyzed the images here:


https://compress-or-die.com/jpg


... and saw a slight loss in quality unless I chose "Maximum Quality", which balloons the file size.


What's more serious is that it's possible to capture the description, or the title and keywords, but not all three.

How to export photos with metadata

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