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How do I get around - No filenames to describe the photo?

Piggie

Piggie

macrumors G3
Original poster
Feb 23, 2010
9,282
4,321
On my PC.

On the rare times I may attempt to organise some photo's :D

It's often great to name a image, using the filename, to describe the image.

Say I have a folder, called Christmas Day.

I could have photo's entitled

Snow in the morning.jpg
presents all ready for kids.jpg
turkey ready for stuffing.jpg
tim and anne arrive.jpg
fun unwrapping gifts.jpg

Or things like this

Could even be out and a photo of a building, and you name the files to be the names of the buildings.

You get the idea.

On the PC, I may create a folder, perhaps of an event, or a date or something.

As subfolders I may have, for example as above Christmas Day.

Or as per my other example. A Walk through the city.

And then if I'm really organised, I may name key shots with what they are.

But, the iPad (and perhaps other Apple products) strips off the filenames, so I only have a folder, and the images.

Unless I actually write with a paint program over the image, there is no "info" for the image.

Personally I'd love to see Apple include an info area for even just 1 line of text as a comment to go along with the photo.

Is there anyway around this problem/issue?

Perhaps I'm missing something obvious.?

I just don't see any way to identify the photo other than looking at it.
I would of thought it was very important for some people to have text that goes with the image, which as I say you normally achieve by using the filename.

eg: http://bigbikes.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/1978-honda-cbx-1000.jpg

The actual name of the file is "1978-honda-cbx-1000.jpg" so the filename tells you what it is.
 
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There are several solutions I found for this. All require buying apps however. Collections and Photo Sort both have the ability to add text to the photo and organize. *It may not be enough but I'm using it mainly to title each photo. It means adding the photos FROM Photos to these apps but works quite well. The other option is adding in a photo processer like Filterstorm or Photogene or even Tinker. Still you have to save to 'saved photos' and no organization.

The one thing I like about Collections is that Dropbox is integrated and you can upload there and organize. The other possibility is Goodreader which would allow you to organize to a point and also add notations. I haven't tried this for what you're asking about though. Its also integrated with Dropbox. Whoops, can only add notations in PDF so won't work for your request.

Diane B
 
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Thanks.

I will tell you something I think would be great. and would look pretty nice.

Using multitouch, the ability to flip a photo over (see it flip in 3D) and write on the back of it.

This text could be embedded into the image and you could do the same in iPhoto too.
 
Piggie said:
Thanks.

I will tell you something I think would be great. and would look pretty nice.

Using multitouch, the ability to flip a photo over (see it flip in 3D) and write on the back of it.

This text could be embedded into the image and you could do the same in iPhoto too.
Click to expand...

Nice idea!
 
Arnieaz said:
They say "A picture is worth a thousand words!"
I just look at it :)
Click to expand...

Yes, but.

Sometimes it helps to have what it is also.

Like I could take a selection of flowers in the garden, or you could have a selection of photo's of paintings, or landmarks etc etc.

Sometimes, seeing something is not enough to know what it is Other than some type of flower a painting by someone, or a building somewhere.

If it's a family/person thing then that's fine.

I go have a feeling, feel free to correct me anyone.
That Apple's whole iPhoto. Lifestyle Mac brand thing is all about people etc.

It's not really so suited to factual things, items, scenery, all that type of thing.
 
Yes, but you can give the event a meaningful name.
It would be nice to name each photo also.
I like the idea of flipping it over for notes, dates and etc.:rolleyes:

Couldn't pass up the first comment thou!
 
Arnieaz said:
Yes, but you can give the event a meaningful name.
It would be nice to name each photo also.
I like the idea of flipping it over for notes, dates and etc.:rolleyes:

Couldn't pass up the first comment thou!
Click to expand...

By event I guess you mean folder name?

This I suppose is what I mean.

An event is leaning towards a "Lifestyle" thing again.

As in, a Party or a trip to the beach, or a barbecue with friends.

I just don't take many photo's like that as "events"

I may take 2 photo's of my cat, and then another day, a photo of a plane flying over, then that afternoon a photo of the christmas tree.

Two days later, a photo of a wine bottle, then later the same day a photo of a funny cloud in the sky.

I take more random photo's like that, than I do "Event" out for the day, types of photo collections.

Hence it's hard to really group such individual shots into a folder (event) based on time they were shot.

I could take 30 cat photo's over a year and make a folder named Cat 2010 and put them all in there. Perhaps then a month by month name within that.

The iPhoto way, which I admit I've not used. but from what I've read, it does not really see, geared to that type of photo organisation.
 
Arnieaz said:
Yes, but you can give the event a meaningful name.
It would be nice to name each photo also.
I like the idea of flipping it over for notes, dates and etc.:rolleyes:

Couldn't pass up the first comment thou!
Click to expand...

Most digital cameras nowadays embed the date the pic was taken into the picture file. Apple just needs to write some code to display this info. Plus, more and more cameras also add geotag info to the pics. And Apple is developing "Faces" for iPhoto. I expect all that info would eventually become syncable and displayable on idevices. It's just another item on Apple's humongous todo list.
 
Night Spring said:
Most digital cameras nowadays embed the date the pic was taken into the picture file. Apple just needs to write some code to display this info. Plus, more and more cameras also add geotag info to the pics. And Apple is developing "Faces" for iPhoto. I expect all that info would eventually become syncable and displayable on idevices. It's just another item on Apple's humongous todo list.
Click to expand...

This is all super fantastic.

However, knowing the day, the location, or faces in a photo is all totally hopeless if I go to an antique car and bike museum, take 50 photo's of old vehicles and wish the viewer to know the name of the vintage vehicle in the photo.

As I've said, you would normally go though them and write the filename to what it's a picture of.

1928 Harley Hard Tail.jpg
1929 Model T Ford.jpg
1933 Chevy v8 Front.jpg
1933 Chevy v8 Rear.jpg
1933 Chevy v8 Side.jpg
1958 Batmobile Replica.jpg

etc etc.

I could make a folder (and event) called my day at the vehicle museum. but after that, I don't know what use any other iPhoto feature is.
 
Piggie said:
1928 Harley Hard Tail.jpg
1929 Model T Ford.jpg
1933 Chevy v8 Front.jpg
1933 Chevy v8 Rear.jpg
1933 Chevy v8 Side.jpg
1958 Batmobile Replica.jpg

etc etc.

I could make a folder (and event) called my day at the vehicle museum. but after that, I don't know what use any other iPhoto feature is.
Click to expand...

My guess is, Apple expects you to tag the pictures in iPhoto. Then eventually, when they get around to allowing photo metadata info to be displayed on iPad, the tags will show up along with date and place.
 
Night Spring said:
My guess is, Apple expects you to tag the pictures in iPhoto. Then eventually, when they get around to allowing photo metadata info to be displayed on iPad, the tags will show up along with date and place.
Click to expand...

Ah right.

I never knew about tagging. That sounds fine.

Can someone with a Mac and iPhoto tag some picture description to a jpg file and upload it, so I may download the image and see where the tags are.

So then if I wish I can make sure if I add info to a photo in windows, I put the tag info into the correct place.

Thanks :)
 
Piggie said:
Ah right.

I never knew about tagging. That sounds fine.

Can someone with a Mac and iPhoto tag some picture description to a jpg file and upload it, so I may download the image and see where the tags are.

So then if I wish I can make sure if I add info to a photo in windows, I put the tag info into the correct place.

Thanks :)
Click to expand...

I have both Mac and windows, so I can experiment. Am going out to dinner tonight, but if nobody else has stepped up by tomorrow, I'll see what I can come up with.
 
Night Spring said:
I have both Mac and windows, so I can experiment. Am going out to dinner tonight, but if nobody else has stepped up by tomorrow, I'll see what I can come up with.
Click to expand...

Windows 7 is so easy to change Metadata.

At first, I actually hunted for a program, till I foolishly realised you don't need anything.

Just: RIGHT CLICK / PROPERTIES / DETAILS

And it's all there, and you can just type in new info to all the metadata fields.

Title
Subject
Rating
Tags
Comments
Authors
Data Taken
Program Name
Data Acquired
Copyright

The tons more camera info. More than you'd ever need really :)

Not sure how much of this the Mac can see, or what parts the Mac or rather iPhoto actually uses.
 
Piggie said:
Windows 7 is so easy to change Metadata.

At first, I actually hunted for a program, till I foolishly realised you don't need anything.

Just: RIGHT CLICK / PROPERTIES / DETAILS
>snip<
The tons more camera info. More than you'd ever need really :)

Not sure how much of this the Mac can see, or what parts the Mac or rather iPhoto actually uses.
Click to expand...

ha! How simple! :D

I think it highly likely that the Mac sees/uses the same data, but like said, I can confirm tomorrow.
 
Okay, I tagged a photo in Windows, opened it up in iPhoto, and they don't show up. :( I tried googling "iphoto import tags from windows" and didn't see any solutions. Unfortunately, iPhoto (this is '09) reminded me of everything I hate about Mac OS. Crawling back to my trusty Win7 to recover! :p
 
Night Spring said:
Okay, I tagged a photo in Windows, opened it up in iPhoto, and they don't show up. :( I tried googling "iphoto import tags from windows" and didn't see any solutions. Unfortunately, iPhoto (this is '09) reminded me of everything I hate about Mac OS. Crawling back to my trusty Win7 to recover! :p
Click to expand...

Thanks.

Even though bad news.

Knowing how STRICT Apple are about following guidelines, I can't imagine they would do anything non standard when it comes to embedding info into an image, or any other file.

Which of the many fields you can enter metadata into in windows 7, did you fill in to see if the mac would see it?

Perhaps put something in every field.

Apple
Banana
Peach
Strawberry

etc etc and fill the fields up and see if any of them show up on the mac in iPhoto ?

As I don't know iPhoto I'm at your mercy :)

Can to edit a image tag, or assign text to a photo in iPhoto?

I assume the only way it definatly would not work is if iPhoto stored this info in it's Database and not with the file.

Which would be a bit naughty as if the database gets screwed then you lose all your information also.
 
Piggie said:
Perhaps put something in every field.

Apple
Banana
Peach
Strawberry

etc etc and fill the fields up and see if any of them show up on the mac in iPhoto ?
Click to expand...

I didn't fill out *every* field, but I filled several, and none of them showed up in iPhoto.

As I don't know iPhoto I'm at your mercy :)

Can to edit a image tag, or assign text to a photo in iPhoto?
Click to expand...

I don't really know iPhoto either, and the oft-repeated slogan that Mac "just works"? LIES! I can't figure out how to use iPhoto! I know, I know, I'm trying to do things the Windows way instead of sitting back and let instinct take over.... Sorry, my Mac instinct is AOL this morning and I'm not in the mood to go looking for it.

I did figure out how to add rating in iPhoto. (I had added a rating in Windows, but that didn't show up, either.) Went back to Windows, and not only was the rating not picked up, but all the fields I entered earlier were now blank. :eek:

Maybe you could try going over to the Mac Apps forum and see if someone knows their way around this?

Oh, and why do you want to know this anyway? Thinking of switching to Mac?
 
Unfortunately I think you currently maybe out of luck with the Photos App on the iPad. I've just tried setting some Titles and Keywords on some photos in iPhoto '09 and syncing these to my iPad. I can't see either the Title or Keywords displayed anywhere in the Photos App. Maybe I'm missing something but my guess is that this is something that Apple haven't got round to yet.

As far as iPhoto on my Mac is concerned I like the application a lot; however I think that you have to commit to the "Library" way of doing things for it to make sense. I've got all the photos I've taken in the last few years in iPhoto and for me it works great. I can organise my photos by when they were taken (Events), where they were taken(Places), who is in the photo(Faces) and manually(Albums). Given all these different ways of looking at my photos I don't care that I don't know the exact location and name of my image files. Plus all of these views (Events, Places, Faces and Albums) are synced across to my iPad.

Metadata (i.e. titles, comments, keywords, ratings and so on) is a tricky subject and gets particularly tricky when you consider making metadata portable. Generally there are 3 different approaches to storing metadata; storing it in the same file as the data it describes, storing it in a separate file or database and storing it in the filesystem itself. The EXIF data that the camera itself creates is an example of storing data in a file. Another example would be the tags (Album, Artists...) that are storing in an MP3 file.

iPhoto uses a database to store metadata. This has performance advantages over reading EXIF data out of files however it does add in extra steps when you want to get the photos out of iPhoto. Probably the easiest way is to select a bunch of photos, choose "File->Export" and select the checkboxes to include the title, keywords and location in the EXIF data. Using a database also means that it is crucial to backup the whole "iPhoto Library" directory and not just your photo files; if you don't do this then you risk losing your metadata.

Finally some systems store metadata as part of the file system itself. An example of this would be the resource forks that can be created on Macs. Windows also has the ability to store metadata when using NTFS. I think what you may have been doing when editing metadata under Windows is editing the metadata stored by NTFS. When you copied your photos to a Mac, OSX either didn't get this NTFS metadata or don't know what to do with it. In either case iPhoto wouldn't have seen the metadata that you set when you imported the photos.
 
Thanks for the interesting replies. I appreciate it :)

Part of my problem, and I've said this before, is that I don't have an "Apple Lifestlye" if you know what I mean.

I don't go out for the evening with Tom and Stacy and take party photos

Then go out the following day to the zoo with Timmy and Jenny.

Late afternoon going the John and Zelma's barbeque.

Stuff like that.

I may walk outside and see a plane flying low and take 2 photo's of it.
Come indoors and the dog is laying funny so take 1 photo of that.

Someone on these forums has a iPad problem so I take a couple of close up iPad photo's.

I try a new beer and it's great so I photo the tin.

All weird stuff like that.

So, I end up over time, with a bucket load of random photo's.

The geo location of 90% of them has no meaning.

The face thing is meaningless

There is not really an Event as such.

I tend to photo stuff, things, etc, more than a Party or a day out.

Even when on Holiday (which is an EVENT) I photo things more than people.

There is nothing more boring to me than coming back from holiday and:

Here's me on the beach
Here's my friend on the beach
Here's me and my friend on the beach
Here's his wife on the beach
and so it goes on and on.................

I'd much rather take photo's of the landscape and surroundings.

Then, and this is a good example, you really need an explanation to go with the photo of what it's a photo of.

Again, in Windows this is what the filename way or sorting is for.

I would of thought the in-file metadata way of comments would be the official way as then the data stays with the image wherever the image goes. Like the EXIF data in a mp3 file. That seems the safest long term way.

I really don't like the idea of a few thousand images, with just meaningless numbers of filenames, all held together by a database, it just sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.
 
I share your pain. I am a PC builder and user. I also do a lot of photography (more than 50,000 frames a year). I saw an ipad and was impressed by the screen display of photos. I bought one with the expectation that it would be perfect for a portable portfolio for my photos.

Boy, was I wrong!

I simply cannot sync photos from my PC in proper order and I cannot organize the images into a nested file folder system. I have tried every trick in the book to get a golf swing sequence to display in the exact order it was shot (10 frames per second)! it simply does not work. I had hoped to sync photos from three days of motorsports divided into sub folders for each day. All the photos were dumped into one folder in random order!

I DO NOT like itunes screwing with my photos (they call it optimizing) when I do sync. Sometimes I want a super high resolution image on the ipad so I can zoom in on detail. I cannot load my photos in the resolution of my choice!

I end up using the ipad to read news. I will be looking at the other tablets (not Apple) coming in the future to meet my needs.

CDL
 
dlathem said:
I share your pain. I am a PC builder and user. I also do a lot of photography (more than 50,000 frames a year). I saw an ipad and was impressed by the screen display of photos. I bought one with the expectation that it would be perfect for a portable portfolio for my photos.

Boy, was I wrong!

I simply cannot sync photos from my PC in proper order and I cannot organize the images into a nested file folder system. I have tried every trick in the book to get a golf swing sequence to display in the exact order it was shot (10 frames per second)! it simply does not work. I had hoped to sync photos from three days of motorsports divided into sub folders for each day. All the photos were dumped into one folder in random order!

I DO NOT like itunes screwing with my photos (they call it optimizing) when I do sync. Sometimes I want a super high resolution image on the ipad so I can zoom in on detail. I cannot load my photos in the resolution of my choice!

I end up using the ipad to read news. I will be looking at the other tablets (not Apple) coming in the future to meet my needs.

CDL
Click to expand...

If you use Windows it's dead easy to arrange your photo's

You just need to change the date the photo's were taken to get them into order.

I must admit, no you bring it up, no sub folders / nested folders is utterly stupid.

From day 1 with my iPad on launch day I was dissapointed in that the photo app is just really a Tech Demo.

That may sound harsh, but it's no good at actually doing anything.

As we all know you can't move images into folders. Which would seem so natural to do. And no sub folders, which is barmy.

My only worry is that I don't think it will change. I think Steve things having images sorted by having them in folders is the wrong way, so we won't get any improvement in this department.

I hope I'm wrong.
 
Arnieaz said:
They say "A picture is worth a thousand words!"
I just look at it :)
Click to expand...
It's amazing how people constantly need to understand WHY an OP is asking a question instead of helping him answer it.

Your input was much appreciated, thanks!
 
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