iPhoto library & changing photo titles?

[Big Stevie]

I know Apple don't like us fiddling with our iPhoto Library (show package contents > Masters etc), but is it ok to change the title of photos stored there?

I need to upload quite a lot of photos to an online photo printing website, and to help me find the correct photos I was thinking of re-titling them. Am I asking for trouble or should I export them elsewhere in Finder?

[snberk103]

You are asking for trouble. That is how the iPhoto database knows which image has been edited, where it goes, etc etc.

But... why are you using iPhoto to retitle the images? You can either retitle on a one-by-one basis if you need to put a descriptive title for each image. This will be slow to do whether using iPhoto or the Finder.

However, if you need a common format for a bunch of photos... say "My_Name_00x" or "YYYY_MM_DD_00x" (where x is a sequential number) then iPhoto has tools to do that for you very quickly. If you are uploading you are going to want to export to a temporary directory anyway, so you can rename on export. Or... you can just do a Batch Change which gives you some more options for renaming.

Don't miss the feature that allows you rename images using the Album Name. You can sort the images you want to upload into a temporary Album, name it to be the name you want on the photos, and then Export the photos renaming them to the Album name plus a sequential number.

There are all sorts of ways to do what you want to do using iPhoto which makes it easier to do, and doesn't corrupt the database.

[Big Stevie]

Thanks. Ive ended creating a new folder within Finder, then, opening iPhoto I highlighted the relavent photos within Events, then exported them to the new folder that I had created.

It worked quickly and seems to have done the job