Tiger, iPhoto keywords not picked up by Spotlight

[chameeeleon]

I was glad it searched iPhoto keywords.
I just wish there was a way for iPhoto to automatically rename source picture files after the title you've given them in iPhoto. Spotlight gives me results like "img 0566436" which mean nothing to me, obviously requiring me to go to the full window and the little photo view. If they'd rename the files, or if Spotlight had an option to display the titles rather than the filename I'd be very happy.

 

[mkrishnan]

I was glad it searched iPhoto keywords.
I just wish there was a way for iPhoto to automatically rename source picture files after the title you've given them in iPhoto. Spotlight gives me results like "img 0566436" which mean nothing to me, obviously requiring me to go to the full window and the little photo view. If they'd rename the files, or if Spotlight had an option to display the titles rather than the filename I'd be very happy.

A pain, but you could select the entire library, export it with the by-title naming at full res, and re-import it... But I've noticed this about PDFs too -- sometimes I am in a hurry and save PDF journal articles with the wacky code names that the document servers give them, instead of something intelligible. Spotlight makes it much easier to find the right one, since I'm only looking at two or three instead of twenty, but it's still hard to figure out whether I want 0XB523F55 or HR2599GFB991.

 

[Applespider]

For those of us who didn't upgrade from iPhoto 4 (4.0.3 to be exact), does anyone know of a fix to get the metadata to appear in Spotlight. To be honest, if it doesn't then what's the point using iPhoto at all? Metadata from Adobe applications seems to work, after all. Shouldn't these be embedded into the files?

The keywords aren't embedded in the iPhoto files. They're in a separate iPhoto file which iPhoto 5 has a plugin for that allows Spotlight to search them.

I did see a link somewhere (at work though so can't search history) for a script that someone had written which allowed you to put the iPhoto 4 comments into the Spotlight comments field in Get Info.

 

[jacg]

Worth noting: Tiger didn't seem to notice changes to comments in iPhoto 5.02 until after I repaired permissions.

 

[lord_flash]

The keywords aren't embedded in the iPhoto files. They're in a separate iPhoto file which iPhoto 5 has a plugin for that allows Spotlight to search them.

I did see a link somewhere (at work though so can't search history) for a script that someone had written which allowed you to put the iPhoto 4 comments into the Spotlight comments field in Get Info.

Yes indeed, it can be found at Automator World but I'm not especially impressed yet. So far it doesn't seem to be able to handle more than about 3 files at once without hanging Automator. I think I'm going to have to learn how to do this programming myself (oh, and use Adobe software to attach metadata from now on).

 

[kbrumors]

This works for me...

Spotlight only seems to be picking up the kMDItemComment metadata from iPhoto images, which was not populated by iPhoto before v5 (maybe even v5.0.2). My pre-v5 library didn't have these tags populated and thus Spotlight didn't pick up anything unless I entered the comment with iPhoto v5.

To verify this issue, in Terminal, cd to a directory in your iPhoto library that contains images with comments, and run:

% mdls -name kMDItemComment * | grep -v '\-\-\-\-\-\-'

You should see an absence of output if you're having this problem.

The easy fix from Terminal is to cd to the root your iPhoto library (by default "~/Pictures/iPhoto Library" I believe?). This directory will contain the iPhoto.db file (among others).

After quitting iPhoto, cd to your library directory and run:

% mv -i iPhoto.db /tmp

If the rest of the procedure doesn't work, try:

% mv -i .i* iPhoto.* /tmp

When you restart iPhoto it will rebuild this file (give it a minute for larger libraries, and/or watch CPU usage) and populate the kMDItemComment tag. Your comments will instantly be viewable by Spotlight. You can also verify by re-running the mdls command above.

BTW, this tag is not in a separate file, it's stored in the extended attributes on a per-file basis.

Hope this helps -- quick and painless fix without batch-adding a comment character.

Cheers,
--
Ken.

 

[ifjake]

i'm not sure i understand what's going on. if you have iPhoto 04 and that's it, no going from 04 to 05 stuff, is there a way to get spotlight to catch the keywords of the photos of your library? does iPhoto 04 even assign keywords to the photos or is it just assigned in a little database file somewhere? the automater script isn't working for me. and besides, i use keywords, not comments.

i have iPhoto 04 and i want to use keywords and see these keywords come up in spotlight. is this even possible?

 

[kbrumors]

Sorry...

I was only talking about comments not showing up for Spotlight when using iPhoto 5. My guess is that the comment is a glorified keyword. If iPhoto 4 doesn't support extended attributes, I'm thinking Spotlight won't be able to pick up anything outside of the standard JPG attributes.

But if iPhoto 4 does populate attributes, moving your iPhoto.db aside should repopulate... but I haven't tried or tested that. Worth a shot.

Sorry for the confusion,
--
Ken.

 

[ifjake]

i'm thinking that iPhoto 04 doesn't populate attributes as you put it. i did the terminal stuff but nothing happened. i use Keyword Assistant so i'm going off the keywords. when i look at the actual photo in my library with Preview and do the "get info" thing and see if they keyword i assigned to it from iPhoto is actually in the photo itself, it's blank. which is unfortunate, because i'm really pleased with iLife 04 and don't feel the need to upgrade to 05, other than this one little thing. i'm going to leave some feedback at Apple and see what happens.

and i can't seem to get that automator action to work, or it only works with comments and not keywords. i kinda wish it was saved as something i could open and fiddle with.