iPhoto JPEG Metadata Manipulation

Here is some information about the Title and Description fields in Apple's Mac OS X Snow Leopard iPhoto '09. The information was collected to help in sharing photos with non-Mac users.

When exporting from iPhoto with "Title and Keywords" checked, iPhoto exports the XMP Title and Description tags and duplicates them in the IPTC ObjectName and Caption-Abstract fields. Mac OS X Preview shows the XMP fields under the Get Info IPTC tab.

According to Ken Watson, Google Picasa uses the IPTC Description field for its Caption field and Windows Vista and Windows 7 photo viewer use the IPTC Description for its Title field.

The ExifTool by Phil Harvey shows the following metadata from an exported iPhoto.

---- IPTC ----
Caption-Abstract    : iPhoto Description
Object Name             : iPhoto Title

---- XMP ----
Description              : iPhoto Description
Title                           : iPhoto Title

All the metadata can be listed with group headings like this: exiftool -a -u -g file.jpg. The iPhoto Title data can be copied to the other fields for a whole directory with: exiftool '-IPTC:ObjectName>IPTC:Caption-Abstract' -'IPTC:ObjectName>XMP:Description' -overwrite_original ./ Careful, this will not save the originals.