Dear friend,

My name is Anders and I’m the CEO of Brattoo Propaganda Software. In my last email I told you a little about the new features in Photos 2.0 and also gave you a few tips and hints. Again, we received a massive amount of positive feedback and we are so grateful. We received quite a few questions about how to add metadata to photos and if there is a way to batch change metadata such as description, keywords, places etc. Well, in this email I will address exactly that.

What is metadata and why do you need it?

Sometimes metadata is described as “data about data”, in this case data about your photos. Metadata is information such as location, description, title, rating, date and time. The metadata helps you bring order and improve the overall quality of your photo library. Especially in the digital age, when many of us have thousands and thousands of photos.

The Info Window

All this metadata is located in the Info Window which I described in my last email. Enable it with the command+I key combination or in the Window menu.

The Title

First we have the Title. The Title is not the same as the filename. By default the Title is empty, and not visible. If you set a Title you will be able to see it below the image thumbnails when you browse your library. This can be really useful if you select meaningful titles. A much requested feature is to automatically set the Title to the filename. That cannot be done in Photos automatically, but since we love our customers we developed this small (and free!) app that does just that for you. You can download it from here: https://brattoo.com/photosCopyFilenameToTitle.zip If you enjoy using the app, or have suggestions on improvement, then please let us know.

Date and Time

With today’s modern cameras the date and time is almost always correct, but sometimes you might need to set it yourself (for whatever reason). To do so, simply double click on the date in the Info Window and a new window will open. In the new window you can set the date, time and timezone of the photo. This can only be done for one photo at a time.

Ratings and Favorite

If you previously have used iPhoto or Aperture then you might be used to the star rating system. With this system you could rate images between one and five stars. In Photos that is gone and replaced with the little heart symbol called “favorite”. First I thought that I missed the possibility to rate photos, but then I came to the conclusion that I rated the photos I liked with five stars and left the other ones unrated. So, I think it kind of makes sense to just have the favorite label, at least to me.

You’ll find the small heart symbol in the upper right corner of the Info Window. Click on it to enable or disable it. If you have enabled the menu option, View->Metadata->Favorite, then you can also mark it directly in the image browser.

Description

Use the description field if you have any comments that you want to add to the photo. In Photos 2.0 you can actually change the description of many photos simultaneously which was a requested feature, which was available in both Aperture and iPhoto.

In Photos you batch change by selecting the photos you want to set the Description for and then set it in the Info Window. If the field say “Add a description” then none of the selected photos have a description. If the field says “Various descriptions” one or many of the selected photos have descriptions set that differ from each other. Now you can set the description to many photos at the same time. If you have many photos with different descriptions and you want to clear them, then you will have to first set them to a common description and after you have done that you can clear it.

Keywords

Keywords are great when organizing photos. There is a Keyword Manager in Photos but personally I prefer to simply enter them one by one in the keyword field in the Info Window. Simply enter the keyword you want and hit enter to save it. It will even show a small drop down menu with available keywords as you type.

You can batch change the keywords as well. When making a selection the keywords field will show all keywords assigned to the selected images. If the keyword text is light grey, then it is not set to all the selected photos.

Location

The location is set if your camera has a GPS built into it, like an iPhone. This way the Info Window can show a map of where the photo was taken. Pretty neat. But what if you want to change the location? You can do that in two ways. Either grab the pin on the map by the red dot and drag it where you want it. Or, click on the place description just above the map and start typing the location (street, city, place mark or country). A popup will appear that will help you get the correct location.

If you want, you may also batch change. If the photos were shot in the exact same spot and are represented by only one needle on the map then you can drag it. If there are multiple needles on the map then you can only batch change by editing the place description as described above.

Upgrades

Finally I would just like to tell you that our upgrade discount for Duplicate Annihilator for Photos is still available. For only $4.95 you can upgrade any old Duplicate Annihilator license to Duplicate Annihilator for Photos and for just one dollar ($1.00) more you can upgrade any old Duplicate Annihilator license to the Duplicate Annihilator Toolbox including a family pack! This means that you get five licenses for you and your family for all versions of Duplicate Annihilator including iPhoto, Aperture, iOS and Photos for only $5.95.

Get the upgrade from: https://upgrade.brattoo.com

Thank you for your time, I hope that you found this email informative. If you have any feedback, suggestions or ideas the please reply to this email. I read all emails and reply to them in person.

Best Regards,
Anders, CEO and Founder, Brattoo Propaganda Software