Photos Workflows

Tech Support
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1

My wife and I started birding during Covid. We have gone all in and take photos of the birds also. It’s been a lot of fun. The downside is that it’s generating a ton of photos.

My current workflow is

  • load all of the photos to the Mac Mini under my account from the SD cards in the cameras.
  • make sure that all photos have a location and fix the ones that don’t in Photos on the Mac.
  • a few hours later they photos will have synced to iCloud and are visible on all of my devices.
  • use Darkroom on either the Mini or an iPad to make a first pass and removing photos we don’t want to keep.
  • use Pixlmator Pro on the Mini and it’s AI/ML capabilities to “edit” the photos. We shoot in both JPEG & RAW.

What i have not found yet is a way to edit Photo keywords on an iOS device. Merlin Bird ID by Cornell will identify the bird based on the photo. I would like to sit on the back porch, review the photos and double check our identification and then tag the photo with the species.

Any suggestions to add keywords to the original on either iPad or iPhone? I don’t want to use a 3rd party tagging system or create new photos.

2

I use Metapho to amend EXIF data on photos in the Photos app

3

I’d wait & see if this new iOS 15 feature includes edits eventually.

4

per the developer Metapho doesn’t do keywords. It will do other EXIF data but not those.

1 Like
5

:slight_smile: I have my fingers crossed but . . . figured i would raise the question here incase someone else already had a solution. I also emailed the developers of Darkroom because it will display EXIF data but not allow you to edit it.

6

You could probable cook up something triggerable from the iOS share sheet with Hazel, a Mac and exiftool but I’d wait & see first.

7

According to its App Store description, EXIF Viewer ($2.99) can do this.

8

Just checked the EXIF apps I have. It looks like ViewExif can edit stars(!) and keywords, as well as description. ExifWizard doesn’t seem to be able to.

9

Looking promising:

10

I have installed both ViewExif and EXIF Viewer. They are both allowing me to change keywords that are syncing between iPhone and iPad. However, those keywords are not syncing to the Mac and Mac applied keywords don’t show up in those apps. That sort of make sense when the photos are “stacked” on the Mac; when the jpeg and Raw images are shown as a single image. But i also tried applying keywords for photos taken with the iPhone.