Favorite / Hidden / Album metadata not applied during import?

[rwjack]

Hi, I'm trying to do some black magic... I absolutely hate Tahoe, so I created a new volume and reinstalled Sequoia. Moving back my picture library is the last bit of the rollback process. It's insane how well documented osxphotos is, but I'm still not sure if I'm doing something wrong. Any help would be appreciated.

I did the following on Tahoe (26.2):

osxphotos export img/ --skip-original-if-edited --ramdb --exiftool --touch-file

Then I did this on Sequoia (15.7.3):

osxphotos import img/

The image dates are perfect, but the images are missing favorites / hidden / album metadata. Maybe even person metadata, but I'm not sure if I care about that all that much.

So, I realized I don't really need --exiftool and --touch-file, because I don't care about the "temporary migration files" having the correct metadata, I just want the metadata to be correct within the photos app.

Reading some more through the docs, I deleted the entire Sequoia library, and tried again with:

osxphotos import img/ --exportdb img/.osxphotos_export.db

Hoping that would restore the favorites / hidden / album metadata - but I saw half way how images that should be in albums, were not, nor were there any favorite tags applied, so I stopped the import half way.

To note, I also checked that the album metadata is actually saved in the export db, and sure enough, the one image I inspected:

osxphotos exportdb .osxphotos_export.db --info ba4688e8-4ae0-4e03-8a2f-1bf239ead588.jpg

Shows correct album / favorite metadata.

Does anyone know what I'm missing?

[RhetTbull]

You'll need a few more options to recreate the library. Export then re-import is a use case I'm actively working on but it still isn't perfect. See this thread for a discussion of what others are doing. At a minimum, I suggest export with the following:

osxphotos export img/ --export-by-date --sidecar xmp --update --export-aae --verbose --keyword-template "{photo.hidden?hidden,}"

Then import with the following:

 osxphotos import img/* --walk --verbose --exportdb img/ --sidecar

Exporting the AAE files with --export-aae exports the edit information needed to re-create edited images.

Importing wiht --exportdb uses the export database created by osxphotos export to recreate the albums, folders, and metadata. The --sidecar is used to import the custom hidden keyword generated during export from the XMP sidecar.

The people / face regions in the photo cannot be recreated (this is a limitation of Photos). Additionally, hidden photos are not re-hidden. Favorite status, locations, albums, folders, keywords, captions, titles will all be re-created. Any hidden photos will get the keyword "hidden" applied. You can then use a Smart Album to find these and re-hide them following import.

Note that the import command uses Photos' AppleScript interface to interact with Photos. The AppleScript interface is buggy and there's nothing OSXPhotos can do to fix this. That means sometimes Photos hangs or crashes during import. OSXPhotos will try to re-start Photos. I will be releasing a new version in the next day or so that will include improved error handling for this so you might want to wait until version 0.75.0 is released this week to do the import.

[rwjack]

I have access to the files themselves, but I cannot open the library in the Photos app. Also, I would probably need to tell osxphotos which Photoslibrary to use, right?

Actually, I don't get how this is supposed to work? I go into /Volumes/Tahoe - Data/Users/agent/Pictures - and the Tahoe library is supposed to live there, but how do I point it back and say that it's actually the Sequoia library that should be updated?

[rwjack]

Happy New Year and happy holidays!

Should I try now with 0.75.1?

[RhetTbull]

Yes, give it a try with 0.75.1. I think this is fixed now.

[rwjack]

Just to confirm, I'm supposed to go through the full export / import process with the latest version?

osxphotos export img/ --export-by-date --sidecar xmp --update --export-aae --verbose --keyword-template "{photo.hidden?hidden,}"

osxphotos import img/* --walk --exportdb img/.osxphotos_export.db --sidecar --verbose --exportdir /Users/agent/Pictures/img

Oh, I just started the import and I got favorites right away! Waiting for it to finish so I can make a proper comparison against the original library.

Edit: Confirmed, this are the final commands that export and are able to import favorite / hidden / album metadata. (Hidden is not actually hidden but just adds a hidden keyword - searchable in photos)

[rwjack]

Okay, the results are in:

Original library:
7240 photos (not counting hidden ~100)
868 videos (not counting hidden ~40)

Imported library:
7140 photos - missing ~200
867 videos - missing ~40

Output results: Done: imported 7997 file groups, 241 errors - so the numbers "kind of" add up.

I'll mark this one as resolved then and make another discussion so we can stop cluttering the thread.