Importing Spotlight Comments

Hi Everyone,
I have around 700 historic photos that have been digitized. All the photo details (dates, etc.) were entered into the Spotlight Comments field under Get Info. Unfortunately, none of the comments appear when I open the photos in Adobe Bridge CS4. I will now start using Bridge to add the metadata tags. However, is there an easy solution (perhaps an Automator script) to export the Spotlight Comments and use them in Bridge? I really don't want to retype the information, and I would be extremely grateful for any advice.
Thank you,
Brian

You most probably require the help of script to do this. Better to ask your Question in that forum. Your Spotlight Comments belong to Finder both AppleScript & Shell can get access to these not too sure about JavaScript. JavaScript would be required to add this info to the correct files.

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How to Import Spotlight Comments into iPhoto

Is there a way to import Spotlight Comments into iPhoto at the same time I bring in the image?

Afraid not. You will need something to convert those comments into standard photo metadata like Exif or IPTC.
Regards
TD

Import spotlight comments?

Is there a way to import spotlight comments along with the photo into iPhoto? And vice-versa, is there a way to export the photo description into spotlight comments?
I'm guessing no. I don't see a anything in preferences or the import/export command, but I thought I would ask to be sure!
Thanks,
Karen

Karen
Is there a way to import spotlight comments along with the photo into iPhoto?
No, unless you can find a way to write that to the Exif data.
And vice-versa, is there a way to export the photo description into spotlight comments?
No, you can only use the Title and Keywords.
However this app
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~erick205/Projects/Metadata%20Export/
may be useful to get the info out and you can copy and paste.
Regards
TD

Import Spotlight comments into Bridge CS3?

Has anyone figured out a way to do this yet?
Thx

Has anyone figured out a way to do this yet?
This sounds like a request after an earlier post but I don't know what you
exactly want or to what post you are referring to. As I rarely use Spotlight
I saw an option to place a comment but never used it in my workflow nor have
I heard anyone else about it.
Bridge uses metadata according to IPTC, if you need to copy text to those
fields you might try the scripting forum elsewhere on this site.
Maybe you can specify a bit more what you want to do and what your goal is.
Meanwhile you could already start to use a workflow with adding text to the
metadata fields in Bridge itself. You can select multiple files that need
same info and you only have to fill in once for those selected files to fill
them all in one go.
BTW, the current version is CS5 and needless to say you are a little behind
with upgrading, especially Bridge CS3 was not the best version. CS6 will be
your last chance to an upgrade after this you will have to get a complete
new version.

Spotlight/Finder only searching "new" spotlight comments not old ones

I have a bunch of files on my external hard drive that I had taken several hours to "tag" with spotlight comments a few months back. I tagged them so I could quickly find them in Finder or Spotlight by different key words and not just file names or their contents (folders wouldn't work because the keywords overlapped many of the files. Plus folders are slow). It worked beautifully. Until I stopped adding tags for those 4 months until now.
I hadn't been using my comments at all in the past couple of months, but i had some files that I hadn't tagged so I decided to take the time to tag all the new ones. While testing to see if the comments worked, I noticed an extreme shortage of results, compared to the results i had for the same key words 4 months ago. I noticed that only the newly tagged files were showing up. I immediately checked the old files to see if the comments were still there and there they were. I restarted my MacBook Pro, thinking that maybe it was because I hadn't done so in the past few days. I noticed the little dot in the lens of they eyeglass and thought "oh boy! it'll reindex everything!" but it only indexed "new" files of course.
So my question is: "*How did this happen?*" But more importantly: "*+How can I fix it?+*"
I've thought that forcing spotlight to reindex my entire external hard drive would do the trick, but I cannot find any means to achieve that goal. Plus, I would rather just be able to index the files within one folder as I wouldn't have to wait an entire day of sluggish performance for that. Any ideas?

Let me start with the "easy" question first: the .DS_Store files are where "Finder information" is stored. Windows users find these things a pain in neck, and usually insist they be deleted. Most of time this isn't a problem, the Mac users just get annoyed when their folder doesn't open the way it was when last closed--the principle information stored there is the view the folder was told to keep, the size of the icons and their arrangement, and so on. Every time you open a folder a .DS_Store file created if one does not already exist, and if one does the file will be updated if you change your settings for the folder, for instance switch it to List view, tell it to always open in List view, with columns for Date Modified, Size, but not Kind or Date Created. And it also keeps the information entered in Spotlight Comments. Just how Finder preserves this information if a file is moved, in Mac OS, to another folder, I don't know. But it does.
What we REALLY need is a nice little program to write to the metadata of the file. For instance, Spotlight will index keywords, which are stored in the file itself, as part of the file's metadata. I mainly work with graphics, and Photoshop allows you to add keywords to the file's metadata. Apple's iPhoto and Aperture will also add keywords, but they are not written to a file's metadata until you export them. PDFs can also have keywords assigned, you can even do it with Preview. Text documents can also have keywords added using some (most?) text editors, including TextEdit (provided the file is in RTF format). The nice thing about keyword metadata is that it goes with the file, and be accessed in any OS that allows a metadata search.
Unfortunately I don't know of any program that would allow you to select a batch of miscellaneous files and add the same keyword to all of them. It would certainly be handy though.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Batch Renaming loses Spotlight Comments, Os X to blame?

I posted this over at the Adobe forum for Bridge, however, I'm going to post it here too because part of me feels like this issue I'm experiencing is tied to a recent Os update: from Leopard to Snow Leopard.
I'm a photo editor for a wedding photographer and have been implementing some of my own personal workflows into his pipeline. I tend NOT to rename camera-generated files, at all, unless there's an important reason to do so. Sorting an entire wedding by "Date" works perfectly for building the proper timeline for a shoot. So camera-generated file names are perfectly okay for our needs.
When an edit is complete I'll generate JPEGs from Aperture. The resulting files will continue to carry the original RAW files names, unless there is a duplicate file name, then Aperture will add a number: "(1)" to the file, if necessary. Typically, after export, I run an Automator action that stores the file name in the Spotlight Comments. Because prior to shipping and archiving, I AM going to rename the final JPEGs sequentially: 0001_wedding, 0002_wedding, etc.
The beauty was that with the original name stored in the Spotlight comments for the JPEG, I would easily look at 0148_wedding.jpg, see that it's spotlight comments said, "Original Name: IMG_3471" and obviously know exactly what RAW image this new JPEG started as. Worked perfectly.
So process was: Export, Store Original Name in Spotlight Comments of JPEGs, Batch Rename (sequentially) based on date modified in Bridge CS4.
Well now everthing's changed. We had a system drive go down. We were running 10.5.8. When the system came back from the shop, with a new drive installed, it was/is running Snow Leopard. 10.6.3? I think. Snow Leopard, no doubt.
And now my prior workflow has been wrecked because the act of renaming, in Bridge CS4, erases all those handy Spotlight comments. However, part of me is wondering though if this issue is rooted more deeply, at the OS level? Because R-Name (Batch renaming utility) is now eradicating Spotlight comments as is an Automator action built for the same purposes. This all used to work perfectly. And the one major change that has occurred was this "upgrade" from Leopard to Snow Leopard.
So, question is: is there something I can alter in Bridge Preferences to maintain my Spotlight Comments, when batch renaming? Is this all tied to the Snow Leopard? Is there ANY renaming utility that's not going to fall victim to whatever the hang up here is?? How can I batch rename and not destroy my lovely Spotlight Comments in the process?
Thanks for your time!!

Yes, this works. However, this was already part of my workflow.... and not where the trouble lies.
After exporting jpeg images from Aperture, they carry the same name of the original RAW files, from which they came. (So, IMG_8342.jpg would have started it's life as IMG_8342.CR2.) But we dont' send them out like that. We sequentially name them 0001_image.jpg, 0002_image.jpg, etc... So after renaming, how do you find the original file again, right?
BEFORE the renaming phase, I would run the "Store Original Names in Spotlight Comments" action. That way, I could look at the comments for a derivative .jpg—whose name has now changed—and determine the name of the ORIGINAL file.
After renaming, the derivative file might end up being named 0361_image.jpg, but it's Spotlight comments would say, for example, Original Name:<<IMG_8485.jpg>>. Then I would know that this particular file started off as IMG_8485.CR2.
As such, I could quickly/easily backtrack, knowing that the original RAW file was named IMG_8485.CR2
The issue is that once you've gone thru the effort to ADD these spotlight comments, if you THEN go through a re-naming step, this erases all those Spotlight Comments. That was my problem... Getting the Spotlight Comments in place was never the issue. KEEPING them there was the problem.

Transferring spotlight comments to iPhoto

I've got several hundered scanned photos on a hard drive with spotlight comments attached.
Is there any way to transfer those spotlight comments into iPhoto's comment field when I import the files into iPhoto, or will I have to type them all in manually?
If there isn't a way to do it through iPhoto, it seems like the kind of task that an Automator script could be written to handle, but I'm not very familiar with that.

Chip:
Unless you can find an Applescript that will do the job you'll probably have to enter them manually. Automator does not have any actions that I could find that could do the job. But then, I'm not overly proficient with Automator.
You might ask in the Applescript forum.
Do you Twango?

Spotlight comments and zip archives

There have been a few posts in this forum that point out the difficulties of using Spotlight with zip files but it is only now that I have discovered (the hard way) that zipping files into an archive actually removes (or loses) my Spotlight comments.
The Spotlight comments I lost were all on jpg and gif files. Should I therefore be considering storing metadata actually within each graphic file rather than using Spotlight?

The so-called "Spotlight Comments" in the GetInfo window are just the old Finder Comments, and are actually stored in the .DS_Store file of the folder containing the files. If you zip the folder with the files in it the comments will be preserved. However, it is just too easy to forget about this. You really want all your important metadata as part of the file itself, so if you have a graphics program that will add metadata information to the files that would be the best way to go.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Listing all the Spotlight comments

There was a wonderful widget called Tagbag! (http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/business/tagbag.html) that listed all the words inside the "Spotlight comments" field, but it doesn't works anymore in Leopard. Also, the developer doesn't updates it for 3 year now, and I doubt he will. I tried Tagbot, but the "import tags" kills the app in Leopard.
So, is there any other way to create a list of tags from the "Spotlight comments" field that exists in all my files?

You should never make use of sun.* packages directly, see:
http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/faq/faq-sun-packages.html
To get a list (NLST command) then open a URL connection to ftp://user:[email protected]/dir/motd;type=d as per section 3.2.2 of RFC 1738. Alternatively use a third-party ftp client (there are many).

Support for Spotlight Comments Yet?

One of the glaring problems with iPhoto is its lack of support for Spotlight. I took 2 months to meticulously add Spotlight comments to all of my archived photos, only to find that when I import them into iPhoto, I can no longer search by metadata. How idiotic was that? Not even a utility to import them! Did they finally fix this in iPhoto 6?

Nope, just tried this and the Spotlight Comments are lost: Not attached to the copy that's made in the iPhoto Library, and not imported into any field in the photo's metadata.
Spotlight Comments seems a bit of a last minute good idea that never took off to me. I wonder if it will be exploited in future releases or if it will quietly get stuck as borderline useful as it is now. I agree: Apple added this field to Get Info; you'd think they'd make use of the **** thing in their software!

Spotlight Comments not found

I added "backup" as a Spotlight Comment to a variety of files and folders using an automator action. When I search using the query Spotlight Comment contains "backup" only a few of my files and folders with that comment are found. I have tried re-indexing but still Spotlight misses some files and folders. Spotlight in Tiger would find all of them. I believe in Leopard Spotlight Comments are now written in extended attributes. Can someone please try adding a Spotlight Comment to some files/folders and see if they are all found in a spotlight search. Thanks.

biovizier wrote:
..."I will say that Leopard seems a lot better at keeping track of comments than Tiger was but it probably wouldn't hurt to be mindful of how files are transferred to make sure the .DS_Store file goes with it. I personally would not rely on "Comments" for anything important.
Hmmm. It says in Leopard Help: +To make items easier to find when you search for them, you can use the Spotlight Comments field in the Get Info dialog. For example, use the field to mark all the files for a project with the project name or tag all your urgent files with the word “urgent".+
So, Apple are saying that it certainly should work - it is called 'Spotlight Comments' after all! What I've found though is that it's unreliable. I'm trying to reorganise all my filing around metadata - having just a few 'physical' folders and using a metadata+ Smart Folder combination to do the rest. To do this requires using the Spotlight Comments field (which can be accessed via a Finder search by using 'Other ...' from the Finder's searching popup menu. So, I having been using my own 'keywords' in the Comments field, but the problem is that sometimes Spotlight finds them and sometimes not. I can have the keyword in 6 files and spotlight will find 4 of them, sometimes all of them. I've re-edited and rearranged but cannot get consistent results.
Has anyone had a similar experience and found any pattern to what works and what doesn't?

Find files that has no Spotlight Comments!

Hi,
Is there a way to create a Smart Folder to collect all the files that have no Spotlight Comments attached to them?
Do Comments get copied when backing up to an external device? If not, is there a best practice?
Regards,
Nawaf
MacBook 13" 2Ghz 2GB Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Thanks Steve
This is the disadvantage of storing your files as referenced. Importing all referenced files is not the best solution for me, since I have a lot (100.000+) files.
However, I just realized that you have to open all stacks in order to have Aperture show the right number of photos in the database. I found that I only missed 3 files and I did find them.
Problem solved. Advise to others: be very structured when you store your files as referenced files.
In future releases of Aperture there could be a function that would allow you to import files from folders that are not already inported.
Aperture rocks.... sorting and filtering is great. Metadata management is sweet and makes things so much more easy.
Karsten

Will iCloud Drive support Spotlight comments? If so, will they be accessible and capable of being edited on an iPhone or iPad?

I like to remind myself of next actions for my files and folders on my Mac by using the Spotlight comments in OS X. I noticed iCloud Drive is going to support "Tags" in OS X Yosemite.
Question: Will iCloud Drive support Spotlight comments (in addition to Tags)? And, if so, will I be able to access and manipulate those Spotlight comments on my iPhone or iPad?

If you really want to import as a WAV file, go to Edit > Preferences > General > Import Settings, and set "Import Using" to "WAV Encoder," as shown below. Then rip the CD.

Convert Windows Properties Comments to Spotlight Comments

I have some JPG photo files that I'm importing from a Windows box. On that Windows box, I had entered information about each photo in the "comments" metadata for the file. (In Windows, right-click file --> Properties --> Summary Tab --> Comments field).
I would like to be able to access those comments from the Mac. Ideally, I'd like to have them appear in the "Spotlight Comments" under Get Info for each file, but I realize this might require some crunching. At minimum, I'd like to have a way to at least see those comments on the Mac. Currently, I've not been able to find a way to do so. EG, in iPhoto, you can see a bunch of other metadata, such as when the photo was taken, but not those Windows-specific comments.
Any hints?
Thanks.
Mac Mini Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Before you can convert you must be able to play (no issues) in QuickTime Player.
If it doesn't play you're probably missing the codecs.

Spotlight comment via command line?

Hi all
Anyone knows whether it is possible to add a spotlight comment to a file/folder with a shell command? And if it is, what this command is? I tried GetFileInfo to at least read a spotlight comment, but it didn't show it.
Tina

"Finder" comments aren't very reliable so it probably is best to avoid them for anything important if possible. They aren't actually a part of the file, and in the case of "OS X", they are stored in the ".DS_Store" files of the folder in which the file resides. The ".DS_Store" files aren't always updated in a timely manner and if anything disrupts the association between the file and the ".DS_Store" file containing that file's comments, the comment may be lost. For example, most command line methods of copying or moving files will not transfer the "comment" unless the whole folder is processed together. There is even some ambiguity, where moving a file with 'mv' updates the Spotlight database so that it appears as if the comment moved along with the file, when in fact it hasn't.
Anyway, regarding the original question, the only way I know of to add a comment via the command line is indirectly - i.e. using 'osascript' to get AppleScript to tell the "Finder" to do it. This obviously isn't ideal since a user with sufficient privileges to modify the ".DS_Store" file associated with the item has to be logged in and the "Finder" has to be running. eg.<pre>
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to set comment of (choose file) to "blah"'</pre>

Importing Spotlight Comments

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