Photos App – Remove Specific Text from Multiple Descriptions

iphoto

I've recently upgraded to iPhoto '11 (couldn't resist the pricing on the new app store) and as I'm adding more meta-data to my library and generally organizing things (places, faces, etc… I hadn't upgraded since '08) I've noticed something odd in my photos. Every photo in my library has a description (though many are short), but it would appear that somehow the description of one of the photos has been appended to many.

I don't know if maybe I accidentally screwed up a batch change at some point in the past, or if the library upgrade somehow messed up, or what else may have happened. But what I need to do is fix these somehow.

Now, manually editing is something of a daunting task. Within a library of 21,248 photos, 18,858 of them have this additional text. The one thing I do have going for me is that it's a specific string. If there's a way to "remove this string from everywhere in the library without removing the rest of any given description" then that would be perfect.

Is there anything I can do like this? Maybe even manually editing a library file in a text editor? (Would that break anything else in iPhoto if its library was edited outside of the application, even while it's not running?) Does anybody have any ideas?

Best Answer

Consider using an AppleScript to perform this task. The following AppleScript will get you started:

tell application "iPhoto"

    repeat with i from 1 to number of items in photos

        set myPhoto to item i of photos

        set comment of myPhoto to replaceText("find this", "replace with this", comment of myPhoto)

    end repeat

end tell

-- replaceText from Bruce Phillips (http://brucep.net/2007/replace-text/)
on replaceText(find, replace, subject)
    set prevTIDs to text item delimiters of AppleScript
    set text item delimiters of AppleScript to find
    set subject to text items of subject

    set text item delimiters of AppleScript to replace
    set subject to "" & subject
    set text item delimiters of AppleScript to prevTIDs

    return subject
end replaceText

To use this AppleScript, copy and paste it into a new AppleScript Editor document.

In this situation, you want to find and remove a specific piece of text. Modify the above AppleScript as follows:

  1. Change the "find this" segment and enter the text to find.
  2. Change the "replace with this" segment to be blank, "".

With these changes in place, save the document, and click Run in the toolbar. Depending on the number of photos, this AppleScript will take a long time; potentially hours.

Related Question