Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

jocker · Apr 20, 2005, 01:37 PM

This isn't a support thread, just an observation.

Spotlight, obviously, has its own database for all its searching.

iPhoto has a separate one.

iTunes has a separate one.

This means that doing a Spotlight search for, perhaps, a keyword assigned in iPhoto to one of your images, will return no results.

Do you think Apple will improve integration, perhaps in an update to the iApps which manage music/photos. I certainly hope so, this is very frustrating for me (I have a lot of photos which I lovingly tagged with keywords).

Its been like this all the way through the betas right up until 8a425. OK I'm not running GM, but then no-one is (unless they've pirated it). I can't imagine it is 'fixed' in 8a428 because its not a bug, but something that needs to be addressed in future. So please, no-one flame me for saying that a feature doesn't work in a beta.

jocker · Apr 20, 2005, 01:39 PM

In fact it would be such a simple update... any keywords just add them to the 'spotlight comments'. Or create a new iPhoto file type which extends images, and add keywords to the metadata.

How would YOU do it?

leperkuhn · Apr 20, 2005, 01:43 PM

i would assume next version of ilife is fully integrated with spotlight. why wouldn't it be? every program that uses "smart folders" like Mail and font book uses spotlight, i believe.

Superchicken · Apr 20, 2005, 01:48 PM

Wow... that sounds really stupid... I'm surprised they wouldn't be allowing you to search all that stuff by default... seems silly to me. I imagine the iLife apps are gona be updated after the GM is released.

jocker · Apr 20, 2005, 01:49 PM

Originally Posted by leperkuhn

i would assume next version of ilife is fully integrated with spotlight. why wouldn't it be? every program that uses "smart folders" like Mail and font book uses spotlight, i believe.

Thats a long time to have to wait dude

jocker · Apr 20, 2005, 01:52 PM

Originally Posted by Superchicken

Wow... that sounds really stupid... I'm surprised they wouldn't be allowing you to search all that stuff by default... seems silly to me. I imagine the iLife apps are gona be updated after the GM is released.

You can see why though... either they do a 'hack' (search in the iphoto and itunes db by default) or they do it elegantly, using the proper spotlight database, with an update to the app after the GM. I imagine iPhoto 5.1 will require tiger and will go through and add the metadata to the files (at the moment, all the 'metadata' is stored in its own db, as discussed).

Millennium · Apr 20, 2005, 02:09 PM

There is no problem, nor is this inelegant.

All that a Spotlight plugin does is take in the URL of a file to be examined and then return information about the file. Although this information is usually found in the file, it need not be. iTunes, for example, looks in the file but also in its own database. The same is true of iPhoto. In fact, other apps which use databases could do the same thing. Why is this inelegant?

wobblez · Apr 20, 2005, 02:22 PM

I have iPhoto 5.0.2 working just fine with Spotlight.

bewebste · Apr 20, 2005, 02:43 PM

Spotlight has a plug-in architecture that allows writing separate importers to import data from applications, so I'm guessing they'll just write an importer that can pull the relevant data from iPhoto's database files and that will take care of it.

In fact, I just updated to iPhoto 5.0.2 and notice that there's a new file called "iPhoto.ipspot" in the iPhoto Library folder. I bet iPhoto writes out metadata information to that file which can then be indexed by Spotlight.

moodymonster · Apr 20, 2005, 02:48 PM

I would imagine like Motion and Safari 1.3, we're already using elements of Tiger, and that Spotlight's integration into those Apps is probably lying dormant in them even under Panther.

Catfish_Man · Apr 20, 2005, 04:15 PM

Originally Posted by leperkuhn

i would assume next version of ilife is fully integrated with spotlight. why wouldn't it be? every program that uses "smart folders" like Mail and font book uses spotlight, i believe.

Actually smart folders doesn't have to have anything to do with spotlight (see iTunes, which had them before it). Spotlight searches files. That's ALL it does. That said, spotlight may be used to do the searching for smart folders in some apps. Searchkit, which is somewhat related (and available in 10.3), may also be used.

Chuckit · Apr 20, 2005, 04:29 PM

Since 1.3 doesn't exist for Tiger, I seriously doubt there's some kind of magical Spotlight integration lying dormant.

adam1185 · Apr 20, 2005, 04:35 PM

Hmm..well from what I've seen, spotlight only finds newly added keywords to photos in iphoto. There must be a way of rebuilding the library or something so that all previous keywords are added to the metadata.

Chuckit · Apr 20, 2005, 04:57 PM

Since iPhoto is AppleScriptable, I'd imagine you could just write a script to rebuild the keywords.

adam1185 · Apr 20, 2005, 05:02 PM

Ok...I've figured out how to trick iphoto to add all its keywords to the meta data. I just created a dummy keyword ( i used hte number 1 ) and added it to every photo in my library. By doing this, iphoto also added every keyword I had assigned to photos to the metadata as well, so now it searched perfectly!...if I had Tiger that is...

jocker · Apr 20, 2005, 05:19 PM

yep sorry everyone :-(

iphoto 5.0.2 works great with spotlight.

romeosc · Apr 20, 2005, 05:48 PM

Search is "System wide" per demo at our local Mac Users group last night by Apple Rep. His demo was very impressive! Searching seemed seamless and

moodymonster · Apr 20, 2005, 06:33 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Since 1.3 doesn't exist for Tiger, I seriously doubt there's some kind of magical Spotlight integration lying dormant.

I didn't make my point clear.

Motion is using tech from Core Image/Video and Safari 1.3 (Panther) is using tech from Safari 2 (Tiger).

Therefore it would appear that Apple has back ported techs developed for Tiger onto Panther. I'm not saying there's Spotlight in Safari (Panther), but that Apple have taken tech from Tiger development and put it into Panther.

It would be feasible to suggest that Apple's iApps developed alongside Tiger and released after Apple demo'd Spotlight to the world would work with Spotlight. While installed under Panther, Spotlight would be in the App but unused, but under Tiger it would come alive.

MaxPower2k3 · Apr 20, 2005, 06:43 PM

Motion 2 requires Tiger, so it's not exactly bringing Tiger tech back to Panther.

jocker · Apr 22, 2005, 04:12 PM

Originally Posted by MaxPower2k3

Motion 2 requires Tiger, so it's not exactly bringing Tiger tech back to Panther.

He said Motion, not Motion 2 you muppet.

MaxPower2k3 · Apr 22, 2005, 05:53 PM

muppet?

i'm not sure if that was supposed to be insulting or not, but it was unnecessary nonetheless.

karbon · Apr 22, 2005, 08:53 PM

Originally Posted by jocker

This means that doing a Spotlight search for, perhaps, a keyword assigned in iPhoto to one of your images, will return no results.

It works here. When searching for the Keyword in Spotlight the images from iPhoto actually appear. I haven't done anything special here, it just works....

PurpleGiant · Apr 22, 2005, 10:39 PM

Originally Posted by MaxPower2k3

muppet?

i'm not sure if that was supposed to be insulting or not, but it was unnecessary nonetheless.

muppet = friendly jest, no need to take personally

MARINEOSX · Apr 22, 2005, 11:07 PM

Muppet.....LMAO hahahahaha that is great. In the keynote when jobs was demoing spot light it worked fine with iPhoto and Mail and all the other apps too.