Photos exports people's first names only

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Photos exports people's first names only

If I export (as JPEG) from Photos, it correctly adds most of the photo's metadata as EXIF, which is contained in the JPEG file (you can see this using "exiftool" a great command-line debugger for metadata). The people identified in the Photo (whether they've been tagged automatically or by Photos's facial recognition algorithm) are export in the "Person In Image" EXIF tag. So far, so good.

HOWEVER, Photos only exports the FIRST name of the people in a photo. This is not useful if, for example, you know more than one person named "Bob." In my case I have photos of 15 people with that name. Even if I manually tag the photo with the full name of the person, only the first name is exported.

Is there a secret setting or preference somewhere that will correct this halfhearted behavior?

Thanks for any help!

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 15.7

Posted on Nov 9, 2025 9:05 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 10, 2025 7:27 AM in response to Chuck Weger

For me, I get in Exif:

Person In Image: Orville S...ge, Altha J.

In IPTC I get the same

These are names I have entered in the People Album. Altha was married to Orville, so I don't use her last name in her People Album, but I do use his last name. I'm not sure that I would expect something different in the metadata.

By the way, the caption

has both their full names, birth and death dates, and their relationship to my family. Most of us don't rely on the automatic face IDs -- the caption is the most stable place for this stuff

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