Adding captions/keywords to JPGs

[pdarrah]

I have 7 years of digital photos and am now starting a project to scan many of our family and geneaology photos.

I have been organizing my photos with folders - First level = Year, next level = Month, sub-folders as needed within months for events or whatever makes sense. This works fine for a general structure, but it doesn't help much when looking at an older photo and wondering who those people are or why Uncle Joe looks like that! Basically, I am looking for a way to add the type of info we used to write on the back of our prints. With the photos I am scanning, many of them do have writing on the back! Of course, I could scan both sides and try and keep those files together over the future years - but it seems to me it would make more sense to put this info into the actual JPG metadata. I'm thinking that the IPTC description/caption/keyword type stuff is probably my best bet.

The real problem is - what is the easiest way to add this info to thousands of photos? I use PaintShopPro and could do this from there - but my mom has volunteered to help with adding all this data and I don't want to buy another copy of PSP just for her to do this. It also seems a little clunky since this isn't PSP's main focus. I looked at Picasa and it seems that adding captions is fairly easy, but it is only 1 at a time so if there are a group of pictures we just want to label as "Grandma's 99th Birthday" she would have to type it each time (even cut/paste doesn't seem to work well!)

Does anyone else have any suggestions? She will not be editing the photos in any other way - just adding metadata. Idealy, it would have a decent user interface so teaching her to do this wouldn't be a big deal...

THanks for any help,

pdarrah

 

[MICKEY88]

I have 7 years of digital photos and am now starting a project to scan many of our family and geneaology photos.

I have been organizing my photos with folders - First level = Year, next level = Month, sub-folders as needed within months for events or whatever makes sense. This works fine for a general structure, but it doesn't help much when looking at an older photo and wondering who those people are or why Uncle Joe looks like that! Basically, I am looking for a way to add the type of info we used to write on the back of our prints. With the photos I am scanning, many of them do have writing on the back! Of course, I could scan both sides and try and keep those files together over the future years - but it seems to me it would make more sense to put this info into the actual JPG metadata. I'm thinking that the IPTC description/caption/keyword type stuff is probably my best bet.

The real problem is - what is the easiest way to add this info to thousands of photos? I use PaintShopPro and could do this from there - but my mom has volunteered to help with adding all this data and I don't want to buy another copy of PSP just for her to do this. It also seems a little clunky since this isn't PSP's main focus. I looked at Picasa and it seems that adding captions is fairly easy, but it is only 1 at a time so if there are a group of pictures we just want to label as "Grandma's 99th Birthday" she would have to type it each time (even cut/paste doesn't seem to work well!)

Does anyone else have any suggestions? She will not be editing the photos in any other way - just adding metadata. Idealy, it would have a decent user interface so teaching her to do this wouldn't be a big deal...

THanks for any help,

pdarrah

I would check with PSP to see if you can create an action, adding your info, then batch process your groups using that action..

another option would be to do a batch rename of photos within your subfolders such as gmas99bday for Grandma's 99th Birthday

 

[pdarrah]

I would check with PSP to see if you can create an action, adding your info, then batch process your groups using that action..

If I were doing these all myself, I would probably just do that - but that is getting way too complicated and technical for Mom! I need a way for her to view the photos (thumbnails most likely) and say "Oh yes, that is Aunt Sophy and Uncle Joe at Cousin Fred's anniversary party" and then add that info to the file. Also, I really don't want to buy another copy of PSP just for her to do this. I already own 3 copies (1 for my office PC and 2 for different home PC's so DH & I don't fight over it!) and really don't need another for Mom's PC.

another option would be to do a batch rename of photos within your subfolders such as gmas99bday for Grandma's 99th Birthday

That would work for now, but being into geneaology (and some of the photos are part of that work) I also want this information to stay with each photo even into the future. If I send an assortment of photos to another family member, I want all the info to stay with the photo. Early on, we tried using the filename for the geneaology photos where we listed everyone's name from left to right that was in the photo - this gets REALLY unwieldy for large group photos. It is also a pain when you have 27 photos of Grandpa and obviously just his name isn't going to work. You can do GrandpaA, GrandpaB, ... and so on but it is a major pain in the neck. For the big group photos, we currently have little text files with the same name as the photo (i.e. familyphoto.jpg, familyphoto.txt) with the extra information, but again, over time it would be very easy for those files to get separated. Just not a good solution - it would be much better to include it in the files metadata.

Thanks for the thoughts,

Pdarrah

 

[boBQuincy]

BreezeBrowser allows editing IPTC data and it's pretty easy: just right-click on the thumbnail, select "edit IPTC Data" and edit away.

The software is $50 (used to be less) and it is good for many other purposes as well as editing IPTC data.

breezesys.com

 

[MICKEY88]

If I were doing these all myself, I would probably just do that - but that is getting way too complicated and technical for Mom! I need a way for her to view the photos (thumbnails most likely) and say "Oh yes, that is Aunt Sophy and Uncle Joe at Cousin Fred's anniversary party" and then add that info to the file. Also, I really don't want to buy another copy of PSP just for her to do this. I already own 3 copies (1 for my office PC and 2 for different home PC's so DH & I don't fight over it!) and really don't need another for Mom's PC.



That would work for now, but being into geneaology (and some of the photos are part of that work) I also want this information to stay with each photo even into the future. If I send an assortment of photos to another family member, I want all the info to stay with the photo. Early on, we tried using the filename for the geneaology photos where we listed everyone's name from left to right that was in the photo - this gets REALLY unwieldy for large group photos. It is also a pain when you have 27 photos of Grandpa and obviously just his name isn't going to work. You can do GrandpaA, GrandpaB, ... and so on but it is a major pain in the neck. For the big group photos, we currently have little text files with the same name as the photo (i.e. familyphoto.jpg, familyphoto.txt) with the extra information, but again, over time it would be very easy for those files to get separated. Just not a good solution - it would be much better to include it in the files metadata.

Thanks for the thoughts,

Pdarrah

since you are doing text files,,, why not print them out on avery shipping labels and stick them on the back of the photo

 

[pdarrah]

since you are doing text files,,, why not print them out on avery shipping labels and stick them on the back of the photo

I'm not printing out the photos - if I were, we could just write on the back like in the "old days". The idea is to get them all digital and still have the info with the file. I have been googling and there seem to be some other programs out there that can edit the IPTC/EXIF metadata. Microsoft's PhotoInfo looks promising. There is also ACDSEE, Exifer, and some others.

I don't really rellish downloading a lot of demos and trying each. Maybe someone who has used one or more of these types of programs will come across this thread ....

pdarrah

 

[Groucho]

Unfortunately, as far as I've found, there is simply no really good free option for keywording your photos.

The best free solution, IMHO, is Irfanview (see link in my signature - no relation, just a happy user), its Thumbnail view makes it pretty easy to add a bunch of keywords at once. (Right-click, JPG Lossless Operations, Set IPTC Data to Selected Photos.) However, it doesn't work so well for layering them, ie, marking a bunch as "family", then some with "dad", and some with "mom", etc. For that, Adobe Lightroom works extremely well, but it fairly expensive, and has a learning curve (though not nearly as bad as Photoshop.)

When grabbing Irfanview, make sure to also grab the plug-ins, these are necessary for editing exif/IPTC data.

 

[pdarrah]

I would like to thank everyone for their responses. I am still looking around. I'm looking at IrfanView, Microsoft's PhotoInfo and IDImager Free. I'll probably have to try using each to see what works best. If anyone else has any experience with this stuff, I'd love to hear about it.

Pdarrah

 

[Dcanoli]

I would like to give an additional "shout-out " to Irfanview. I've had this program for years, and I really like it a lot.

I recently stumbled across some digital photos I printed out for my 7YO and a school project he had. They had captions across the bottom, and I was wondering how I had done that--it was Irfanview.

It's an easy program to manipulate.

Good luck!