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moontear
moontear
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Book module: Auto layout, add photo captions automatically from images?

Jan 9, 2012 11:39 PM

Tags: #lightroom #captions #lightroom_bookmodule

Am I misinterpeting the "Add photo captions" checkbox in the Auto layout preset editor? It seems like no caption text is added, just a blank caption box.

 

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to select "automatically add caption from <...> (EXIF metadata, any field)"? So I could automatically add all my images and their respective titles or locations instead of blank boxes.

1422 Views   17 Replies   Latest reply: +becs, May 31, 2012 12:02 PM
 
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  • Seán McCormack
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    1. Seán McCormack,
    Jan 9, 2012 11:43 PM   in reply to moontear
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    Surely you mean IPTC, only mechanical info in EXIF normally?

     

    1) Are there captions in the photo already

     

    2) Does the page template have text?

     
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  • moontear
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    2. moontear,
    Jan 9, 2012 11:55 PM   in reply to Seán McCormack
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    I meant IPTC.

     

    1) The images are pretty "complete" metadata wise. They have titles, captions, GPS information, location names, keywords, author information, copyright... -> would be great if I could choose WHAT will get written to the caption. And no, the "IPTC:Caption" does not get written to the caption in a book.

    2) Page template? You mean Page layout? Yes it does have text and the captions themselves (the textboxes) are added, only the content in the boxes is missing.

     
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  • Victoria Bampton
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    3. Victoria Bampton,
    Jan 10, 2012 12:01 AM   in reply to moontear
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    Check Book menu > Book Preferences > Fill Text Boxes with - I can't remember what the default is.

     
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  • Ian Lyons
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    4. Ian Lyons,
    Jan 10, 2012 12:34 AM   in reply to Victoria Bampton
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    Victoria,

     

    Unfortunately, the default is blank. The user needs to choose frrom the available options. I suspect this is a bug.

     
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  • Victoria Bampton
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    5. Victoria Bampton,
    Jan 10, 2012 12:42 AM   in reply to Ian Lyons
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    Have you bugged it already?

     
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  • max.wendt
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    6. max.wendt,
    Jan 10, 2012 8:42 AM   in reply to Ian Lyons
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    It will only be blank if you have stale prefs. Toss them and you'll see that the current default is "Title metadata."

     
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  • max.wendt
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    7. max.wendt,
    Jan 10, 2012 8:45 AM   in reply to moontear
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    You can set the default caption value in the Book Preferences (Book > Book Preferences...).

     

    The default should be set to use the contents of the IPTC title field.

     
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  • Victoria Bampton
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    8. Victoria Bampton,
    Jan 10, 2012 10:59 AM   in reply to max.wendt
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    Thanks Max!

     
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  • max.wendt
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    9. max.wendt,
    Jan 10, 2012 11:18 AM   in reply to Victoria Bampton
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    No problem - glad you figured out it was me, despite my goofy username. We're working on sorting this out...

     
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  • Victoria Bampton
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    10. Victoria Bampton,
    Jan 10, 2012 11:42 AM   in reply to max.wendt
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    Only an engineer calls them 'stale prefs'

     
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  • Joe Hoddinott
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    11. Joe Hoddinott,
    Jan 10, 2012 1:18 PM   in reply to moontear
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    Going back to part of the original question - Can one use auto caption to drop in something simple like the filename or EXIF (exposure) data?  That would be very useful.

     

    PS - Hi Vic!

     
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  • Victoria Bampton
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    12. Victoria Bampton,
    Jan 11, 2012 5:58 AM   in reply to Joe Hoddinott
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    Hey Joe!

     

    No, not at the moment. It's Title or Caption.  It would be useful to know which other data you'd be inclined to include a book - I was thinking Filename, Capture Time, possibly keywords as a starting point for custom text.  Anything else?

     
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  • Joe Hoddinott
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    13. Joe Hoddinott,
    Jan 11, 2012 6:39 AM   in reply to Victoria Bampton
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    The most useful ones at the moment for myself would be filename, comments and naturally keywords.  I'm thinking proof-books here and filename would be critical for that.  My 9-5 job uses the comments field to store scanned barcode data which if we could extract and caption onto PDF pages would be of several uses to us.

     

    But I would think any field or better yet, any combination of fields should be able to be pulled from both the EXIF and IPTC data and auto captioned.

     

    Is telling you enough to pass it along to the powers that be or should I use another channel for such a request?  Thanks for your help Vic.

     
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  • Victoria Bampton
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    14. Victoria Bampton,
    Jan 11, 2012 7:30 AM   in reply to Joe Hoddinott
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    Here's good Joe, thanks.

     
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  • moontear
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    15. moontear,
    Jan 11, 2012 11:08 AM   in reply to Victoria Bampton
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    Hopping on the Joe bandwagon and also returning to my original question: this would be perfect: add caption from <...> (IPTC metadata, any field).

     

    Especially interesting are the fields Joe named, but also Location! I'm a heavy geotagger and the "best" first caption for the image is always the location "Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, USA". After I have these captions I can always make the more fitting/better e.g. "My first kiss" or something like that. The title and caption fields are correct as far as IPTC goes, but personally I rarely use them - only for fine art prints, there I actually I have a "title".

     

    So if I had one free wish: Any IPTC field. Otherwise location would be great.

     
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  • Victoria Bampton
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    16. Victoria Bampton,
    Jan 11, 2012 11:14 AM   in reply to moontear
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    As a possible workaround, John Beardsworth's Search Replace Transfer plug-in http://photographers-toolbox.com/products/jbeardsworth/findreplace/ would allow you to transfer that data to the Title or Caption field.  I'm not 100% sure about it's beta compatibility, but it's sure to be updated for the final release if it's not working right now.

     
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  • +becs
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    17. +becs,
    May 31, 2012 12:02 PM   in reply to Joe Hoddinott
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    In the Lightroom 4.1 release, available now, Filename has been added to the list of fields you can use for Book text.  To get Lightroom 4.1, go to the Help menu in Lightroom and select Check for Updates, then follow the prompts.  Or, you can download Lightroom 4.1 from adobe.com.

     
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