Author Topic: Can TP8 write iptc captions to a border under every photo?  (Read 15559 times)

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diana

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I have thousands of scanned photos of varying size that have iptc captions inside the file. Now, most people in my family can't see iptc data in a file unless I put a text caption on a border under the image - which works on computers and for those without them via a tv or dvd player slide show.

I need to batch write iptc captions to every photo at the bottom of the picture.  Images vary in size but I usually add a 600 pixel white border below every image as it is large enough to contain my largest captions, then placing the top of my left aligned text at x=0, y=-590 (y must be negative to measure from the bottom up) so it fits nicely 10 pixels under the image. Software that can place the text just where I want it on any size image as above, can't word wrap, arg!  I crop excess border in batch mode with Irfanview since it can figure out what is all white and crop the edges to that. I have TP7 Pro and can't find a way to do this.

Another feature I'd like to see is to be able to calculate the font size based on the image size as in >=300 and <=500 size 16 in Times New Roman, >=501 and <=700 size 18 in a batch processed environment. A select case type code in a script perhaps. I'm not great with scripting with just a little Basic and Visual Basic from the old days badly remembered, but if all I needed to do was configure where on the images to place text (x=10 pixels and y=image.height-590 pixels) and determine font size as above - and I'm given enough tools to do just that in the scripting language, I guess I could do that. Hopefully scripts can be called in batch mode.

I've tried multiple apps but not found a one to do this iptc text captioning job on images of varying sizes the way I need it to be done via program options or scripting. I use Irfanview to do all this in batch mode after resizing all the images to the same 700 pixel height and setting x=10, y=710 for the text which places the text in the proper place in 700 pixel high images only.  That's ok for view images on a small monitor or old tvs like we have (no HD, 19" tube sets) but not a big hdtv or huge monitor.

Daan van Rooijen

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Can TP8 write iptc captions to a border under every photo?
« Reply #1 on: 2011-09-10 13:34:01 »
> I need to batch write iptc captions to every photo at the bottom of the picture.  Images vary in size but I usually add a 600 pixel white border below every image as it is large enough to contain my largest captions, then placing the top of my left aligned text at x=0, y=-590 (y must be negative to measure from the bottom up) so it fits nicely 10 pixels under the image. Software that can place the text just where I want it on any size image as above, can't word wrap, arg!  I crop excess border in batch mode with Irfanview since it can figure out what is all white and crop the edges to that. I have TP7 Pro and can't find a way to do this.

TP7 has the necessary functions but if they will all work the way you want, I don't know. The devil is usually in the details..

In steps..:
    [*]Resize images
    [*]Use Transform | Crop/Add Border to add a border (use To a certain pixel size, or By a negative number of pixels)
    [*]Use Image | Stamp to stamp the desired IPTC field in the border (click the small button to the right of Text to get to the IPTC fields). Fiddle with the positioning and sizing options to (hopefully) get the desired result. I doubt if text will be wrapped - didn't try..
    [/list]

    You can do all this from batch commands too.
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    diana

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    Can TP8 write iptc captions to a border under every photo?
    « Reply #2 on: 2011-09-10 14:32:21 »
    Thanks for your reply!  I tried all those items as listed but that stamp feature I can't get to work for me. I can't get it to wrap text which makes it pointless to continue on trying to figure it out but I've tried nevertheless. I've dabbled with the stamp feature before finding it not very intuitive so maybe it's user error.

    Placing text using a value from the top of the image can't be used in batch mode as few images are the same height (and I want them that way) and all need to be captioned under the image within the border area. I must place the top of the text 590 pixels up from the bottom of the image and 10 pixels from the left side and there's no way to set that in the stamp dialog I can see.  Even if you can enter a negative value, it does not work. That -590 pixels from the bottom of the image to the top of the first line of text in the caption setting works with every image I have added a 600 pixel white border to at the bottom, no matter the height or width of the image. I chose 600 pixels as it is just large enough to handle my longest caption.

    Setting the position by pixel offset just doesn't seem to work for me either.  If I have an image 1031 pixels tall, I want the text 1041 pixels from the top - and that ends up in the border center about 300 pixels below the image rather than 10 pixels below the image at the top of the border.  Very bizarre output.  Truncated text on both ends no matter that I chose left aligned.  I remember coming away frustrated and confused trying to use the stamp feature before and I'm still that way.

    Daan van Rooijen

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    Can TP8 write iptc captions to a border under every photo?
    « Reply #3 on: 2011-09-10 14:44:29 »
    Yes, I was afraid it wasn't going to be easy. I just wanted to be sure that you knew which tools are available.

    One thing that may help is to first bring all images to the same size using the Add Border command, preferably in a lossless format like PNG or LZH-compressed TIF. When you've done that, you can run a second batch that adds an additional border at the bottom (which is then at the same position for all images) hopefully making it easier to stamp the IPTC data into it in a consistent manner.
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    diana

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    Can TP8 write iptc captions to a border under every photo?
    « Reply #4 on: 2011-09-11 09:29:40 »
    Thanks for the tip Daan but I'm going to stop fiddling with TP7 for the job because it won't wrap the text and that's a deal breaker even if I found some workaround to make the text placement work for me on tall thin images and very wide and short images too without doing one by one. I'll keep looking for something that can achieve this on any size image in batch mode.

    I really need the capability to place text with word wrap anywhere on any size image because the text is relative to the image left, right, top and bottom sides and the number of pixels to the top or bottom of the text from either side, top or bottom. There should be user choice how to combine those so one can lay text on an image or in a border around the image.

    I expected to be able to lay text in a border on top just above the image based on the image top and the bottom of the text and a known border height or lay text right under the image based on the image bottom, a known border height and the top of the text or even place rotated text against the right or left side of the image with similar knowns and relative positions.

    Negative numbers to move the text up from the bottom or from right to left on the sides. Positive numbers move the text down the image from the top or left to right on the sides.  I'm surprised this can't be done already in several apps.  Do people really put caption text on images one by one these days and add line breaks to wrap text to fit every image?  I edit iptc text one by one as I add it to the image, but that's the last time I'm messing with typing in text if I can help it - I'll use it to place captions where I need them but I'm not doing that one by one either, unless there's only one image to do.  Surely I'm not the only one that wants people to actually be able to read that iptc caption when viewing the image.  I see some web thumbnail galleries show exif, iptc, and xmp in html under the image so to make it portable, why not in a border below the image?  I'm ranting, sorry. ;-)

    macsnapper

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    Can TP8 write iptc captions to a border under every photo?
    « Reply #5 on: 2011-09-12 00:28:57 »
    have a look at using the print catalogue options
    you can set up the catalogue to print 1 image per page and allow enough extra lines under the image to accomodate the longest caption.
    You can choose the font but control over nice formatting is limited.
    Because the caption would come out directly under (almost touching) the image you may want to print another piece of empty data before the caption, so choose a field which you know has no data.
    Hope this makes sense and hope it works with TP8 I use TP7
    good luck

    diana

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    Can TP8 write iptc captions to a border under every photo?
    « Reply #6 on: 2011-09-12 10:52:39 »
    Keeping the original image width and height and quality while adding the text in a specific area under the image is the goal and the catalog just can't do that.

    Thanks for pointing out the method as someone else may benefit from your reply. I use TP7 like you.

    Daan van Rooijen

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    Can TP8 write iptc captions to a border under every photo?
    « Reply #7 on: 2011-09-12 11:59:59 »
    > Keeping the original image width and height and quality [..]

    ..should not be a grave concern if you use the 'rebuild thumbnails at printer resolution'-option. It won't re-sharpen the images, but rebuilding them should go a long way towards preserving their quality. So, maybe this catalog idea has some merit after all.

    btw, to use the Print Catalog dialog in a regular tabbed (non-wizzard) fashion, see Options | Preferences | General and turn 'use wizzard dialogs' off.
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    diana

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    Can TP8 write iptc captions to a border under every photo?
    « Reply #8 on: 2011-09-12 14:01:36 »
    I did set it to rebuild at printer resolution but it wants me to specify how many units to make the thumbnail. That makes the process a one by one deal as I have to check each photo for how many inches the thumbnail would need be to print 1:1 at the original resolution (most 300dpi but some vary) which is not a batch thing. Then I have to add text of unknown width and height and that changes what can fit on the page. I'd need some huge page sizes to print 1:1 for some images but most would fit on letter, legal or tabloid size pages. One choice for the settings just won't fit all the images.

    I've printed smaller photos of the same size and resolution using the catalog, one image per page with caption, but my current images are scanned photos of all sizes and resolutions and it doesn't appear to be able to handle that automagically.

    I know the data the software needs to figure out how to handle every file is in the file (because it tells me so in the properties) and most software can do all the things I ask (except those that won't word wrap IPTC captions) albeit not always the way I want due to limited settings available. I'm just trying to a way to keep this a batch job and not a tedious one by one image editing job. I probably could have hand captioned 200 images in the time I've spent typing messages about this here and there but I figure if I find what I need, I'll save much more time later with thousands more images to go on hand and more to come.

    diana

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    Can TP8 write iptc captions to a border & web page updates?
    « Reply #9 on: 2012-02-08 10:38:09 »
    Just in case Phillip has the time to look at this in the future, I found a tiny app I purchased a license for within a day of finding it. Quick ePics works perfectly for top and bottom captions but does not do left and right captions. It sizes the border added to fit whatever length caption you have, no cropping afterwards required.

    I did have to copy all IPTC captions to the jpg/image caption category for Quick ePics to access the caption data as it did not handle iptc captions directly. I ended up using top captions as old tv sets with glass curved screens (like mine) chopped off a bit of the bottom captions; more so than at the top.  I can't describe the captioning features I was looking for in TP as well as this software demonstrates, but the little app is lacking in metadata handling and can't do side captions.

    For portrait images, right (or left) side captions are my preference and I still have to do those manually so I'm looking for similar automation for that job.

    For picture display on any monitor or tv (USB slide shows are so common these days), side captions work best on portrait images. Tvs and monitors are are only getting wider rather than taller with HD models. I don't want to add any more height to a portrait image by adding a top or bottom caption, especially when there's so much more room to work with on the side of the image.

    I guess I'm looking for an all-in-one trick pony in TP since it's been one of my most used graphics management apps since version 3 and still is today.

    Also, I wish TP's web page output could be updated to include more output choices and modern features/styles - not just grid size and page/font colors. I've used TP for many years to create up to 500+ web pages and 5,000+ image thumbnails for my 12+ year old web site but now even I'm getting bored looking at the web pages.