# Captions for folders?



## JohnKendrick (May 6, 2012)

I would like to put a caption on a folder in LR 4 but can find no way to do it. Best I can tell I can only add captions to specific photos, not to folders. Or, for that matter, not to a collection folder itself. I've read the relevant sections in Martin Evening's book and in Victoria Bampton's and find nothing.

Thus, my question. Is there simply no way to do this in LR 4? Or is there some workaround, plugin or what not that will do it?

Thanks in advance for any help,

John Kendrick :hail:


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## clee01l (May 6, 2012)

Captions are a Metadata field found in the EXIF Standards for image files. Folders are not image files and aside from a path pointer in the Filesystem, folders have zero bytes. An image file has a size other than zero and both a header and a data section. The metadata is in the header section. If you want a caption for all of the image files in the folder, you need to apply a Caption to all of the images in that folder. You can do this in the Grid view or with the "paint can"


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## erro (May 6, 2012)

Though applying a caption to all photos in a folder will, of course, apply the same caption to all those photos. Is that what you want? You can then not change the caption for one of the photos, because then not all photos in the folder will have the same caption anymore.

A workaround may be to simply change the name of the folder to include the caption you want.

The question is: what is it you actually want to acheive by this "caption"?


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## JohnKendrick (May 6, 2012)

Thanks, Cletus. You've offered the suggestion I finally decided to apply but it's not quite the one I want. I understood the folder problem--lack of metadata fields--but I thought, given the need to label sets of photos rather than simply folders, there might be some workaround, perhaps even an elegant one.

I gather not. But thanks for the help,

John


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## JohnKendrick (May 6, 2012)

Ah, change the folder label. Good thought but I have a longish caption--about six sentences, each of which is rather wordy (one of my writing sins). I've been watching Jardine's LR 4 library modules and found the folder/picture labeling routines suggestive. So I'm presently labeling them in accord with George's instructions. It still, however, seems to me that others would need a way to include several sentence stories to folders/collections before they go to books, websites, and slide shows. Just to have them in the library. In fact, the more I think of it, such captions could then be the basis for captions in books, websites, slideshows, etc.

Thanks for the reply,

John


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## erro (May 6, 2012)

But why do you want to have the same, sentence long, captions for all photos? Seems a bit redundant?


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## JohnKendrick (May 6, 2012)

erro said:


> But why do you want to have the same, sentence long, captions for all photos? Seems a bit redundant?



Ah, perhaps that's where we misunderstand one another. I wrote a longish caption for the entire morning's shoot, which I wish to apply to the collection, not to any one given photo. It describes why I took the shots, where I went to take them, and what I hoped for them--for the full collection.

Does that help?

John


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## erro (May 6, 2012)

I see. Well, no such thing as a "folder caption". If your caption is too long to fit in the folder-name, and you don't want it replicated in all photos, then I really don't know....

How do you plan on using this "folder caption"? Do you want it to be searchable inside LR? Or is it enough if you can find it by some other means?

One workaround would be to just simply create a text-file in the folder where you write your caption. You can right-click the folder in LR and "Show in Finder" and then double-click that textfile.


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## johnbeardy (May 6, 2012)

Or create a JPEG (possibly via Book) and import it?


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## JohnKendrick (May 6, 2012)

erro said:


> I see. Well, no such thing as a "folder caption". If your caption is too long to fit in the folder-name, and you don't want it replicated in all photos, then I really don't know....
> 
> How do you plan on using this "folder caption"? Do you want it to be searchable inside LR? Or is it enough if you can find it by some other means?
> 
> One workaround would be to just simply create a text-file in the folder where you write your caption. You can right-click the folder in LR and "Show in Finder" and then double-click that textfile.



I'm not so much interested in it being searchable as a record of my thoughts at the time for this collection of photos. I could then use bits and pieces or whole chunks of that record if I decided to include some of those photos in websites, books, and/or slideshows later on. The idea of a text file in the folder at the Finder level (I'm a Macintosh user) is a very helpful thought. I would much prefer something like a caption field for the folder within LR, but it's clearly not a possibility at the moment.


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## Victoria Bampton (May 6, 2012)

One other idea John - what about adding a blank grey JPEG and creating a VC of it for each collection.  You could then add your notes to that single photo, so that it's accessible in LR, and a distinctive grey file would be easy to spot.


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## JohnKendrick (May 6, 2012)

johnbeardy said:


> Or create a JPEG (possibly via Book) and import it?



Yes. Could do it. And I might try it. If you would use your influence with the Adobe crowd to implement a folder caption in the next version. (I'm now looking for the right icon to communicate a smiley. Can't find it.)

I think you were the source of a large caption field plug in for LR 3 that someone recommended and I used. Sound right?

John


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## JohnKendrick (May 6, 2012)

Victoria Bampton said:


> One other idea John - what about adding a blank grey JPEG and creating a VC of it for each collection.  You could then add your notes to that single photo, so that it's accessible in LR, and a distinctive grey file would be easy to spot.



I like that. Sounds much the same as Beardsworth's thought. Just worked out a bit more--VC for each collection. 

John


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## Mark Sirota (May 7, 2012)

Victoria Bampton said:


> One other idea John - what about adding a blank grey JPEG and creating a VC of it for each collection.  You could then add your notes to that single photo, so that it's accessible in LR, and a distinctive grey file would be easy to spot.



This is a brilliant idea!  I can envision a set of files with different sorts of big text on each for different purposes.


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## johnbeardy (May 7, 2012)

Adding the text to the metadata as well as to the picture would make it searchable. 

It may even be possible to use something like Mogrify or a Photoshop droplet. So you'd import a blank jpeg to start the process, give it the caption, then export with Mogrify/PS to add the caption as a watermark. You then import this file.

John


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## JohnKendrick (May 7, 2012)

Mark Sirota said:


> This is a brilliant idea!  I can envision a set of files with different sorts of big text on each for different purposes.



Agreed. I created the file by Word into pdf into jpeg via Preview. Then added it as the first file in the LR folder for the photos I took last Sunday. Then I added my text for the full shoot to the metadata caption field. I could have added that text to the jpeg file, too, of course. But my preferences, at least at the moment and until I experiment with this more, is to use the VC capability to have blank jpeg (well identified with a bit of text).

I would still prefer a metadata caption capability for the folder. But this suggestion looks better and better as a workaround.

John


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## JohnKendrick (May 8, 2012)

JohnKendrick said:


> I would still prefer a metadata caption capability for the folder. But this suggestion looks better and better as a workaround.
> 
> John



Again, I should add as a footnote, the point of adding captions to the folder, at least for me, is to record my thoughts about the shoot as close to the time I've done them as possible. And as fully as possible. Thus, those thoughts are then available when I get to the book module, website posting, and so on. And having them in LR rather than in a file in the folder at the Finder level, makes them readily available and serves as memory jogs at the point at which I need it.

John


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## erro (May 8, 2012)

But then again, not all of us store "one shoot" per folder. Me personally I store my photos in date based folders, one folder for each date something was shot. So in one and the same folder there might be several shoots done the same day. And a shoot that goes on for several days will span many folders.

I would need some other method for describing a shoot. Perhaps some kind of general caption for a collection, or a keyword.


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## Mark Sirota (May 8, 2012)

My solution to that one is that I break up my date-based folders if I have multiple shoots in a day.  I might have "2012-07-04 Carnival" and then "2012-07-04 Fireworks".  (I'll split them manually after import.)  So each folder could still have one of these caption images.


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## JohnKendrick (May 9, 2012)

Mark Sirota said:


> My solution to that one is that I break up my date-based folders if I have multiple shoots in a day.  I might have "2012-07-04 Carnival" and then "2012-07-04 Fireworks".  (I'll split them manually after import.)  So each folder could still have one of these caption images.



That's also the way I do it.


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## erro (May 9, 2012)

And I don't use descriptive folder names at all, so if I have shot both carnival and fireworks on the same day, they all end up in the same folder. I separate them by keywords.

I'm just saying a "folder caption" isn't necessarily a universal solution for everyone.


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## johnbeardy (May 9, 2012)

I'm sure it could be useful, but I can't imagine Adobe implementing it.


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