Author Topic: Caption jpg files (Read 20,733 times)

John Alaska · « **on:** July 26, 2015, 11:50 PM »

I need a way to caption image files, automatically in bulk, using the original file name. Something like "Grand Canyon North Rim.jpg to "Grand Canyon North Rim". In other word, I'm to lazy to add text manually for each file.

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #1 on:** July 27, 2015, 01:01 AM »

It would be amazing if this doesn't already exist, but then that's what coding snacks tend to expose!

lanux128 · « **Reply #2 on:** July 27, 2015, 03:44 AM »

Quote from: John Alaska on July 26, 2015, 11:50 PM

I need a way to caption image files, automatically in bulk, using the original file name. Something like "Grand Canyon North Rim.jpg to "Grand Canyon North Rim". In other word, I'm to lazy to add text manually for each file.

Here is a possible solution using FastStone Image Viewer (Free for home use).

• https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-pictures/how-can-i-have-filename-as-a-visible-caption-on/cdb2d5ba-7ad7-4d9d-b6e9-0a2a1a873fd4?auth=1

IainB · « **Reply #3 on:** July 27, 2015, 06:07 AM »

@John Alaska: What you seem to want looks rather redundant, and would be akin to using the Caption field metadata as a generic tagging field, whereas the Caption field is usually for data that is peculiar to a particular image. The Keywords (Tag) field would seem to be more appropriate for what you need.
Some people might use a mass file rename to cater for this, so the identifying text would then be in the filename, but that just clutters up the filename with metadata.
However, if you were a Google Picasa user (as I am) then, you would probably select all the image files you wanted to cover with the chosen specific term and attach it as a Tag "Grand Canyon North Rim". You could later create a virtual album for that Tag name and put it up in the image store (Cloud) with that as the album name, and share it as you wanted. You can attach multiple, different tags to a given image file.

Picasa Tags are included in (attached as) Keyword field file metadata, and so stay with the file. Other image managers would thus be able to pick up that metadata. One needs to be aware though that due to the apparently somewhat loose implementation of standards for image file metadata in image management tools, some metadata might come under a different category of metadata depending on what image management tool you use.

Thus, my recommendation would be try to maintain some degree of consistency and only use a single image management tool - e.g., (say) such as Picasa or some other decent image management tool - and drop the idea of effectively trying to use the "Caption" metadata as a generic tagging field. Instead, use the provided Tagging functionality for tagging.

IainB · « **Reply #4 on:** July 27, 2015, 06:48 AM »

After making the above response, I came across this in my feed-reader: Daminion is a professional photo, video and document management software - gHacks Tech News

Daminion - see Asset Cataloging for Digital Photos, Videos and Documents | Daminion - looks potentially very useful, but I would have to trial it before I knew how good it was for my needs.

John Alaska · « **Reply #5 on:** July 29, 2015, 02:13 PM »

Perhaps I should have been more specific. What I was trying to convey, and did so poorly, is that each file has a different name (about 1000) and they all reside in 1 folder. There is no no relationship between the file names other than that they are all jpegs. Wallpapers of different parts of the world, actually. I want to take the title and add the text to the image, in a place of my choosing, to avoid having to right click the image to see what it depicts. I was thinking some sort of OCR restricted to the title block. Or am I just wishing for the impossible? To be a little more clear, I have changed the image titles on many of the jpeg so they don't accurately reflect what's in the meta data.

MilesAhead · « **Reply #6 on:** July 29, 2015, 02:39 PM »

ImageMagic as described here:
http://ask.metafilter.com/107722/Batch-Adding-Text-File-Name-to-JPEG-Images

sounds like it may be what you want.

mouser · « **Reply #7 on:** July 29, 2015, 03:17 PM »

This absolutely sounds like it should already exist.

A simple easy to use utility that can batch add captions to images, with some flexibility of where to put the caption and set the text based on filename, filedate, etc.

It must exist.. if it doesn't one of us needs to make it quickly.

I do already have some code for adding captions to images and autosizing text for it, etc. so if we don't find anything good perhaps ill make it.

John Alaska · « **Reply #8 on:** July 29, 2015, 06:17 PM »

Thanks Miles. I'll definitely check that out, but what Mouser suggested (A simple easy to use utility that can batch add captions to images, with some flexibility of where to put the caption and set the text based on filename, filedate, etc.) would be the hot tip.

JavaJones · « **Reply #9 on:** July 29, 2015, 06:55 PM »

It does exist and it's called XnView, the world's greatest (free) image viewer and converter.

http://www.xnview.com

Once installed just go to Tools -> Batch Processing (Ctrl - U), add your folder of images on the first tab, then go to the Transformations tab, under Image double-click Add Text, then on the right where you see Parameters, click the button with two arrows >> and select Filename (or whatever other info you choose). You can then specify text color and background color, font, and positioning. You will probably want to experiment with one or a couple images to find the ideal combo, then once you do you can apply it to all of them.

XnView is great.

- Oshyan

MilesAhead · « **Reply #10 on:** July 29, 2015, 07:09 PM »

Quote from: JavaJones on July 29, 2015, 06:55 PM

It does exist and it's called XnView, the world's greatest (free) image viewer and converter.
http://www.xnview.com

Once installed just go to Tools -> Batch Processing (Ctrl - U), add your folder of images on the first tab, then go to the Transformations tab, under Image double-click Add Text, then on the right where you see Parameters, click the button with two arrows >> and select Filename (or whatever other info you choose). You can then specify text color and background color, font, and positioning. You will probably want to experiment with one or a couple images to find the ideal combo, then once you do you can apply it to all of them.

XnView is great.

- Oshyan

I used XnView in the past. I had no idea it could do this kind of stuff.... downloading.

JavaJones · « **Reply #11 on:** July 29, 2015, 07:27 PM »

XnView is the Swiss Army Knife of image viewers/editors (I use "editor" 2nd as it is not Photoshop-esque in its editing abilities, but it does include many tools including crop, color adjust, etc.). Its batch processing capabilities are actually quite strong, and very useful. And it has a very good JPG compression engine, as well as support for Lanczos image resizing, which makes it a great tool to use for resizing lots of images for example. It also does lossless JPG rotation, which is handy.

- Oshyan

mouser · « **Reply #12 on:** July 29, 2015, 10:55 PM »

just another +1 for xnview as an image folder browser.
i still use irfanview when viewing individual files, but when i have to search and browse a large directory tree full of images, xnview is my tool of choice; very nice searching/filtering features.

JavaJones · « **Reply #13 on:** July 30, 2015, 09:16 PM »

I've never understood why people use Irfanview with XnView is available. Irfan is so much clunkier to me. What's the advantage for viewing single images vs. Xn?

- Oshyan

mouser · « **Reply #14 on:** July 30, 2015, 09:26 PM »

i can't really say that there is one -- im just used to having irfanview for my default app to open an image file when i double-click it from windows explorer. i suppose i should try using xnview to see how it compares.

When double clicking to view images in explorer, my #1 need is speed, followed by good default scaling options, and only-once instance even if i click multiple files.

JavaJones · « **Reply #15 on:** July 30, 2015, 09:40 PM »

Well, if you have any interest in reducing the number of applications you have installed, and the number of UIs you have to deal with for various tasks (in this case particularly image-related tasks), then I would definitely suggest giving XnView a try as default image viewer. It has a fairly wide variety of options which should allow you to set it up as you like it, including scaling and single-instance options. And it is, in my experience, also quite fast, both on initial open and on moving forward/backward between images as it has some simple caching and read-ahead stuff (optional), and also I think the newer MP version might be even faster...

- Oshyan

MilesAhead · « **Reply #16 on:** July 31, 2015, 10:45 AM »

At first I was annoyed that I could not paste an image in XnView. That is what I use Irfanview for most often. Then I found it is Import from Clipboard instead. Works fine.

As I learn to use Paint.NET more I think I will depend on Irfanview much less. Plus once you have to mess with Layers you might as well go with a bull blown paint type application.

Shades · « **Reply #17 on:** July 31, 2015, 02:14 PM »

Irfanview is very fast and can edit images just as MS Paint can, besides having a very similar feature-set when compared with XnView. It is also portable...you can copy the irfanview folder you installed in one computer to another computer and IrfanView will work without problems.

With so much similar features between these two viewers/editors, it doesn't matter that much what you prefer. For me, IrfanView is the "devil I know" as I have been using it for over 15 years.

MilesAhead · « **Reply #18 on:** July 31, 2015, 02:36 PM »

Quote from: Shades on July 31, 2015, 02:14 PM

Irfanview is very fast and can edit images just as MS Paint can, besides having a very similar feature-set when compared with XnView. It is also portable...you can copy the irfanview folder you installed in one computer to another computer and IrfanView will work without problems.

With so much similar features between these two viewers/editors, it doesn't matter that much what you prefer. For me, IrfanView is the "devil I know" as I have been using it for over 15 years.

I have used Irfanview for a long time also. But I see no need to delete it just because I added XnView. If I was squeezing everything into an SSD that may be another matter. But even they are supposed to explode with big time storage at commodity prices very soon.

John Alaska · « **Reply #19 on:** July 31, 2015, 03:14 PM »

Thanks JavaJones. It worked like a champ, after about 20 minutes of trying to get the right parameters for positioning the text correct.

skwire · « **Reply #20 on:** July 31, 2015, 03:20 PM »

Great suggestion, JJ.

@John Alaska: Do you mind if I mark this thread as solved and move it to the Finished Section?

JavaJones · « **Reply #21 on:** July 31, 2015, 10:25 PM »

For me having to use multiple programs for similar tasks contributes to cognitive overload, it's "scattering" and makes me less expert with a given program's full feature set (I would suggest that perhaps not knowing XnView has these kinds of features speaks to this being somewhat true for others as well?).

XnView has a primitive "paint" plugin, but it's not an MS Paint replacement. So if that's a need, then indeed Irfanview may be superior. Personally I never used MS Paint for anything useful so I don't have that need. The stuff XnView *does* do (boxes, lines, arrows, captioning) suits my needs, and if I need more MS Paint-like functionality won't help me, I need something like Photoshop. But that's just my needs.

I can understand that Irfanview may have just the right feature set for some people's needs, while XnView may be missing some key thing. I still don't entirely understand using both, but admittedly I do have more than one image viewer (Faststone and XnView) installed, so who am I kidding...

- Oshyan

MilesAhead · « **Reply #22 on:** August 01, 2015, 01:15 PM »

Quote from: JavaJones on July 31, 2015, 10:25 PM

I can understand that Irfanview may have just the right feature set for some people's needs, while XnView may be missing some key thing. I still don't entirely understand using both, but admittedly I do have more than one image viewer (Faststone and XnView) installed, so who am I kidding.

Heh heh. For me trying new programs often prods me to learn how to use the ones I have. It helps me to have more than one approach to the same task. Plus it is tough to resist trying free software in glitzy packaging. Uninstalling these can waste some time for sure. though.

lanux128 · « **Reply #23 on:** August 01, 2015, 01:38 PM »

i have a few apps to view images, IrfanView, frameless, & etc.