Tech Tip: Adding Image Descriptions
If you participated in our most recent quarterly crop, you may have added pages to our collaborative FOREVER album. Even if you didn’t submit any pages to it, you may have appreciated those who did. You may be sharing other collaborative albums with your friends, and if that’s the case, you will love this tip!
Click HERE to learn more about FOREVER’s new shared albums and click HERE to see some of ours. The basic premise is this – you can set up an album in your FOREVER account and share it with others and give them the ability to upload photos to it or download photos from it. This is fantastic, especially for family groups, friends, teams, or groups who travel together! The drawback is that the owner of the album is the only one who can manipulate the photos once they are in the album. Of course, this is for your protection, so that no one deletes your photos or edits them in a way you didn’t want them to, but it also means that collaborators can’t add a description of the photos they upload after they’ve been uploaded to the album.
Here’s where this tip comes in – a description can be added to each image BEFORE it is uploaded to the album, and the description will stay with the photo. Here’s how:
Method One (Great for single photos)
Locate the desired image on your computer and right click it. A pop up box will appear > choose Properties.
When the next box opens, go to Details:
Once in Details, left click on Comments and it should be highlighted in blue. Hover your mouse over the right side of the highlighted area and it will turn white. Now left click the white box to open the editing box, then type in the description of the image. For example, if the image is one of a completed Artisan page, enter the content, fonts, and p2P Blueprint, Bright Idea, or video used. If it’s an image that will be shared in a collaborative album or in a personal FOREVER account, add pertinent details – names, date (if different from metadata), place, etc. Whatever is entered here will be the description of the image after it is uploaded to FOREVER.
Add a description in the comments section, then click OK
Here’s what the opened image looks like in FOREVER:
The description added in the Comments section of Properties will show up as the description of the image in Forever albums.
You can see how helpful this information is when working with others on a collaborative album! Happy sharing!
Alternate Method (great for a whole folder of photos)
If you have trouble with the above method, or if you have a whole folder of photos you’re working on, try this method:
Using Windows File Explorer (in your toolbar), navigate to the photo or folder of photos on your computer (not in Historian) that you want to work with.
When the file library is open, go to the View tab. Choose “Detail Pane” and “Large Icons”. You will see that the selected item and its properties are open on the right side of the library window.
Click on the photo you wish to work with, and the detail pane will display the properties that can be edited.
Click on the column to the right of the word ‘Comments’ to open the editing box. Add your information and save it.
Continue to the next photo in your folder and repeat.
This is genius, a huge help! Thank you, Jan!
It is a big help, for sure!
WOW…I have learned so much in the last 30 minutes. It’s so exciting!
That’s what we love to hear! Thanks!
WOW!!! SOOOO cool!
Is this correct?
If I type the description text in Historian in Tell Your Story, it will go over when the photo is moved to Forever.
Yes, the “tell the story” information will stay attached when you upload it to your FOREVER storage account.
I can’t seem to make this work as I have a mac. Is there a work around for those of us with a mac?
Yes. HERE is a link that should be helpful.
Thanks for the reminder Jan.
Worked for me! Thank you Ladies for continuing to make our lives easier! Love p2P!
Glad to hear it!
So I thought I would try this. Found a picture on my computer, right click, got to properties, got to details and there is no comment section either. Running windows 10. I get description, origin, image, camera, advanced photo and file. Any suggestions???
Donna, those are the six sections available when viewing Properties in Windows 10, but there should be subsections of each one. For example, under description, I see Title, Subject, Tags, Comments, and Star Rating. Each of the other sections has subsections as well. If you are not seeing those, I expect it may be a setting on your computer.
I have posted an alternate method in the tip – try it and see if you have better results.
Wow, never knew you could do this. All you pixies are amazing.
Is there anyway to add descriptions for photos taken on a phone before upload?
To my knowledge, you’d need to upload your phone photos to your computer and use the method described (I’d try the alternate method). I will do some research to see if there is a different way.
From my initial research, it looks like there are some apps (no free ones that I’ve seen so far) that allow you to edit metadata on iPhone images, but it looks like you need an app to do it.
Tameka,
I tried another batch of photos and figured out that after clicking on “Comments” while it is blue highlighted, you have to move your cursor over to the right about half way before the white text box will appear. I used a different set of photos this time and the text box appeared. Some of the photos in the first set of photos I tried will not show the text box no matter what I do. Not sure why.
But thanks for the tip and I will certainly use it now that I know how to make the “invisible” text box appear!
I never saw the text box till after I started typing (having first clicked the curser into the blue highlight)
This would be a fabulous ability especially when sending photos to friends and family. But I tried this on several photos in Windows 10 and only managed to get a text box to pop up once. I typed in the box and was able to add the comment. But on all the other photos neither left or right clicking would bring up a text box. and when I just typed a letter, like “A” in the blue space, the cursor moved to the item “Attributes” in the list below the “Comments”. Can you help me figure out what I am doing wrong?
When you left click on the Comments line, it should turn blue. Now hover your mouse over the right side of the blue line, then left click to open the editing box. If you are still having problems, please see the alternate method I have added to the tip.
Correction: when I right click (or left click) on COMMENTS nothing happens.
Hello Veronica. I have just tested on a Windows 7 Computer. Please make sure that you left click to the right of the word “comment” (in the Value column), not clicking on the word comment itself.
Tameka, this works for me if it is not an image that had been in Historian. But if is an image that was in Historian, then anything I had typed in the “Tell Your Story” box is already in the Comments section. However, I cannot change it, nor can I input anything if it is blank. I had names of people in that field in Historian, then copied the image to my desktop to find it easily later. That information is in the Comment line, but I can’t change it. When I click under the Value column the line turns blue. Then, when I type anything, the cursor hops to some other property of the image that begins with the first letter I type. When I type an “L” the cursor hops to a line for “Lens” information further down the list of image information.
But if it an image that was NOT previously in Historian then I am able to do what you describe, and that is pretty cool.
Veronica, did you try changing the Tell Your Story in Historian? You could use tags for people’s names instead of putting them in the Tell Your Story section.
Once you have highlighted the comments section, hover your mouse over the right hand side of the column and it will turn white. Left click and the editing box will open and you can type away.
Jan, thank you for your suggestion. I use the Tell Your Story box to identify particular things, such as the specific waterfall I photographed during a vacation. In the group picture example, I would tag it with the family name (mine or my in-laws), but if there were people in the picture who were “extras” I would not want to begin adding tags for everyone. The information in the Tell Your Story box is something I would want to include when I sent the picture to others. So the fact that it is already there is a plus. I had no idea this information was included when the image was sent along, even though I should have because I often use other information in the property boxes, such as what camera was used to take the picture.
And I tested the reverse situation. My niece emailed me a picture of her new dog, and I downloaded it to my desktop. Because it was an image that had not been in my Historian with anything in the Tell Your Story box, I could add the dog’s name in the Comments field, just as your tip instructions describe. When I imported the image into Historian the Comments field that contained the dog’s name was automatically put into the Tell Your Story box for the image. Voila!
So this is a win-win for me, and something I would not have known about if it wasn’t for you terrific Pixies. If something is already in the Tell Your Story box, it’s probably something I want there. If not, I can alter it before doing something else with it, like pass it on to someone. And now I know I can identify images with information before I put them into Historian, if I would want to do that.
Again, thanks!
I attempted this, but when I right click (or left click) on Details, nothing happens. There is no opportunity to type anything. I tried it on a photo image I had copied to my Desktop, and am using Windows 7. This would be so useful, not just for the Forever shared albums. Any thoughts?
I just tried it!
GREAT TO KNOW!
I also learned that if for some reason you add a photo and you “KNOW” that the date of the picture is wrong, you can change it in the details location. I uploaded one the other day and I never did know how to fix that until just now!
THANK YOU!
WOW!
I am off to try this!