APA

Thanks anto however your suggestion would complicate a simple requirement. AP should really have this type of basic function included. Adobe Lightroom and other companies products have had the ability to access the photo metadata (EXIF and/or IPTC) decades. This is a gap in the AP feature set...

Thanks David in Яuislip Your 'work around' and the detailed instructions are appreciated. I hope Affinity can take up the request to provide automatic captioning as a standard feature. In fact I can achieve automatic captioning (with a plethora of options) using Adobe Lightroom (Classic) + LR/Mogrify 2 Plugin. I would like to migrate to Affinity, however without automatic captioning I can't move from Adobe to Affinity.

Thanks Avezeau ... that video link shows the type of captioning feature that is sadly missing from AP. If AP had this function, I would convert to Affinity. APA 9-AUG-2021

Thanks Wosven... I installed AP (I only had APu installed) and then I could switch to AP persona in APu. When done this will allow the metadata to be seen for a photo (but you need to switch into AP persona every time) . At this point it would be possible to cup/paste photo metadata and then switch back to APu to continue... Phew! In summary, unworkable and manually copy/paste for data is unacceptable when there are many photographs to be processed. I thank you for alerting me to the AP 'persona' as a possible solution it was worth a try. Looks like ID wins in this area (although I do not have any first hand experience with ID). Its a real shame, APu can't auto caption a photo when its dropped on a page! Cheers, APA

The original images have EXIF/IPTC (as I'm sure you are well aware) and I update the EXIF/IPTC description field (one time) once when I review the images at import time. From that point on, the metadata (time, location, description) for my purposes is finished. Of course I can always go back and revise the description if needed (its rare). Today I can 'export' my images and automatically append and metadata from any EXIF/IPTC. The resulting JPG image files are 'ready for publication' however the caption (which is automatically added) is now part of the image data (this process if just like adding a border) to a photo. This is not ideal, because (as you suggest) we can't modify a (now visible) caption, its image data! This is where I was hoping APu could help (i.e. read the EXIF/IPTC from the file and insert a caption), but it seems APu has no capability to read the EXIF and auto caption an image 'container' on page. Frankly, I'm very surprised this basic capability is missing from APu. Onward!

"Why not just Place the photos in your Publisher document and then add the captions by hand? " A: Far too time consuming and prone to error. Today, all my image files have EXIF and IPTC fields with Description/Caption data. I'm very surprised APu can't read and use those standard metadata fields for publication layout. I have not used InDesign, however I have read other Affinity forum posts (now years old) and they say InDesign has this function. If fact Lightroom can also 'publish' in a more limited way.. and read the metadata from the image files. I'm trying to move away from Adobe products (Lightroom is my last piece is Adobe software in use).. and I had my hopes on APu.

Hello Walt, Thanks for the prompt reply. Such a pity it has no capability in this area. My only option would be to post-process the photos (i.e. add captions) re-save the photos (with captions as part of the photo) and finally import them into AP. That added complexity is something I can do without. Cheers, APA

Greetings, I'm new to Affinity Publisher and I want to add photographs and 'automatically' add captions with the data from the EXIF and/or IPTC data. Can Affinity (latest version as of June 2021) do that? The caption information can be 'static'... that is, I only need it to be created when the photo is added. Thanks, APA 13-JUN-2021