2021 - Can Affinity Publisher Auto Caption a photo with EXIF or IPTC data from the photo?

[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

 

[walt.farrell]

No.

[APA]

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

[walt.farrell]

12 minutes ago, APA said:

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 seems complex. Why not just Place the photos in your Publisher document and then add the captions by hand? 

By the way, AP is Affinity Photo. If you need to abbreviate Publisher (I generally don't) it's APu. Hover over the underlined terms here to see that.

[APA]

"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.

[walt.farrell]

28 minutes ago, APA said:

Far too time consuming and prone to error.

But how will you add a text caption to your image, and keep them in text form so they can be properly formatted and re-edited if needed?

[APA]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

But how will you add a text caption to your image, and keep them in text form so they can be properly formatted and re-edited if needed?

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!

 

[walt.farrell]

Thanks for clarifying your workflow.

[Wosven]

You've got a metadata panel in AP. I didn't test if it's available from the AP persona in APub, but if it is, you can add your image in APub, add the caption text frame, and switch to AP persona to retrieve the metadata in the panel.

If you're on Windows, you can also look at the properties of the image with a right-click and copy the data in the Details tab.

It's better in ID where you can create live variables for image metadatas like copyright and caption, and once added to your document, you just need to replace an image to get those updated.

I hope we'll get something similar in APub.

[APA]

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

[Avezeau]

Terry White demonstrates Adobe InDesign's Caption option in this video, beginning at 14:52 (ending at  -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxrZi6RI-xE

[Wosven]

Yes, that's it. I mainly use it for adding copyrights, since illustrative images don't need caption, and the ones I uses had sometimes French & English captions, so it's best to copy-paste and shorten them to get only the needed language.

It's strangely a feature I wasn't able to automate with a script and have to set manually (live caption) in each document. It just need another option to select also an Object style beside the paragraph style for the text.

[APA]

5 hours ago, Avezeau said:

Terry White demonstrates Adobe InDesign's Caption option in this video, beginning at 14:52 (ending at  -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxrZi6RI-xE

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 

[Fixx]

There are a couple of threads in Publisher feedback forum.  And yes, powerful but flexible automatic captioning would be very nice feature indeed.

 

[David in Яuislip]

It can be achieved with Data Merge but be prepared for some pain, what follows may prevent you from falling down some of the rabbit holes I found

All images must be the same size or else you'll have to crop them individually after the Generate stage

Create a csv file with the filenames and required text fields. Mine was a bit of a mess having created text in various places with different software so I used

exiftool -Iptc:Caption-Abstract -Iptc:keywords -XMP:Subject -m -csv *.jpg > data.csv

It looked like the image below. It's probably best to clean this up so there's only one text field but I left it as is so used three text fields in Publisher

Now, in Publisher
Create a document equal to the image size, no Master, single page
Create a frame with the Rectangle Picture Frame Tool covering the whole page - this to be at the bottom of the layer stack
Create a text placeholder with the Frame Text Tool

Read the Publisher Help
Open the Fields panel and link the image & text to the relevant fields
Document/ Data Merge Manager

Preview a couple to check they're working then click Generate

Export as Jpeg, All Pages

[APA]

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.

 

 

[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...

[Frankyboy]

This problem is also for me killing. All the work-arounds are very time consuming (over 100 photos in a publication). Specially when all the information is already loaded in LightRoom (LR) for all my pictures. Within LR you can use Blurb to make a publication if this is intended as a photo portfolio type of document. In LR the procedure is very easy. You can select Title or other items and all the info is loaded directly to your document.

Working with pre-organized captions is crucial in todays practice.

Why can Affinity not work in the same way.  Please developers bring this in Publisher as soon as possible.

Walter Frankvoort

[Pšenda]

48 minutes ago, Frankyboy said:

 In LR the procedure is very easy. .... Why can Affinity not work in the same way. 

Maybe because APhoto is a photo editor, not DAM like LR?

[Paradise33]

With Data Merge this is a breeze. As Affinity Publisher isn't a DAM like LR you will need to collect the required EXIF metadata externally. I use iMatch to export the required field's as XML, TXT or CVS file.

If the order of the photos are incorrect I use Custom sorting order in iMatch to regenerate a new CVS file. If you use Master pages and keep the field names the same recreating a new 100 page booklet takes a little over a minute. It is a different way of thinking from what I was used to but now I understand how it works I wouldn't change a thing. Well done Affinity Team!