CR keystroke for the Metadata Panel Description field?

[jollymade]

Is there a keystroke that will allow <CR> or linefeeds within the Description field?  My goal is to make a list of parameters for art work, like:

"Spring Thoughts"

Painted bronze

12" x 4" x 4"

2023

 

thanks!

 

[MikeTO]

6 minutes ago, jollymade said:

Is there a keystroke that will allow <CR> or linefeeds within the Description field?  My goal is to make a list of parameters for art work, like:

Hi and welcome to the forums.

On macOS you would press Option + Return. I believe it would be Alt + Enter on Windows but I don't know for sure.

Cheers

[jollymade]

Thank you!  I'm on Windows, and had no luck with Alt + Enter.

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, jollymade said:

Thank you!  I'm on Windows, and had no luck with Alt + Enter.

If Alt doesn't work, try Shift or Ctrl + Enter. And if none of them work, just for fun, try copying and pasting a line break from a text frame.

Good luck.

[- S -]

I'm not sure whether there are certain limitations for writing to "XMP-dc:Description" and "IPTC:Caption-Abstract" metadata tags, however Windows File Explorer will also not allow the user to use carriage returns in this field.

I.E. If you try to create a new line in the "Subject" metadata field in Windows File Explorer, it will react in the same way as Affinity Photo.

 

Therefore, I suspect this is intentional.  However, I'm not sure whether it's a limitation in the XMP/IPTC metadata specifications for those particular tags, or whether it's like this due to a limitation in Windows (I.E. in the Windows "XPSubject" field).

You may be better off using keywords with semicolons between keywords.  For example:

Spring Thoughts; Painted bronze; 12×4×4 inches; 2023;

 

[MikeTO]

First, I was wrong above, you don't need to press Option + Return to start a new paragraph in Affinity, you can just press Return. I was just assuming that Affinity required a modifier since the question of how to do this came up. I haven't edited the field in Photo very often.

5 hours ago, - S - said:

I'm not sure whether there are certain limitations for writing to "XMP-dc:Description" and "IPTC:Caption-Abstract" metadata tags, however Windows File Explorer will also not allow the user to use carriage returns in this field.

I.E. If you try to create a new line in the "Subject" metadata field in Windows File Explorer, it will react in the same way as Affinity Photo.

Therefore, I suspect this is intentional.  However, I'm not sure whether it's a limitation in the XMP/IPTC metadata specifications for those particular tags, or whether it's like this due to a limitation in Windows (I.E. in the Windows "XPSubject" field).

I think you're looking at the subject field which is restricted to a single paragraph - description supports multiple paragraphs. I've been using multiple paragraphs in the Description field for many years in Photoshop and Lightroom using TIFF, PSD, and DNG. However, it's good that this question was asked because there's a bug with Photo's handling of this field. 

Create an image in Photo and type a couple of lines into the Description field. If you copy and paste the entered text into an editor (such as an Affinity text frame with show special characters on) you'll see a paragraph break between each line which is what I would expect. If you save the file as .afphoto or export to TIFF and re-open it, you'll find that Photo didn't save the paragraph breaks.

 

If you repeat the test with Photoshop and save as PSD or TIFF you'll find that the paragraph breaks are retained. If you open the Adobe-created file in Affinity Photo you'll see the paragraph breaks and you can even edit the image and re-save it without losing them. But if you modify the meta description then the breaks will be lost when the file is saved.

Here are test files created in Photoshop that demonstrate the issue in Photo.

test-photoshop.psd

test-photoshop.tif

[DWright]

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