One Method to Add Photo Captions Visually Below Your Digital Photos
For most people, I still think the best and easiest way to preserve the description of what’s in each of your archived photos in your collection is to enter this information into the reservedย caption or description field using a photo managing program or editor.
This insures that it will stay embedded inside, within the metadata of your master images, and can later be accessed by any other application that is written to utilize it.
I’ve written how to do this in four of the best programs in an article called “The Best Way to Add a Description (Caption) to Your Scanned Photos.”
But, for aย select few, you still may be wishing there was also a way to record this information as real “visual” text that could be shown with each of your photos โ like it was almost part of the image itself as seen in the image at the top of this post.
And I can understand this wish since currently it’s fair to say manyย photo viewing applications you may wish to use aren’t even capable of displaying your embedded captions when typed into this captioned (metadata) field. It’s not that it’s that hard to writeย applications that do so, it’s probably just the programmers don’t think you care much about photo captions, so why spend the time coding it.
So when Tim Stenzinger wrote me one day and said he was experimenting with a way of using Photoshop to do this very thing, I was very interested in finding out more aboutย his method. Not only that, Tim was very generous with his time and was willing to document each of the steps in the post below for anyone who’s interested in following along.
Even if this isn’t something you would want to take the time to do for every photo within your entire collection, it’s still possible you may want to do this with select ones.
Please welcome Tim to Scan Your Entire Life, this is his first article here. And if you have any questions for him after reading this, feel free to ask him in the comments below. Enjoy!
This is a cool way to add captions to your scanned photos without having to rely on embedded metadata. In other words, this way would allow you to have the written caption as a part of the JPEG or TIFF file itself. The main advantage to this idea is not losing your captions over the years (possibly even centuries) should an application “accidentally” delete or write over the metadata contents.
Programs change, data conversion can get lost โ this way your caption is part of the photo itself and thus your written information for your photos shouldnโt be lost (the only way this could happen would be to crop it off from the photo). So years from now, people will know who or what is in your photo, and/or any other tidbit you might want to include.
Create a Template
The first thing to do is create a template in Adobe Photoshop for Mac or PCย (or an image editor of your choice with fairly comparable features).
Since 99 percent of these scans would be fairly small in size, I made the template only 8 inches wide by 6 inches high. Anything larger would simply need a custom made, larger template.
I scan 4″ by 6″ photos at 1200 dpi โ which is why this template is created at 1200 dpi as well. That way, if a person enlarges this photo to something like 8 by 12 inches, itโs dpi will be somewhere around 600. This is twice as high as what most people feel necessary.
Most experts would scan a standard 4″ by 6″ photo around 600 dpi. And in scanning photos at 1200 dpi, it might be overkill and take longer to scan as well as gobble up tons of megabytes! But thatโs just me! I want to be able to zoom into these photos without loosing any details. So itโs up to you. What most people recommend is to scan photos at 600 dpi thus you can create this template at 600 dpi as well.
Also, I choose to use 16-bit RGB color rather than 8-bit. Is that really necessary? Probably not. Will it take longer to process, and gobble up more megabytes? Totally! But is it superior for editing photos? (Such as enhancing color etc.) It sure is.
So really, itโs all up to you. You could use 600 dpi at 8-bit, or go nuts like me and choose 1200 dpi at 16-bits. In a nutshell, my way is totally higher in quality, but it will be harder on your computer, slower to scan, and it will take more memory and storage.
Add a Temporary Text Placeholder
Later, after loading the photo onto this template, I would type over the word โwhatโ with the actual subject of what the photo is. Then I would move on to the other word โwhereโ and type over that with the actual location. These details are better displayed later on these instructions.
Add a Photo
After I have scanned a few pictures and have them sitting in a folder somewhere on my computer, I then move them into this template. So, all I do for that is to open the photo in Photoshop, then I โselect allโ by pressing Command and the letter A for โall.โ Thatโs how it is on the Mac (Windows usersย it would be Control and the letter A). Then I hit Command-C to “copy” it to the computer’s (invisible) clipboard.
Then I close that photo and (with the template already open) paste the image onto the template by pressing command and the letter V. (Control-V for Windows users)
Arrange the Photo and Insert Captions
Since I like to create a frame around the photo, I like to have it centered out perfectly. So my first thing to do is to display the grid lines on the Photoshop template. To do this I simply go to โviewโ then โshowโ and select “Grid” (Or simply select โCommandโ and the โ key). Doing that again will turn the grids back off too.
Now that the grid is selected you can drag the picture to where ever you want. I like to slide it to the corner of the first grid lines (both vertical and lateral).
Now is when Iโll start typing over the words of the template text. But before I do, Iโll slide the text under the picture and try to center things out the best I can. So when I do type, I keep an eye on the photo and when I should start the next line. If at all possible, I try to start new lines for the different descriptive factors (ex: What, and where is on line one along with the band name, the actual peopleโs names are on line two, and the details are on lines three and four).
In this example, I typed over the word โwhatโ with โConcert at Kennedyโs Bar.โ Then I typed over โWhereโ with โSt. Louis, MO.โ I continued on this way even adding any special notes and interesting facts about this photo.
* I use this text template in order to remain consistent. Of course you donโt have to use it, you could simply start typing away with your own narration. I just like doing it this way to keep me as consistent as possible.
Also notice, I did not center this picture in the middle of the template. That would be wasting space. So after moving everything to the upper left corner, then I move on to the next step: cropping off the dead space.
Cropping and Saving Photo
Now itโs time to crop off the dead space. I simply select the cropping tool and use the grid to get a good approximate frame around the whole picture. Once I do, I hit “enter” to complete the crop.
And here is what I am left with!
At this point itโs a good idea to see ifย everything looks good to you. Make sure everything is spelled correctly, and reads nicely. Also make sure the text is centered out under the picture nicely. Then turn the grid lines back off.
Then Iโll flatten the image (I figured, to save space who really needs a layered file if the only thing I did with the photo was create a small caption. I figure if I ever needed to change the caption, I would simply color out the old caption and add the new text on a new layer. Then I would flatten it again).
To flatten this image, I went up to โlayerโ on the menu bar and then selected โFlatten image.โ
Then I simply save it as (whatever name, or naming system I want), but I save it with the TIFF file format (File > “Save As”).
I feel if I am going to go through the trouble of doing all this, and using such high quality settings, I am certainly going to save it as a high quality format that doesnโt degrade if I were to edit it in the future. But then the question is, what about loading it to the Internet. And thatโs why after saving this as a TIFF, then I hit โSave Asโ again, and save it as a JPEG file.
You can be the judge of how high of a JPEG quality setting you want. But I will suggest save it as: High quality (at least 10) and select โbaseline optimized.โ This might be too large to upload onto some sites, if so, maybe save it as a lower quality file (maybe 3 or 4). But I would still use the baseline optimized selection.
Basically it comes down to having a master file (TIFF) and possibly a few different sized copies to send to your friends or upload to some site on the internet (JPEG).
And that’s it! That’s your first photo saved with a visual caption written out below it.
Reusing This Master Template For Your Entire Photo Collection
Now you can open the template again (which should be blank if you saved the previous picture โsave asโ which would leave the template unaltered). This time I will show you another size picture and how the same process will work for this too.
Open Template and Open New Picture
Select-All On Picture, Select Copy, and then Paste to the Template
Add Text, and Arrange
Crop. Turn Off Grid Lines
Save Your Image As Something Else
Click on (Fileย > “Save As”) from top menu item.
With this template, you can copy almost any shap of picture. You could choose to add captions at the bottom of the photo, or if itโs a skinny picture (like a school portrait) you can put the text to the side of the photo. Whatever you like!
Here is an example of how different photos fit into the template. The key is to remember to save the template “as” something else and not just hit save by itself. The worse case scenario is you may have to make a new template if you screw up and only hit save instead of save as.
I hope this idea was a help to you, and people for generations will have at least some information about your photo no matter where it winds up on the internet or elsewhere.
If you have any questions about how I did any of the steps above, just ask away in the comments below.
Have fun!