Is there a way to add captions to Lightroom photos based on title and/or description?

Question

I know there are several workarounds using the print or slideshow module to add captions to photos in LR (see How to add captions to photos in Lightroom).

I have a collection of old family images that I would like to export with a textfield attached to them based on the title and/or description to preserve and share them this way without information being lost. Is there a plugin (for LR4) or a hidden workflow that can help me?

For clarification: I want to add "old-school" captions beneath the image during the export.

Answer 1

Yes, the LR/Mogrify 2 plugin does exactly what you want. Once you've followed the installation instructions, do the following:

1. Bring up the Export dialog.
2. In the Post-Process Actions window, double-click Text Annotations (under LR/Mogrify 2)
3. In Define your text, enter {title}. (You can also get there by clicking Add Token, then picking Title of photo in the IPTC Tokens list.)

You can also use the Outer Borders feature of LR/Mogrify 2 to put the caption in a border rather than over the photo.

Answer 2

When you add caption and title data to an image in Lightroom, it is preserved in IPTC metadata format, and therefore already embedded in the image. Most photo programs, and Windows and Mac OSX will display this info when viewing details of an image: i.e. Mac OSX 'Get Info'.

For easier sharing, you can ask Lightroom to use the 'Caption as Filename' on export, which makes the Caption even more useful.

Answer 3

This is possible without the use of a plugin as described on this Adobe blog post.

But if you want to see the captions on the exported photo, here’s a trick: Export JPEGs of captioned slides. In the Slideshow module, create your slide show with captions as described above, and then press Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) to change the Export PDF button to Export JPEG. Click the Export JPEG button to export the photos as JPEGs with captions (and other slide layout and overlay options) intact.

Here is a video which explains how to add caption in the slideshow module, afterwards just export your slideshow as explained in the adobe blog.

Option 2

On this forum they mention that you can also print to JPEG. It doesn't allow you to freely position the position of the metadata.

Answer 4

If you want to do this from your metadata ("Title" for instance) added in the Library module, follow this process:

Go to the Print module. Select one of the single image templates. Modify the size of the cell to be exactly the output size you want (eg. 4x6) - with no borders at all. Under the Print Jobs panel, set the "Custom File Dimensions" to exactly match the cell size from above. Also select to print to Jpg file on that same panel. Under the Page panel, choose the info field you want to have displayed (the metadata field(s)... Set your text color and size, sharpening choices etc. (Save all this as a new Template) Select your photos and print them. (You can also key the info you want printed when doing it one-by-one as well). You'll get files with the data printed over the image (within the boundaries). The color of your text will flip if you select a color background to contrast appropriately.

This isn't all that wonderful, but it's there.