Annotations, Captions, and Comments on Photos in ThumbsPlus

Some notes and a report on strange behavior in ThumbsPlus

Notes by Walter vom Saal. Updated 3/4/2011

In my discussion of how to transfer files from ThumbsPlus to Lightroom I discuss Annotations and Captions, but ignore Comments. Here I will describe my understanding of differences among these, and also some curious behavior I found iin ThumbsPlus while trying to understand the behavior of Annotations, Captions, and Comments in that program. I am using ThumbsPlus Pro version 7.0 on a Windows platform, so the procedures below refer to those versions.

Annotations, Captions, and Comments

There are several senses in which these terms are used.

First, they can refer to verbal information about a photo that are associated with that photo in a variety of settings. For example, one could talk about a caption or a comment that accompanies a photo in a web album, a label that goes with the photo when printing out photos on a contact sheet, text that may accompany a photo on a site such as Flickr, and so on.

Second, they can be terms used by some particular program that organizes or displays photos, referring to specific fields that contain text associated with each photo.

- in Lightroom, each photo can have a caption associated with it. The caption associated with each photo is stored in the Lightroom database (which Lightroom calls a Catalog). If desired, the caption can then be shown along with each photos in slideshows, in web albums, or in print layouts.

- in ThumbsPlus, each photo can have an annotation associated with it. Again, the annotation can be shown along with each photo in slideshows, in web albums, or in print layouts.

Third, they can refer to text fields that reside inside the image file itself. For example, JPEG files can include IPTC data fields that include a CAPTION field. JPEG files can also have a COMMENT field. Such additional data that can be added to an image file is referred to collectively as metadata. Not all image file types allow metadata to be written to the file. For example, JPEG photos can (but don't have to) have IPTC metadata, EXIF metadata, and Comment fields. TIFF photos can have IPTC and EXIF metadata. Photos saved as GIF or BMP files do not contain metadata.

- To read more about these fields, see Wikipedia entries under JPEG, IPTC, and metadata.

- If you want to see the contents of these metadata fields in your photos, try IrfanView. It is a powerful free image viewer that is widely used and respected. Open a photo in IrfanView and click Image > Information and you can see IPTC fields, EXIF fields, and Comment fields. (However, it does not seem to show metadata in GIF or PNG files.)

Moving metadata in and out of files in ThumbsPlus

I will refer to these procedure below:

Read keywords from files. In Options > Preferences > Keywords tab, check “IPTC keywords.” Then select the folders or photos you want to look at and right click > Thumbnail > Make (or press F3).

Write keywords to files.

- Select all photos for which you want to add the keywords from ThumbsPlus to the files.

- Click on Edit > Edit IPTC Info (or right-click on photos and select Edit IPTC info)

- Click on Keywords in the top menu bar of the dialog box and select “Combine with database.” You will see that the Keyword box is now grayed out and says “(append from database).” This leaves the existing keywords in the IPTC metadata and adds the keywords from the ThumbsPlus database.

[Caution: if you click this option and it is already checked, it UNCHECKS this option. Look at the Keywords section to see whether you have done it correctly: it must be grayed out and say “(Append from database)”.]

[Note: Do NOT choose Replace with database. This erases the existing keywords in the IPTC metadata and replaces them with the keywords from the ThumbsPlus database. It will cause you to lose any keywords that are in the Lightroom catalog but not in the ThumbsPlus database.]

Read annotations from files. In Options > Preferences > Thumbnails tab, under "Automatically copy image comments to database annotations," check “Always” Then select the folders or photos you want to look at and right click > Thumbnail > Make (or press F3).

Write annotations to files.

- Select all photos for which you want to add the annotations from ThumbsPlus to the files.

- Click on Edit > Edit IPTC Info (or right-click on photos and select Edit IPTC info)

- Click on Populate > Caption from Annotation. You will see that the Caption box is now grayed out and says “(from database annotation).” This erases any existing caption from the IPTC metadata and replaces it with the annotation from the ThumbsPlus database.

[Caution: if you click this and it is already checked, it UNCHECKS this option. Look at the Caption section to see whether you have done it correctly: it should be grayed out and say “(From database annotation)”.]

Read comments from files. Double-click a photo to open it, then click Edit > Edit Comments.

Write comments to files. Read the comment as above, edit it, close the dialog box, and re-save the photo.

Strange behavior in ThumbsPlus

Using both Comments and Annotations on JPG files in Thumbs can lead to some strange behavior. The description below applies to JPG files, but may apply to other file types as well.

1. Read annotation from files in ThumbsPlus replaces the existing annotation.

This is not particularly strange, and in fact is the same thing Lightroom does with its Captions. However, ThumbsPlus documentation does not make it clear that this will happen. In the ThumbsPlus Hitchhikers Guide to ThumbsPlus, the top paragraph on p. 77 is easily misunderstood. It says: "ThumbsPlus can import file comments automatically as the thumbnail annotations (Options > Preferences > Thumbnails). If there is an annotation already, then ThumbsPlus will not add the additional comments to the annotation." I initially read this to mean that the existing annotation will remain unchanged. It actually means the existing annotation will be replaced.

2. Read annotation from files in ThumbsPlus actually puts both the IPTC Caption and the JPEG Comment in the ThumbsPlus annotation.

3. Read image comments from files using the procedure described above actually reads both the JPEG Comment field and the IPTC Caption field.

4. Strange behavior. Because reading the annotation from the file in ThumbsPlus actually reads both the IPTC Caption and the JPEG Comment, you can get the following strange behavior in ThumbsPlus.

- First, set Thumbs to automatically read annotations from the file as described above (Options > Preferences > Thumbnails tab, under "Automatically copy image comments to database annotations," check “Always”)

- Write a comment to the file as describe above. Let's call it "Comment."

- Add an annotation to the photo in the ThumbsPlus database. Let's call the annotation "Annotation."

(You do that with Right-click > Properties > Database (Annotation field) OR right-click > Thumbnail > Annotate OR just press Ctrl+E.)

- Write the annotation to the file as describe above.

- Due to #3 above, the annotation now becomes "Comment Annotation"

- Write the annotation to the file again, and the annotation becomes "Comment Comment Annotation"

- Write the annotation to the file again, and the annotation becomes "Comment Comment Comment Annotation"

- Write the annotation to the file again, and the annotation becomes "Comment Comment Comment Comment Annotation"

...and so on.

What is happening is that each time you write to the file you are putting in both the annotation and the comment into the caption field, so that the comment becomes part of the annotation, and so on.

5. One final little flaw. If you write an annotation to the file that is only one character, it will write to the file in ThumbsPlus (it shows up in IrfanView), but it will not be read back in correctly to populate the annotation.

Because of these kinds of problems,

I recommend that ThumbsPlus users not use both image comments and IPTC annotations.

Annotations, Captions, and Comments on Photos in ThumbsPlus