Inserting "Title"-IPTC-field, when you have no Lightroom

[hanoman]

Lightroom Version Number

11.2

Operating System

1. Windows 10

I am the webmaster of my Photoclub and want my colleages to enter a title in the Title-IPTC- field of their Photos to be published with a Lightroom web galley.
Inserting this field in the WIN Explorer isn't functioning anymore because the entered data will land in a Microsoft nonstandard field XPTitle, which isn't recognized by Lightroom. What do you think, is the easiest way for an unexperienced WIN user to enter an IPTC title.
Thank you for helping.

 

[Rob_Cullen]

Adobe Bridge can do this, and is free for anybody.
And Windows 'Properties' will display the title.
And the Title appears when imported to Lr-Classic.
Even the Windows Properties dialog can add a title that appears in both 'Title' and 'Caption' when LrC reads the file metadata.
Edit: Just reread the OP question and note "nonstandard field XPTitle, which isn't recognized by Lightroom." and yet I somehow managed to see it in Lr-Classic by adding Title in the Windows Properties dialog.

 

[Gnits]

Great question and Bridge is a good answer. I wonder what other suggestions might be out there.

 

[Paul_DS256]

Inserting this field in the WIN Explorer isn't functioning anymore because the entered data will land in a Microsoft nonstandard field XPTitle, which isn't recognized by Lightroom.

Not sure this is true. I take it that you have the club members set the Windows Explorer TITLE field for the JPG they are submitting,

I started working on an example to use EXIFTOOL to copy the TITLE put in by Windows to a field that LrC would see. However, setting up the test data proved surprising.

I exported a T.JPG from LrC with only the COPYRIGHT metadata set. I then went into T.JPG and added a TITLE and SUBJECT.

I then exported the metadata from T.JPG using EXIFTOOL then looked for "MS " using FIND and this is what I found

[EXIF] Image Description : MS TITLE
[EXIF] XP Title : MS TITLE
[EXIF] XP Subject : MS SUBJECT
[IPTC] Caption-Abstract : MS TITLE
[XMP] Title : MS TITLE
[XMP] Description : MS TITLE[/CODE]

So, Windows 10 Explorer populates the fields LrC uses.

I then IMPORTED T.JPG back into LrC and this is what I saw

So, at least on my Windows 10 it seems be picked up properly on the import. Not sure if this is because all the fields Windows wants to use are blank or not.

If you can't replicated this and want a simple single line command to copy metadata fields using EXIFTOOL. let me know.

 

[hanoman]

Thanks all for your effort. Originally i recommended to use the Explorer, until i get a photo from a colleague without a Title in LR. I examined the jpg in exiftoolgui and the missing title was in XPTitle. I crosschecked anew and wrote a title with the Explorer, oh scary, me and probably my colleague didn't click the save button!
I will further recommend using the Detailarea (the third column in Explorer) for the windows user and the costfree Adobe Bridge for the Mac lovers.

 

[Paul_DS256]

and the costfree Adobe Bridge for the Mac lovers

There doesn't seem to be a need for imposing Bridge on MAC users. They can use the PHOTOS app to add title. The only complication is that they have to import them into PHOTO then export to them to save the metadata changes (as far as I can see).

Here are the changes I added to an image in MAC (really old version)

When I export this to another JPG and look at the listing EXIFTOOL and grep here is what I see searching for "MAC "

[EXIF]                    Image Description                              : MAC DESCRIPTION
[XMP]                      Description                                          : MAC DESCRIPTION
[XMP]                      Title                                                      : MAC TITLE
[IPTC]                    Object Name                                          : MAC TITLE
[IPTC]                    Caption-Abstract                                : MAC DESCRIPTION

Unfortunately, none of these get mapped to Lightroom TITLE either in LR6 (remember old MAC) or LrC 11.1. However CAPTION does.

From LrC

So, you could maybe standardize on CAPTION but some experimentation is recommended since I'm running MACOS 10.11.6.

I'm not a strong MAC user so there may be other options but PHOTO was the only one I could find for setting TITLE or DESCRIPTION.

 

[hanoman]

Thank you again. I have ca 150-200 galleries online and the members of my club are used to prepare title and creator metadata with their photos, so i don't want to change it. My confusion origins in not pressing the save key after changing the title in the 3rd column of explorer. I am sorry to steal your time.

 

[Paul_DS256]

I am sorry to steal your time.

No problem. I like digging into challenges like this.
Don't forget regardless of how they enter the information, you can use EXIFTOOL to copy metadata fields

 

[hanoman]

When the title is in some Photos constantly in the wrong field, i use LR/Transporter plugin to correct it in a batch.