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Printing contact sheets that include the IPTC data "Person Shown", "Event" and "Additional Info"

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mplaiss

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Joined
Jul 30, 2022
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Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom Classic version 11.1
Operating System
  1. macOS 12 Monterey
I used Lightroom to add Metadata info to some old family photos. So the info I added to the metadata was mostly in the IPTC area. It included the file name, people shown in the photo, additional info, the event (if there was one) and the locations. I found a You Tube video that was excellent in explaining how to print out contact sheets with metadata. HOWEVER, when choosing the metadata I wanted to print under each photo on the contact sheet there was not an option to include "Person Shown", "Event" and "Additional Info" Can anyone help?
 
Proper handling of metadata in the Lr print module has never been properly developed. Sadly, there is excellent functionality in the Slide Show module, but Adobe have never seen fit to port this into the Print module.

There is a whole bunch of workarounds, which I have lost familiarity with. Hopefully, some of this can be posted by the more experienced community here.

Personally, I use a variety of techniques to marry metadata and images for printing to a professional standard. There are a number of plug-ins which allow metadata of interest to be exported to a Csv or Excel file. Then their are mail merge options within InDesign or Photoshop to design templates to create the required image / metadata combinations. However, these tools are clunky, out of date and not intuitive to use. Several of the Affinity apps have a superb built in mail merge option. It is seriously well designed. I intend to convert my current workflow to use this tool, maybe this winter. It is also possible to mail merge into a Word or PowerPoint document, but Microsoft makes it too tricky to include images in their mail merge. I did get it working but lost the Word template I used and have been unable to get this option to work in a long time. I have stopped trying this option some time ago, as I know the Affinity Mail/Merge is superior to Adobe or Microsoft.

I will post links to two plug-ins I use to export metadata for images of interest when I get back to my desk, probably in the morning.

I recognised this feature was missing from Lr from the very first beta version, have posted requests thru the correct channels, ,but I have given up hope that Adobe will ever implement the elegant solution required, which Lr deserves.
 
I just remembered this technique.

I know some people use/ configure the metadata display feature (Shortcut I) within the Library module (grid and loupe views) to display the metadata of interest, size the thumbnails or loupe view as required and do a screen grab. A bit sad that Adobe cannot present a better option.

There are a few other possibilities, hopefully others will respond with alternative suggestions.
 
Doing it in InDesign doesn’t have to be a mail merge. It can just be a template that you throw images into. InDesign supports caption variables based on image metadata, which can be inserted into a text frame as a sort of caption template, and when that frame touches an image, it will display the metadata fields that you selected to include in the text variables. It’s relatively easy to set up a contact sheet template that would fill captions from each image’s metadata.

InDesign metadata caption variables v00.gif


For mplaiss, the main problem with this option is that in InDesign, the list of metadata you can include in a caption variable seems to be hard-coded, and the list doesn’t include Person Shown, Event, and Additional Info. I don’t know enough about InDesign scripting to know if a script might be able to dig out additional metadata to include in a caption variable.
 
Doing it in InDesign doesn’t have to be a mail merge.
Very true… I had forgotten about that option.

I have stopped using InDesign as my licence does not work any more, always regarded the interface as Non intuitive. Not worth my whike subscribing monthly for it. I use Affinity Publisher anytime I need to layout anything where PowerPoint is not good enough.

Another thought…. Layout using the Book module. Not ideal, but maybe an option.
 
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