titles vs captions vs file names

[AlisonTB]

Hello All;

I have a file naming convention thats essential to my image library. My clients want titles, not the file names. When I export images I can add a title and export only that, but the original file name doesn't seem to go with it in the metadata, making it hard for me to retrieve/identify images that way later on. Also, Lightroom then sees the title in the thumbnail views instead of my very important original file name. Suggestions?

A

 

[Mark Sirota]

There's no particularly clean way to do this with Lightroom alone, but there is with plug-ins.

In particular: On Export, rename your files according to Title. At the same time, use Jeffrey's Snapshot on Export plug-in to store the title (exported filename) in the name of a snapshot.

Later, when your client discusses that photo with you, they'll be using the Title. To map that back to your internal filenames, use Jeffrey's Extended Search plug-in to find it.

 

[AlisonTB]

I'm confused. this is what Jeffrey's Snapshot on export plug-in says :

When you create a Develop snapshot — with a plugin, or by hand by clicking on the “+” in the section header just above the purple arrow in the screenshot above — you are creating a namedrecord of all the various settings used by Lightroom to convert from your original master “negative” image to the version you have in the Develop module now, including any crop, white-balance settings, sharpening and grain, locally-painted corrections, exposure adjustments, etc. etc. etc.
Note that a Develop snapshot does not include Library-module metadata, such as the caption, keywords, a geoencoded location, etc. To save those as well, you'll want to create a virtual copy(which at the moment can not be done by a plugin).


Does this suggest I make virtual copies before export as a way of saving all the metatdata, and then removing the title after safely exporting to my client who wants just the titles?

 

[Mark Sirota]

I'm not sure what your quoted text has to do with this -- I think maybe you're overthinking it.

Basically, this workflow just creates a place to store the exported filename, which you need to do because that's the only name your client will have for the file. There's no other good way to do that in Lightroom today.

 

[AlisonTB]

I found a work-around. I add the title in the title area of the image Metadata, then export the image with the title and file name only (using the custom settings in 'file naming' in the export panel). Then the title and the file name go together to the client as one, and they can then rename or whatever from there. This way I have a record of the title in the LR metadata, and in the documents we send the client.