What do you include in image Title?

[hbwilliams22]

Lightroom Version Number

8.3.1

Operating System

1. macOS 10.14 Mojave

I heavily use keywords, and wondering what I should be including in the image Title, if anything.

 

[clee01l]

To differentiate between the Title and the Caption. The Title is basically the short description, the Caption is a long description.
Ideally the Title should not exceed 255 characters and not more than one line.
e.g.
Title: "Niagara Falls Vacation 2019 — American Falls"
Caption: "Niagara's American Falls as seen from the "Maid of the Mist" boat tour. With Mindy and the kids June 23d 2019

The Title and/or perhaps the Caption will show up when posting to online image sites when the metadata is present on the uploaded file. It is also displayable as an overlay on slideshows.

 

[Conrad Chavez]

If you use a specific online photo service, you might experiment to see how they handle titles. On the one I use, if an uploaded image contains a Title, it will be shown in larger text above the Caption, and it will also be shown in some of their thumbnail layouts. That informs how I decide to use the Title field, at least for images uploaded to that website.

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

What Cletus said. For me, shooting events, the title is mostly the event (e.g. FGCU vs Auburn Soccer 8/25/2019), the caption is something I want to say or describe about the photo. For those doing more serious sports shooting the caption would include the players names, numbers, perhaps a historical note (e.g. school prior), etc. I've seen people's captions run on for long paragraphs.

Sadly the comment from Conrad is very relevant. For example, Smugmug's new lightbox, unlike the prior, shows the title only and not the caption, which made it really pointless for my use as all the titles in a gallery were (generally) the same. Though enough people complained they are reconsidering. But if you have a use planned on specific site(s), check their display before deciding how to code.

 

[Califdan]

When Christie's puts your image up for auction for a half million dollars, The title is how it is listed in the brochure (e.g. "Fallen Aspen in Autumn 2019"). The Caption is what they read aloud to the bidders when the image comes up for sale ("Image taken by H B Williams in September 2019 near the base of Vernal Falls in Yosemite National Park in California during a light snow flurry")

 

[LouieSherwin]

For dealing with the short sightedness of some sharing services you may want to look into any of Jeffery Friedl's Publish plug ins. I am not sure about his SmugMug but for Flickr I can choose to map source metadata to a different output metadata that work around such limitations.

-louie

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

When Christie's puts your image up for auction for a half million dollars, The title is how it is listed in the brochure ...

That's what I have been planning for.

 

[hbwilliams22]

What Cletus said. For me, shooting events, the title is mostly the event (e.g. FGCU vs Auburn Soccer 8/25/2019), the caption is something I want to say or describe about the photo. For those doing more serious sports shooting the caption would include the players names, numbers, perhaps a historical note (e.g. school prior), etc. I've seen people's captions run on for long paragraphs.

Sadly the comment from Conrad is very relevant. For example, Smugmug's new lightbox, unlike the prior, shows the title only and not the caption, which made it really pointless for my use as all the titles in a gallery were (generally) the same. Though enough people complained they are reconsidering. But if you have a use planned on specific site(s), check their display before deciding how to code.

Good information everyone. Now, if I am a casual shooter (no publishing, no posting to online services, no selling images for $500k), do I even need to bother using the title?

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

Good information everyone. Now, if I am a casual shooter (no publishing, no posting to online services, no selling images for $500k), do I even need to bother using the title?

Please don't take this the wrong way but how would we know?

You've told us what you do not do -- but what do you DO with images? For what purpose would you put any metadata in them -- that might tell you which to use.

For example, if all you do is save them on your PC for future reference or for your descendents to see -- doesn't matter, since one can use various tools to search whatever field you put information in.

But if you share them with others in some way, the answer is likely driven by how as well as what you want out of it. Slideshows (for example) are probably more likely to display title than caption (though marginally so), so if you like just the image showing and no text, coding in caption may be good. If you want it seen, title might be better.

There's really no right or wrong answer in a generic sense. It is all about consumption -- you have to code metadata based on what, or who, is going to consume your images.

 

[hbwilliams22]

but what do you DO with images?

Strictly for personal consumption. I want to be able to find my images 20 years from now and glean a bit of information from them. As my catalog grows and time passes, just wanting to make sure I have a sensible workflow. Maybe not all images need a title in my case. Perhaps I can include a title for those grouped shots, like vacations and the ones that do make it into my small portfolio.

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

Consider lightroom, it will search in "any text field" so you can be fairly cavalier where and how you code, and still find things.

That said, there is more to "finding" than, well, just finding. As your catalog grows you will probably want to organize it more, so you can group shots in different ways - find individuals, subject matters, locations. That larger the catalog, and to some extent the more demanding your eventual need for organization, the more important it is to have a consistent strategy, so that the relevant information is kept the same way in 2020 as it was in 2010 or 2030.

The related consideration is that some fields have meaning that work better with certain tools, beyond just title and caption. Keywords, for example, are used in many tools and sites (including lightroom) and can make it easier to group and organize. For example, in LR you can easily do smart collections based on keywords or combination keywords. Capture date/time is another frequently critical field for organization (much more relevant if you ever digitize film where it's not just already in there).

I am not really disagreeing with your conclusion, but I do suggest that consistency often is rewarded much further down the line than we can see today, when you are dealing with far, far more images. And perhaps more importantly -- memory fades. Capture all the info you may ever want to know when you first import images. I can't tell you how frequently I look at a shot I took, and say "who was that?" Or sometimes even "where was that?" You can always ignore too much data later, but you may not be able to recreate it.

 

[clee01l]

Good information everyone. Now, if I am a casual shooter (no publishing, no posting to online services, no selling images for $500k), do I even need to bother using the title?

I think Titles and Captions quite important for my use. I have insect photos going back over more than 10 years. A Keyword search may pull up the image of a particular insect, but Without the Title or Caption, is is often difficult remembering details after a long time has passed.
Also, most people use social services like FaceBook, Instagram etc. If you don't now, then you will likely in the future. Titles and Captions are a courtesy to others and on some sites required. If you get into the habit of adding a Title and Caption to all of your important Photos, you will appreciate the effort at some future time.