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Append text to description of multiple images

Per Karlsson
Is there a way to append text to the existing description of multiple images at the same time?

Let's say I have 2 pictures with the description "church". I then want to add to the end of both those descriptions the text ", Madrid".

It is of course easy to do one by one, but if you have 50 images, or 500, or 2000, that each should have the same text appended it becomes a different issue.
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Comments

11 comments

Date Votes
  • rmoorlag
    Yes, you can add keywords to multiple images at the same time.
    Just select all images you want. Then, in the info panel; add the keyword you want. Tada..
    Example:
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  • Per Karlsson
    Thanks, but for keywords this is not an issue, since keywords are more or less by definition appended.

    It IS an issue for Description though.

    For instance, in the example I mentioned:

    Let's say I have to pictures one with the Description "church" and another with the Description "hotel" and I want to add ", Madrid" (including a comma) at the end of the description on both those images. Is that possible?
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  • rmoorlag
    What field are you refering to?
    I don's see 'description'. Is this the 'Caption' or 'Title' perhaps?
    The the same applies here
    Roelof
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  • imaginatian
    Hi,

    You didn't state what operating system you are on, so this scripted solution is only good for Windows. It can be made in to an Apple Script, but I don't know how to do that.

    In Media Pro select the Scripts menu option. The last entry in the drop down menu should be Tools. Select this and it should show you two options. Select the "Reveal Scripts Folder" option. Click OK to the pop-up message and it should open a Explorer window. If you've not done any scripting before this folder should be empty.

    You now need to copy the following script in to a text file. Use Notepad to do this.

    Option Explicit

    Dim app, mediaItems, mediaItem, strText
    Dim L_title_text, L_message1_text, L_message2_text, L_message3_text
    Dim AddWord

    ' This is the text to add
    AddWord = ", Madrid"

    L_title_text = "Phase One Media Pro"
    L_message1_text = "Please launch Phase One Media Pro."
    L_message2_text = "You need to select at least one media item in the active catalog in order to use this script."
    L_message3_text = "'" & AddWord & "' will be added to the description field for each selected media item."

    ' display an about box
    If (MsgBox(L_message3_text, 65, L_title_text) = vbOk) Then
    Main()
    End If

    Sub Main()
    Set app = CreateObject("PhaseOneMediaPro.Application")

    ' get the active catalog
    If (app.Catalogs.count = 0) Then
    MsgBox L_message1_text, vbCritical, L_title_text
    Elseif (app.ActiveCatalog.Selection.Count = 0) Then
    MsgBox L_message2_text, vbCritical, L_title_text
    Else
    For Each mediaItem In app.ActiveCatalog.Selection
    mediaItem.Annotations.Description = mediaItem.Annotations.Description & AddWord
    Next
    End If
    End Sub
    You need to save the text file with an extension of ".vbs" in to the directory revealed earlier. You should give the file a suitable name as this is what will appear in the script menu in Media Pro. You could call the file "Append Madrid to Description.vbs" - don't put the comma in the file name! If Windows tries to make you save the file as ".txt" then change the "Save as type" drop down below the filename to "All files *.*".

    You now need to restart Media Pro. It only picks up available scripts when it is launched. Now under the Scripts menu there should be an option to "Append Madrid to Description.vbs". Select some images and then run the script. It will ask you to confirm that you want to do this. Click OK and, if you've created the script correctly, it will do what you want.

    If you've also got a picture from Barcelona then you've got two options. You can copy the script to "Append Barcelona to Description.vbs". You would then need to edit the script to change the line
    AddWord = ", Madrid"to
    AddWord = ", Barcelona"
    This route requires you to restart Media Pro so it picks up the new script. If you had lots of scripts it would make the Script menu messy in Media Pro. To get around this you can add folders e.g. "Append Spanish Cities", with these scripts in it and "Append French Cities", with suitable scripts in it etc. I don't know of any limitation to the number or levels of folders other screen space and sense!

    Alternatively you can edit the script in place, but it should then be renamed to not have Madrid in the name. You don't need to restart Media Pro between edits.

    Remember that any changes made to the descriptions are only within the Media Pro catalogue until you export the annotations back to the original files.

    Don't forget to add these scripts to your backup strategy in case you move machines or have a hardware problem.

    Hope this helps. Any questions etc...

    Ian
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  • imaginatian
    [quote="rmoorlag" wrote:
    Is this the 'Caption' or 'Title' perhaps?

    Yes. It depends on your "Field Names" preference under the Edit > Preferences > General menu. It's a hangover from when the standards were still being decided. I use the IPTC Core option, so get to see "Description".

    Ian
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  • Per Karlsson
    rmoorlag - yes "Caption". Called Description in e.g. Photo Supreme and Portfolio.

    But it could just as well apply to other text fields.

    It could be useful for every field to have the possibility to choose between, say (depending on relevance), Replace, Delete, Append...

    Will take a look at the script. Am not very familiar with scripts.
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  • Per Karlsson
    Sorry, forgot, yes, Windows 64b.
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  • Per Karlsson
    Ian,

    Tried the script and it worked very well. However, since as you point out, I will need to create a new script for every word (or edit the existing one) I don't think this is a very realistic solution.

    Here's how I would use it:

    I typically add metadata (keywords and caption) to images in fairly large batches, say between 500 and 2000 images. That would typically be a group of images on a specific subject.

    I organise the images in groups with similar motifs and then add captions (as well as keywords) to a large extent in groups, the same thing to all images in a group.

    This could be in several levels in a hierarchy and it could also be in several "dimensions" (location, type of subject, concept, etc).

    (Not sure if I'm making this very clear...)

    This means that there are a lot of small snippets of texts that I will add to a batch of images. Probably like a hundred or so.

    The way that works in my current DAM (Portfolio) is like this:
    - select the images to append a caption snippet to
    - select "edit caption"
    - type the text snippet
    - select "append" (instead of replace) and click OK.

    Very quick and easy. Doing it with scripts seems just too cumbersome and prone to errors.

    It seems that it can be done in a similar way in Photo Supreme. (Have not yet had time to see about the other DAM alternatives I am looking at.)

    This is actually such an important feature for me so it may even be a deal-breaker. ☹️

    Unless I can find some other way to do a similar thing.
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  • imaginatian
    Per,

    Glad the script worked. However you've gone and changed the requirements!

    Are there options within Media Pro? I guess there are, as it would be possible to develop scripts that prompted you for the text to append, replace or delete from various meta data fields. However this goes way above my scripting capabilities.

    Other than by scripting there is no way of doing what you require within Media Pro.

    If you are evaluating Media Pro then unless it meets 101% of your requirements I would stay away from it. I've been using this software since it was iView Media Pro and since then it has been acquired by Microsoft and then Phase One. I can only think of two major improvements since then. The first was Microsoft's removal of the reliance on Apple's Quicktime to handle various image formats. This is still present for the Mac version of the software but if you are on Windows it now relies on the Codec platform for image handling. You can use Window's own Codecs, those from your camera's manufacturer or, if you've got any sense, those from FastPictureViewer. The other major change was an increase in maximum catalogue size. Although I've tested this I don't really see it as a benefit as performance suffers - if I change one data item then my next incremental backup would contain a 5GB+ size new catalogue file. Therefore I've stayed with multiple but smaller catalogues. All other changes in the last 8 or so years have really only been cosmetic, and then mostly to do with rebranding to reflect new ownership.

    In fact I'm still using iView's Media Pro and for my requirements it is still going strong. It has it's quirks and crashes now and then if you do things in a certain order, which I usually remember not to do.

    There are plenty of other posts in this forum questioning whether Phase One are neglecting this software. I believe they are but it would be commercial suicide for them to admit so. I don't think they really understood what they were buying from Microsoft. I would guess that under the hood the actual code base behind this software is terrible. It was cutting edge a decade ago but in technology terms that is just far too long to keep trying to bolt on new functionality to old software. It needs a total re-write from the ground up and that is too big an investment for a small company to make. The problem is that the longer both Microsoft and now Phase One have put it off then the harder and more expensive a job it has become. With Lightroom dominating the market place, along with a number of smaller DAM options, it probably doesn't make commercial sense to even try.

    Of course I could be really cynical and suggest that Phase One weren't actually bothered with the software they bought from Microsoft and are now just going through the motions with it. What they considered to be of more value was the customer database that came along with it. Most users of Media Pro are 'serious' photographers, whether professional or not. This means that most of them have a level of income, a portion of which Phase One hoped to persuade them to part with in purchasing their flagship software Capture One. In that respect I'm a bad customer of theirs: I got the first version of their Media Pro for free as part of the migration from Microsoft; all subsequent releases have been minor versions so free of charge; I have no intention of even trying Capture One. This means they have invested money to keep me as a user but I've given them £0.00 back in return, and cost them time and money with a few support issues I've raised. As I've put in a post elsewhere this is a terrible business model. I would suspect a large proportion of the user base is similar to me. Therefore Phase One have made little or no return on their investment - even if, as I suspect, they only paid Microsoft a nominal fee.

    On the original iView Media Pro forum your problem would have quickly had many responses, with someone from the support team probably developing the script you needed and testing it with you offline. If this hadn't been done then a solution to your problem would have appeared in the next release or so of the software. Oh, the good old days! When Microsoft got hold of it their forum involvement changed a bit with Anita, bless her, providing answers, suggestions and work-arounds to issues. Actual bug fixes were done but rare. Now Phase One are rarely seen on this forum - other than asking for problems to be raised as support tickets. Their reasoning that this is a user to user forum is very weak and is probably the most accurate indicator of their commitment to this software. At the very least it suggests that they don't actually use their own software.

    I'm sorry that this isn't good news. However as you've only invested time so far it's probably not as bad as it might have been. I guess that at some point down the road I'll be looking for something new. Until then...

    Regards,

    Ian
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  • Per Karlsson
    Ian,

    Thanks for all those comments.

    I have been looking at MP for a long time so I too know it from the iView time although I have never actively used it. A long time ago I was looking for a DAM an at that time it was essentially iView and Protfolio (plus, I guess, Cumuls that I never really looked at and perhaps something more).

    At that time I chose Portfolio.

    Which is now dead, although the sw still works. But relying on a dead sw for a critical task is not very appetizing so I am looking around for an alternative.

    But from various comments on this forum it seems MP is going the same way. And if I look at it, not much have changed since I looked at it I guess almost ten years ago.

    This is a pity since it seems to be the DAM that comes closes to what I need, except in some features. Perhaps that is simply since it is actually very similar to Portfolio, using similar concepts. (Looking at e.g. Photo Supreme its way of organising things is on the other hand very different.)

    One of the important things that is missing in MP is what this thread was originally about: appending text.

    But that and the general consensus about its demise makes me think that it is not worth considering it as a serious alternative any longer.

    BTW, I've written about this quest for a DAM here: and plan to do some new posts on my conclusions of the trials I am doing now on DAM alternatives.
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  • Storebridge
    Hello,

    User Daniel2 has created a fantastic group of scripts that do what you describe. We use them all them time and rely on them. Unfortunately it is Mac only. Maybe they can be adapted; I am not familiar with Windows scripting.

    http://iview.free.fr/ScriptsIVMPEM.html
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