Just returned from Expo2020 in Dubai. Fastest way to add titles onto several hundred pics?

[MareLuce]

Just returned from an amazing 2 week experience in Dubai's World Fair i.e., "Expo2020".


Took several thousand photos on my iPhone 13 pro max.

What I'd like to do is duplicate 500 or so, rotate them to the correct orientation, add subtitles on top of the photos to remind me of what country's pavilion or context the photo was taken

What is the best tool or fastest way to do this?

 

[AlaskaMoose]

Just returned from an amazing 2 week experience in Dubai's World Fair i.e., "Expo2020".


Took several thousand photos on my iPhone 13 pro max.

What I'd like to do is duplicate 500 or so, rotate them to the correct orientation, add subtitles on top of the photos to remind me of what country's pavilion or context the photo was taken

What is the best tool or fastest way to do this?

That will take a lot of time. Hopefully you have written the name of the place or location where you took the photos.
If you have such names or locations written down, you can create new folders, name each folder similar to this:

a. TripToDubai12/21a, then "TripToDubai 12/21b" for this second folder, and on and on. Then drag a number of photos to each folder.

b. Now look at how the photos are arranged or organized in the folder, be it numerically with the smallest number on the top left corner of the window (for example).

c. Now in each folder create a text document titled, "ReadMe." If you use a Mac to edit your photos you can create a text document with "Tex Edit," Pages, and so on. Now start entering the photo's name, followed by the location you took it on the first line. For example, "IMG_2031.JPG", followed by location or place the photo was taken. Then line two can be something like "IMG_2032.JPG," followed by the name or place you took the photo.
--------------------
Keep in mind that you can also create sub folders (residing inside the main folder) containing a number of photos that were taken in the same place of location, plus a "ReadMe" text document to ID the photos in these subfolders.

What is most time-consuming is editing and "Save As" to save the photo. In this case you may have to remove the "IMG" from the photo, leave the ID number "2031_1.JPG alone. Should look like this: 2031_1.JPG.

 

[MareLuce]

Thank you @AlaskaMoose !

 

[MareLuce]

In fact, I’d love to do the same thing for an amazing trip to Alaska in 2019.
(Anchorage, Seward, Haynes, Juneau, Vancouver, and one strange town that required a tunnel to get to…)

What about the last step where I actually add some comment words on the image?

Ex: “Estonia Pavilion, Expo2020, Dubai”

 

[r.harris1]

Tools like Photo Mechanic or the DAM aspects of Lightroom or Capture One do this really really well though I don't know what your budget is or how much time you want to spend on learning a specific tool. Adobe Bridge might be able to do most of what you want without an Adobe subscription (though you would need to set up an account with them, free though it is). I'm not sure what it can do (free version) about rotations.

Basically, you're looking to do keyword/EXIF editing in batch. There may be (Apple) Photos-centric tools that can do the work more easily on iPhone images, I don't know. Or rather, I know there are such tools, I just haven't used them.

 

[AlaskaMoose]

In fact, I’d love to do the same thing for an amazing trip to Alaska in 2019.
(Anchorage, Seward, Haynes, Juneau, Vancouver, and one strange town that required a tunnel to get to…)

What about the last step where I actually add some comment words on the image?

Ex: “Estonia Pavilion, Expo2020, Dubai”

In order to add a title, a name, etc., on the photo you would have to do some editing, which is a little complicated unless you are familiar with photo-editing. There are relatively inexpensive apps such as Photo Shop Elements 2022, Graphic Converter, or just as explained by r.harris1 above. Now, if you print the photo you can handwrite the details on the back, or even type it on a mailing label using Text Edit, Pages, MS Word, and so on, and attached h the label to the back of the photo. Just remember not to use pens or jet inks that are water soluble. I use a laser printer, or a ball-point pen.

The bottomline: with so many photos to identify, the less time-consuming process would be to create a list as I mentioned above. You don't have to create a "readme" file using your computer, however. You can write all the details on a notebook, for example. But when you write it, the details must match the photo's ID or number.

Keep in mind that if you are planning to buy any photo editing app, the first thing to do is to read about the system compatibility of your computer OS and the app. And if you already know about such things, please accept my most sincere apology.

In relation to the Alaska town's name where one has to travel though a tunnel to reach it, this place is called, "Whittier."

 

[USAntigoon]

Just returned from an amazing 2 week experience in Dubai's World Fair i.e., "Expo2020".


Took several thousand photos on my iPhone 13 pro max.

What I'd like to do is duplicate 500 or so, rotate them to the correct orientation, add subtitles on top of the photos to remind me of what country's pavilion or context the photo was taken

What is the best tool or fastest way to do this?

Of course a platform like "Photo Mechanic" can help you a lot..
I used to rename all my pics instead of what the camera assigns and used following workflow:
1) Put all the pics in a folder
2) Open the folder in Finder and use cmd A to select all pics
3) On top bar click on FILE , next select RENAME
4) A window will pop up in which you can custom format the name you like to give to the pics..
5) Be sure to add a space after the new name because next will be a number you can select starting form 1 or higher
6) Bottom left of that window shows the example of your rename..

Good Luck..

 

[MareLuce]

@USAntigoon, @r.harris1, @AlaskaMoose

To clarify what I mean by "add subtitles on top of the photos", the end result would be a photo that looks like this.
I did the below in SnagIt 2022 by TechSmith.

Could Photo Mechanic help automate editing a subtitle or caption onto the photo bottom?
Or does it just edit the EXIF metadata?

For example, I'd make the bottom most caption on all "Dubai World Fair, December 2021"
Then on the extra extra favorite pics I might add 1 more caption.

Edit: And the final step that I haven't described:
Making the photos accessible on the photo frame viewers or Amazon Echo Shows that various Aunts and Uncles and Cousins have.

@AlaskaMoose, YES Whittier!

Loved the 26? Glacier tour. Town felt a little strange, like a good place for a murder mystery to be filmed. And that access tunnel... Seemed like I could reach out and touch the sides from the tour bus from Seward. That tunnel would be a great place for a James Bond scene to be filmed. Stayed 3 nights on Lowell Point in Seward. Power went out 1 night when there were high winds. I claim I felt like a real Alaskan having to tough it for a couple hours .

Or at least a photo where the caption could read,
"City Girl earns a Merit Badge by Surviving a 2 hour Power Outage in Alaska." ?

 

[USAntigoon]

@USAntigoon, @r.harris1, @AlaskaMoose

To clarify what I mean by "add subtitles on top of the photos", the end result would be a photo that looks like this.
I did the below in SnagIt 2022 by TechSmith.

Could Photo Mechanic help automate editing a subtitle or caption onto the photo bottom?
Or does it just edit the EXIF metadata?

For example, I'd make the bottom most caption on all "Dubai World Fair, December 2021"
Then on the extra extra favorite pics I might add 1 more caption.

Edit: And the final step that I haven't described:
Making the photos accessible on the photo frame viewers or Amazon Echo Shows that various Aunts and Uncles and Cousins have.

View attachment 1931849

@AlaskaMoose, YES Whittier!

Loved the 26? Glacier tour. Town felt a little strange, like a good place for a murder mystery to be filmed. And that access tunnel... Seemed like I could reach out and touch the sides from the tour bus from Seward. That tunnel would be a great place for a James Bond scene to be filmed. Stayed 3 nights on Lowell Point in Seward. Power went out 1 night when there were high winds. I claim I felt like a real Alaskan having to tough it for a couple hours .

Or at least a photo where the caption could read,
"City Girl earns a Merit Badge by Surviving a 2 hour Power Outage in Alaska." ?

I normally use Pixelmator Pro, write in the pic the text, save and copy to the next pic…

 

[MareLuce]

Update:

Starting the free trial with Photo Mechanic today

Already have Pixelmator Pro

Rant du minuit:

Why does it take so many clicks and mousing around to find a specific photo taken on a specific day.
Example: I'm looking for a specific photo taken on December 1. This should be so straightforward. Like clicking on a couple drop downs.

On the iPhone, there is a great app for this: Photos 365

‎Photos 365

‎*** Limited time offer: 50% OFF *** - Automatically organize your photos on Calendar / Map. - View photos you took during the week / on a specific day. - Check when and where the photo was taken in full screen. - Search for photos taken at a specific place or near your current location.

apps.apple.com

Anything similar on the Mac?

 

[MareLuce]

Yea I take a lot of photos

 

[jwolf6589]

Just returned from an amazing 2 week experience in Dubai's World Fair i.e., "Expo2020".


Took several thousand photos on my iPhone 13 pro max.

What I'd like to do is duplicate 500 or so, rotate them to the correct orientation, add subtitles on top of the photos to remind me of what country's pavilion or context the photo was taken

What is the best tool or fastest way to do this?

Several thousand? Is your model a 1TB one?

 

[MareLuce]

@jwolf6589 >> Several thousand?

Correction: 7,368 photos all taken from my iPhone. I was mesmerized by the Dubai Expo 2020 country pavilion architecture. + so many things happened that made it a totally joyous experience.

@jwolf6589 >> Is your model a 1TB one?

Is the Pope Catholic? ?

+ 8 TB 16" M1 MBP on order. Am on the edge storage-wise with current 4 TB 2019 MBP.

The bots were everywhere. Real purposeful robots, not demo bots
Police bots shown above.
Cute little bots to interact with kids.
Rectangular Talabat bots delivering food everywhere.

Expo2020 is happening in Dubai through end of March 2022. If anyone is planning on attending, am happy to give specific advice. It was a complete dream of a trip. From a Covid standpoint, I felt much safer there than at home here in Texas.

Back to photo tools comment,
I so wish I had taken the time to annotate trips from 10 yrs ago like I did above, even if just a couple dozen pics per trip.

 

[MareLuce]

Update:

I haven't gotten very far with Photo Mechanic Plus.

1) At first it was taking so long to load. I'd only see the title bar and nothing beneath it.
If I left to get coffee and came back it would be there.
After updating to Monterey 12.1 it's faster.
I'm on a maxed out (64 GB memory, 2.4 Ghz i9) 2019 MBP 16, 4TB drive with 200 GB free.

2) I don't understand why the default view has the dates all jumbled

 

[OldMacs4Me]

I'm on a maxed out (64 GB memory, 2.4 Ghz i9) 2019 MBP 16, 4TB drive with 200MB free.

I do hope you mean 200 GB free, as 200MB does not even leave enough room for routine swapping. Even 200GB is cutting it a bit thin for free space when we are talking a 4TB drive.

 

[r.harris1]

Update:

I haven't gotten very far with Photo Mechanic Plus.

1) At first it was taking so long to load. I'd only see the title bar and nothing beneath it.
If I left to get coffee and came back it would be there.
After updating to Monterey 12.1 it's faster.
I'm on a maxed out (64 GB memory, 2.4 Ghz i9) 2019 MBP 16, 4TB drive with 200MB free.

2) I don't understand why the default view has the dates all jumbled

View attachment 1944512
View attachment 1944513

I don't know why whatever operation you're trying to do is taking a long time (and I'm honestly not clear on what you're doing) - it doesn't on mine but I don't have the quantity of images you have. The reason the default shows the dates jumbled up is that the default isn't to sort by date but name, I believe. If you right click on the Navigator panel there's a "Preferences..." selection. You can change the default sort there.

Edit: I'm reasonably certain that PM (+ or otherwise) isn't going to overlay text on images (what you're calling captioning). Captioning in PhotoMechanic is related more to metadata (generally not viewed on the image itself). It's a tool that's used a lot in photojournalism, event photography and what have you, where that sort of information is important. If I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to do, my apologies!

 

[r.harris1]

To do "one-click" searching in PM+, pop over to the Catalog view and you can search by basic IPTC data.

 

[MareLuce]

I do hope you mean 200 GB free, as 200MB does not even leave enough room for routine swapping.

Yes, good eye, I do mean 200 GB. Fixed in above update.

Even 200GB is cutting it a bit thin for free space when we are talking a 4TB drive.

Agreed. I have an 8 TB 64 GB M1 Max on order.

 

[MareLuce]

and I'm honestly not clear on what you're doing

The question I most frequently ask Alexa when in the kitchen near the Echo Show is: "Alexa, Where was that photo taken?"

I simply want to caption my favorite 50 photos from each vacation with where we were, why it was important, or something interesting about the photo that I might not remember in 10 years.

Like what I did above.

Then I'll send those photos to various photo frames, Amazon Echo Show's in the kitchen, etc.

I'm reasonably certain that PM (+ or otherwise) isn't going to overlay text on images (what you're calling captioning).

Yea, I think you're right.

Though perhaps this would get me part of the way there:

1) Make watermarks like "Dubai World Fair, Dec 2021", "Juneau Alaska, Aug 2019", etc
2) Apply those as partially transparent watermarks to the bottom of the best 100 photos from each vacation
3) Add captions like what I did on the photos above to a subset of those

What do you think?

 

[r.harris1]

The question I most frequently ask Alexa when in the kitchen near the Echo Show is: "Alexa, Where was that photo taken?"

I simply want to caption my favorite 50 photos from each vacation with where we were, why it was important, or something interesting about the photo that I might not remember in 10 years.

Like what I did above.

Then I'll send those photos to various photo frames, Amazon Echo Show's in the kitchen, etc.


Yea, I think you're right.

Though perhaps this would get me part of the way there:

1) Make watermarks like "Dubai World Fair, Dec 2021", "Juneau Alaska, Aug 2019", etc
2) Apply those as partially transparent watermarks to the bottom of the best 100 photos from each vacation
3) Add captions like what I did on the photos above to a subset of those

What do you think?

Yeah, I think something like that would work. You could populate the watermarks with some variable you've set or that's available already (location data is in iPhone images) and go from there. That gives you the visual cue and presumably Alexa would be able to read the metadata of the image already.

Incidentally, thanks to you, I learned something new: that PM did watermarking . I hadn't realized this as that's not how I've typically used the application, but this is great to know for those rare situations I might want that capability. The fact that it can be keyword/metadata driven is a nice feature.

 

[MareLuce]

Yeah, I think something like that would work. You could populate the watermarks with some variable you've set or that's available already (location data is in iPhone images) and go from there.

Cool! I'm most likely going to:

1) Manually create a watermark with the Event name, Location, Month, Year
ex: "Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park, 2017"
I hope to make the watermark look attractive and semi-transparent so it does not distract too much.

2) Slap that watermark on 50 fave photos along the bottom edge (via the Photo Mechanic batch features)

3) Adjust if needed
Ex: If needed, Move the watermark away from a photo's bottom edge if that area is essential for the photo's meaning

Incidentally, thanks to you, I learned something new: that PM did watermarking .

Yay!

Question about Photo Mechanic jargon: This concept of a "Contact Sheet"

For me, a normal person with a ton of vacation photos that I want to visually caption, would
1 Contact Sheet = 1 vacation
?

Would it make sense to group my photos that way?

 

[MareLuce]

Also:

Is it possible in Photo Mechanic to scroll through photos in full screen mode?

Or should I just go back into Apple's Photos app to do that?

The most time-consuming task seems to be picking which ones I want to caption from the best ones.
I wish Photos app had 2 levels of Favorites: Regular favorite and Extra favorite

 

[r.harris1]

…
Question about Photo Mechanic jargon: This concept of a "Contact Sheet"

For me, a normal person with a ton of vacation photos that I want to visually caption, would
1 Contact Sheet = 1 vacation
?

Would it make sense to group my photos that way?

Yes, I think that could work. But it’s really up to how you want to organize your images - its usually used for organizing imports, but for you it may be around categories perhaps or groups of similarly watermarked or geolocated images.