• From: Carmichael, CA USA
  • Registered: 2016-05-21
  • Posts: 6

Topic: adding captions to photos

I've searched the forum and haven't found what I'm looking for.

I can always edit the photos beforehand with Photoshop, but that's a lot of extra work.  Is there a place in Juicebox to add captions to photos?  What I've figured out so far, there seems to be a place to turn captions on and off.  But there is no place to actually enter captions.  I'm using Lightroom 5, and I've found that if I go to the metadata for each photo, and enter the title, then have JB create the web page with captions enabled, I do get the caption at the bottom of the photo, on the same line as I get the image number, such as 3/20.

The reason I chose JB, I have been creating simple galleries with LR, although I'm using the latest version (5), it doesn't offer many web gallery tools.  I've been told by Scott Kelby that nobody uses their web tools anyway.  I like to create simple galleries and can no longer use flash because it is not supported with mobile devices.  I tried JB Lite and it seems to do a nice job, so I purchased JB Pro.  My next task is to try to embed the galleries into other pages.

I'm fairly new to JB and am impressed so far.

My latest work is at:  http://65.78.143.142/webcontent/holtzma … index.html , created with the Juice LR Plugin.

So far I can't find a better way to do this, any suggestions?

Jim

emptech's Website

  • Registered: 2012-04-24
  • Posts: 5,924

Re: adding captions to photos

If you are using JuiceboxBuilder-Pro (the standalone desktop application to create and edit galleries which comes with Juicebox-Pro), click a thumbnail on the images tab and you'll see individual input boxes (below the thumbnails) where you can enter an image title and caption. You can enter a different title and caption for each image.

If you are using the Lightroom plugin, perhaps the easiest way to enter individual image titles and captions would be add the text as metadata and then have the plugin extract it for use in the gallery. This can all be done within Lightroom.
In the Library section, select an image and scroll down to the Metadata section on the right. Now enter an image title in the Title box and a caption in the Caption box.
When you then go to the Web section and select Juicebox-Pro as the Layout Style, the plugin will automatically use the Title and Caption by default for each image in the gallery (although you can extract whatever metadata you like for use as the image titles and captions by editing the Title and Caption templates in the plugin's Image Info section.)

You can leave the metadata in place for just the duration of creating the gallery or you can save it to your source images.
If you do this, the image titles and captions will be embedded within the images themselves and can be extracted for use in future galleries (using either JuiceboxBuilder-Pro or the Lightroom plugin).

  • From: Carmichael, CA USA
  • Registered: 2016-05-21
  • Posts: 6

Re: adding captions to photos

Steven:

You pretty much answered my questions.  I think in the long run I'm better saving the Title and/or Caption in the original photo's metadata, although I've never done that.  I tried to find where the info went on the stand-alone program, but was in the Customize tab, not the Images tab. 
Normally I'll have the plug-in take care of the title, but in the short term, might just use the stand-alone version.

I guess you just had to know this stuff.  Probably the next thing I'll do is to increase the size of this info as it displays, but one step at a time.

Thanks for the quick response.

Jim

emptech's Website

  • From: Carmichael, CA USA
  • Registered: 2016-05-21
  • Posts: 6

Re: adding captions to photos

Now that I have the title and captions working, is there a way to increase the font size?
I went through all of the .xml file settings, didn't see anything that had to do with the font size, only the fonts.

I can live with what I have but it would be nice to have a little more control, change color, add drop shadow, etc.

My current web page version, I'm sure I'll be making improvements on it. 

http://65.78.143.142/webcontent/holtzma … index.html


Jim

emptech's Website

  • Registered: 2012-04-24
  • Posts: 5,924

Re: adding captions to photos

Now that I have the title and captions working, is there a way to increase the font size?

You can change the font size of an image title or caption using HTML formatting as noted in this FAQ:
How do I add HTML formatting to image captions and titles?

If you wanted to change the font size of all captions in a gallery, then you could add CSS such as the following to the <head> section of your web page:

<style type="text/css">

    /* IMAGE TITLE */
    .jb-caption .jb-caption-title {
        font-size: 24px !important;
    }

    /* IMAGE CAPTION */
    .jb-caption .jb-caption-desc {
        font-size: 24px !important;
    }

    /* IMAGE NUMBER */
    .jb-cap-frame .jbac-number {
        font-size: 24px !important;
    }

</style>

You can use either of the techniques above to apply other CSS properties to the image titles and captions, too.

  • From: Carmichael, CA USA
  • Registered: 2016-05-21
  • Posts: 6

Re: adding captions to photos

Steven:

I knew it could be done with html/css, was hoping there would have been a setting in JB.  That's ok, it only took a few keystrokes to edit the html file, that's great, thanks again.

Jim

emptech's Website

  • Registered: 2012-04-24
  • Posts: 5,924

Re: adding captions to photos

... was hoping there would have been a setting in JB.

Unfortunately not. However, please feel free to post suggestions for future versions in the Feature Requests forum thread.
This keeps all the ideas together and ensures that they are not overlooked by the developers. Thank you.

... thanks again.

You're welcome!

  • Registered: 2012-05-12
  • Posts: 25

Re: adding captions to photos

If you are using Lightroom, just caption all your images in the IPTC there.
Then, once loaded into JuiceBox just bring the captions in with Images---> Captions.

  • Registered: 2012-04-24
  • Posts: 5,924

Re: adding captions to photos

I've just re-read Post #3 above and it looks like emptech might have been looking to embed captions as metadata within JuiceboxBuilder-Pro. This is not possible. JuiceboxBuilder-Pro has the ability to extract the IPTC Document Title for the image titles and the IPTC Description for the image captions but cannot save metadata to images. This would need to be done in a program such as Lightroom (as simonjacobs suggests) or Photoshop.

  • Registered: 2015-12-24
  • Posts: 32

Re: adding captions to photos

One thing I noticed re. captions.  Let's say you embed them in the photo's metadata using Lightroom or Photoshop.  The Gallery building process in JB Pro will use the captions.  Fine.  Now you do some more editing of captions in Lightroom.  Then  you go back and edit the Gallery in JB Pro.  Maybe eliminate and/or reorder the photos.  It does not appear to me that JB picks up the changed captions from the metadata.  The captions get stored in the xml file and that does not get regenerated, as far as I can see.  It would be better to regenerate the xml file from scratch for each modification, picking up any changed data from the jpgs. 

It would also be cool if caption editing in JB could update the jpg file metadata but I realize that's both a feature request and a bit of a stretch for the product.

  • Registered: 2012-04-24
  • Posts: 5,924

Re: adding captions to photos

@fkelly12054

When you open an existing gallery in JuiceboxBuilder-Pro, the application reads the image titles and captions from the 'config.xml' file and populates the title and caption fields on the 'Images' tab with them.
This happens regardless of the source of the original title and caption text (whether it was IPTC data or custom text typed in by the user).

If you want to refresh the titles and captions (for example with updated IPTC data), just go to 'Images -> Titles -> Use IPTC Title' and 'Images -> Captions -> Use IPTC Caption' from the drop-down menu at the top. (They will already be selected if they were the original sources but the act of selecting them again will refresh the titles and captions.)

I guess there's always the chance that someone has used IPTC data for the titles or captions but has since modified a few manually in the JuiceboxBuilder-Pro interface. If JuiceboxBuilder-Pro overwrote the titles and captions when an existing gallery was opened (by automatically using current IPTC data), such modifications would be lost.
It's easy enough to refresh the titles and captions via the drop-down menu if necessary.

Please feel free to post suggestions for future versions in the Feature Requests forum thread.
This keeps all the ideas together and ensures that they are not overlooked by the developers.
I do not know the likelihood of suggestions being implemented but this is certainly the best place for all ideas.
Thank you.

  • Registered: 2015-12-24
  • Posts: 32

Re: adding captions to photos

Coming back to this topic after creating a bunch of galleries with these observations on captions.  And customizations. 

My wife and I manage our photos in Lightroom.  We add captions there and take the additional step of writing the metadata to the base files.  This is essential in my view, unless you like losing your work.  Tag and keyword the files too.  Then select groups of images to go in a Gallery.  Use export to put them in an /export/galleryname1 ... n folder safely outside the Lightroom catalog area.  Then verify results in Windows file explorer.  If you set the view for picture type folders to detail and show the title field you can verify that captions got written successfully. 

Now bring up Juicebox Pro.  Create a new gallery.  Bring in the files from /export/galleryname_n.  Now here's issue number one.  Unless you have the preset set to have captions use the IPTC caption field at this point, Juicebox will create the files for the gallery without embedding the metadata caption.  So, if I create the gallery in a directory /jbox/galleryname_n and look at the folder in windows file manager I see nothing in the title field (which is really the caption field).  You can set a preset to use the IPTC caption for the caption and, if you remember to load this first, the files will be created in the /jbox folders with the captions metadata. 

This leads to two questions ... which I will turn into feature requests if you confirm this.  1.  is there a way to set default preferences that will ALWAYS apply, even to new Galleries and unless explicitly overridden.  In other words so that you don't have to remember to load your preset every time.  What happens to us is that we occasionally forget to load the captions.xml preset.  Bring in the files.  Reorder the files by dragging them around in the order we intend for the Gallery.  Publish it and notice that captions aren't there.  Since Juicebox has not created files with captions metadata we can't just reread the files after changing that option.  And 2. which is not so much a question as a request for confirmation.  The files created for the juicebox images directory, if captions are off in presets, don't include metadata.  It would be really useful if they did, so you wouldn't have to delete everything and start over, including dragging the files around into the right order all over again.

In other words, the refresh that you mentioned in your 2016-06-24 response only works if Juicebox has copied over the image files with caption metadata and as far as I can tell it doesn't do that if captions are "off". 

It would also be helpful if you could shift-click or ctrl-click the list of images in a Gallery in order to delete them.  Again, I'll consolidate this into a feature request if there is no work around for this.

  • Registered: 2012-04-24
  • Posts: 5,924

Re: adding captions to photos

1.  is there a way to set default preferences that will ALWAYS apply, even to new Galleries and unless explicitly overridden.

Unfortunately not. There is no way to automatically have Juicebox-Pro use IPTC metadata for image title or captions as soon as the application has loaded.
You would always need to select 'Images -> Titles -> Use IPTC Title' (or 'Images -> Captions -> Use IPTC Caption') from the drop down menu at the top.

Since Juicebox has not created files with captions metadata we can't just reread the files after changing that option.

If you were to edit a gallery (via the 'Open Gallery...' button on JuiceboxBuilder-Pro's 'Start' tab) and the source images are still in their original '/export/galleryname1' folder from when the gallery was first created, then JuiceboxBuilder-Pro will reuse the source images (with the embedded metadata) instead of using the gallery images (without the metadata). (This is what the sourcePath entries in a gallery's XML configuration file are for.)
As long as the source images are still in their original folder, you could edit a gallery and quickly select 'Use IPTC Title' or ('Use IPTC Caption') before resaving the gallery on the 'Publish' tab.
I'm not sure if this will be helpful to you or not but I thought I should mention it.

And 2. which is not so much a question as a request for confirmation.  The files created for the juicebox images directory, if captions are off in presets, don't include metadata.

That is correct. Images that are processed for a gallery by JuiceboxBuilder-Pro (either for resizing or watermarking) do not contain any metadata. The only way to avoid this would be to deselect the 'Resize Images' and 'Use Watermark' checkboxes. In doing so, JuiceboxBuilder-Pro will copy the source images across to the output 'images' folder without processing them (with their metadata intact).

In other words, the refresh that you mentioned in your 2016-06-24 response only works if Juicebox has copied over the image files with caption metadata and as far as I can tell it doesn't do that if captions are "off".

Please see my note above regarding the sourcePath entries (and editing a gallery with JuiceboxBuilder-Pro reusing original source images containing metadata). Leaving your source images in their original locations means that they can be reused (and their metadata can be extracted) when a gallery is edited.

It would also be helpful if you could shift-click or ctrl-click the list of images in a Gallery in order to delete them.

You can. You can Shift-Click and/or Ctrl+Click images on JuicboxBuilder-Pro's 'Images' tab and then go to 'Images -> Delete' from the drop down menu at the top (or press Ctrl+D). If you find that you can't do this, make sure that you are using the latest version of JuiceboxBuilder-Pro (v1.5.0). If necessary, instructions for upgrading Juicebox can be found here.

Thank you for posting your suggestions in the Feature Requests thread.
I do not know the likelihood of any suggestions being implemented but this is certainly the best place to post your ideas.

Edit:
Please also see my reply to your post in the Feature Requests thread here.