best place to add comments to jpg file?

I want to add comments to my jpg files (e.g. names of people in the photo,
name of location, description of event, ...) and I want those comments to
stay with the file when the file is copied, moved, ftp-ed, copied over a
LAN, etc.

I believe the best place to put these comments are in the IPTC fields.
Actually, there aren't that many choices. The only other alternative is the
fields in windowsXP NTFS. They have the advantage of displayable as a column
in windows explorer. However, they are not understood by photoshop and I'm
not sure they would survive when moved to a different OS.

Now, all I need is a photo browser that would display those IPTC fields
along with the thumbnails so that when I browse my photos, I can instantly
see my own comments.

So far I haven't found one. xnview can display those fields when explicitly
requested. Faststone viewer does not provide access to IPTC fields. What
about adobe photoshop album?

Comments/advice?

peter wrote:
So far I haven't found one. xnview can display those fields when explicitly
requested. Faststone viewer does not provide access to IPTC fields. What
about adobe photoshop album?

What about Picasa? I think it uses one of the metadata fields, but not
sure which one.

The organizer that came with Photoshop Elements 3 displays the IPTC
comments when the picture is displayed by itself (i.e., not a
thumbnail). The organizer also has an easy way to enter the comments.
I don't know whether or not the Organizer is similar to Photoshop
Album.


peter wrote:
I want to add comments to my jpg files (e.g. names of people in the photo,
name of location, description of event, ...) and I want those comments to
stay with the file when the file is copied, moved, ftp-ed, copied over a
LAN, etc.

I believe the best place to put these comments are in the IPTC fields.
Actually, there aren't that many choices. The only other alternative is the
fields in windowsXP NTFS. They have the advantage of displayable as a column
in windows explorer. However, they are not understood by photoshop and I'm
not sure they would survive when moved to a different OS.

Now, all I need is a photo browser that would display those IPTC fields
along with the thumbnails so that when I browse my photos, I can instantly
see my own comments.

So far I haven't found one. xnview can display those fields when explicitly
requested. Faststone viewer does not provide access to IPTC fields. What
about adobe photoshop album?

Comments/advice?

"peter" writes:

I want to add comments to my jpg files (e.g. names of people in the photo,
name of location, description of event, ...) and I want those comments to
stay with the file when the file is copied, moved, ftp-ed, copied over a
LAN, etc.

I believe the best place to put these comments are in the IPTC fields.
Actually, there aren't that many choices. The only other alternative is the
fields in windowsXP NTFS. They have the advantage of displayable as a column
in windows explorer. However, they are not understood by photoshop and I'm
not sure they would survive when moved to a different OS.

In addition to the IPTC fields, standard EXIF has two comment fields (Comment
and UserComment), plus you could use Copyright if you weren't using it for the
intended purpose. I suspect there might be more applications that know about
standard EXIF fields than IPTC.

Now, all I need is a photo browser that would display those IPTC fields
along with the thumbnails so that when I browse my photos, I can instantly
see my own comments.

So far I haven't found one. xnview can display those fields when explicitly
requested. Faststone viewer does not provide access to IPTC fields. What
about adobe photoshop album?

Comments/advice?

Unfortunately, I can't help you there.

--
Michael Meissner
email:
http://www.the-meissners.org

Hi Peter,

I believe the best place to put these comments are in the IPTC fields.
Actually, there aren't that many choices. The only other alternative is the
fields in windowsXP NTFS. They have the advantage of displayable as a column
in windows explorer. However, they are not understood by photoshop and I'm
not sure they would survive when moved to a different OS.

Now, all I need is a photo browser that would display those IPTC fields
along with the thumbnails so that when I browse my photos, I can instantly
see my own comments.

I use the freeware Exifer to add info to IPTC fields:
http://www.exifer.friedemann.info/.
The fields I fill a author, credit, URL, copyright, author name,
headline, city, country. There is also a 'description' field which
allows longer descriptions than 'headline'.

One handy feature of Exifer is that it lets you edit a field for all
selected pictures, e.g. entering the country name for all pictures of a
trip. Then all I need is write something in the headline.

Exifer is also a image browser, albeit a bit simple.

ACDSee displays these IPTC infos, but you first have to tell him to
display these fields as columns in the list.

You might also try BreezeBrowser.

--
Philippe Noth, Clarens/Montreux, Switzerland