How to add Shutterstock artist info next to each picture

[TᴀW]

Hi,

I'm working on a book that has over 100 Shutterstock pictures.

The editor tells me that according to Shutterstock requirements, each image needs a caption beside it that includes the name of the photographer/artist.

Easy, I thought! This is a job for InDesign captions.

But surprisingly, the hi-res graphics we downloaded from Shutterstock do not seem to include any metadata! I cannot find the photographer name anyway in the metadata (or hardly anything else either). So there's no way to get this info into the captions automatically.

Not quite sure why Shutterstock would do this. They must be aware of metadata. Chatted to Shutterstock, and they confirmed that artist info has to be copied from the website on an individual basis by typing in the ID of the photo.

This seems really inefficient even for a single photo, let alone when there are 100+.

Have I missed something? There must be an easier way to do this? If you have experience using Shutterstock photos in InDesign, how do you pull in the artist name for the caption?

Thanks,

Ariel

[Eugene Tyson · Accepted solution]

Not overly familiar with Shutterstock.

But you will need to add the caption to the meta data for each photo.

Bridge is a good place to do this.

Learn about Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) standard and working with metadata in Adobe Bridge

You can then import the images to Indesign (or update them if already placed) and then use the Caption feature.

If Shutterstock (or other source) don't do this then it has to be done manually - and if it's part of the EULA for the image - then you should comply with this.

[jane-e]

To add a little to what Eugene said, do a few, maybe a half a dozen, and then test it in InDesign before doing all 100. 

[TᴀW]

Thanks Eugene. I'm surprised that this has to be done manually. Just wondering if I'm missing a simple more automated way of doing it.

... Meanwhile, I've applied for a Shutterstock API key. If all else fails, a script that pulls in the metadata automatically is on the horizon...

[Colin Flashman]

That's truly bizarre! I've not noticed that, but most of the images that my work places are school photos where photographer credit is rarely given. However, I'm aware of regular contributors to Shutterstock and I KNOW they add the metadata, so I'm surprised that this information gets sanitised.

It's not just Shutterstock - Pixabay and Pexels did this too, though I noticed Adobe Stock did NOT do this.

Also found this thread at shutterstock itself: Exif Data on images - Archive - Shutterstock - Forum  particular interest to Laurin Rinder's post on 3 Jan 2015.

[Laubender]

Hi Colin,

yes, Pexels also does it.

Cannot understand why.

FWIW: Once one of my design students used an image from Pexels and the editor, another student, gave the credit for the photography the guy who sent the image. An example for bad communication. I was amazed that the image had no metadata for copyright.

Regards,
Uwe

[Colin Flashman]

Prior to submitting my post, I did try downloading a Pexels image and could not find any copyright metadata:

That said, it wasn't an exhaustive search of every image on their site, and hopefully I haven't fallen for the fallacy of composition - Your logical fallacy is composition or division

[Laubender]

Hi Colin,

I agree: Really a bad, bad habit not to include copyright metadata.

Regards,
Uwe

[TᴀW]

Update: I've now developed an automated solution to do this, using the Shutterstock API.

One click and the metadata for 100+ shutterstock photos is updated with the Artist name, making it easy to generate captions for all these photos!

Since the solution requires a private username and password to access the API I can't post it here, but get in touch if you're interested.

Ariel

[KateF]

Hello! I've begun trying to find my way through this, and I can't even figure out how to start without making a preliminary app within Shutterstock API (free version). I can't beleive it's really this complicated to download stock images with metadata still intact!