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Roger,
Let's start with:
I have thousands of photos to which I have added a descriptive name to replace the number that appears automatically in the title box. When looking at thumbnails, this new name appears under the photo.
However, when looking at a slideshow with full size photos, the name does not appear.
So, my goal is to have these names show as captions within the photos and to be able to do so in bulk.
PSE 2022 , does almost all of what I need, but then botches control of font size, making it all useless.
By @ROGER25366188xtps
First question, how and where did you add the descriptive name ? Can you post a screenshot of where those names appear as I don't understand what is the 'title' box? If they appear under the photos, they are in the 'description' metadata field which is used for captions.
I suppose your 'full size slideshow' is the full size view (shortcut F11). The captions are not displayed in that view mode unless you have clicked on the cogwheel (the 'settings') in the toolbar and if you have not checked the checkbox to show captions.
If the 'captions' you have entered manually do appear now on both locations, that means that the caption is correctly embedded in the files and available for either the process multiple files solution, the advanced printing options or external programs like Faststone or XnView, quoted in the other conversation.
I found a later thread on this topic from Feb 2021 in which you participated and Barbara's solution was quoted (favorably).
By @ROGER25366188xtps
That's helpful.
It took me 20 minutes to search the forum for my posts of Feb 2021.
Here is the discussion:
I'll take the time to read the whole discussion in chronological order. In the meantime, other fellow users may come in to comment. I must say that I don't understand most of what you are saying, so, if you don't mind, I'll have a number of questions before hoping to be more helpful.
Just so I completely understand your request:
You have renamed your files with descriptive words instead of the numbers generally given to a file by the camera. You want those descriptive file names to appear on the photos that you place in a slideshow.
If so, Barbara's solution has worked with every version of Elements since at least version 10 which is the oldest version on my computer. I am assuming it will work with Windows 11 but I have not upgraded from Windows 10.
In my screenshot, I have changed the color of the text that appears on the image which is displayed in the Organizer thumbnail and will appear in the Organizer's Slideshow feature (depending on what theme you use).
In my testing, I found that you may need to experiment with the size and color of the caption that will appear on the photo. The size probably depends on the resolution of the photo. You should therefore only work with copies of the photos before using the Editor's Process Multiple Files feature. To make my test, I used the Organizer's Export Files as Copies feature to place the files in a separate folder. Once the files have been processed, you can then import them into the catalog to use for an Organizer slideshow.
As you can see from the following screenshot, the relative size of the caption depends on the resolution (number of pixels) in the image. I have created two blank files, one 6x4 inches and the other 12x8 inches. Both files are 300 pixels per inch. I added the red text layer to show the size of the image. The text was created with the same size font (200pt). I then processed the files (as you have correctly done) and here is the result:
As you can see, the higher resolution file shows the text in a relatively smaller size. You have different resolution files which results in different size text.
So, next, I took the same files and used the Process Multiple Files dialog to resize the images to the higher resolution of 12x8:
Here is the result of adding the File name to the resized files:
As you can see, the files now have the same size/resolution and the caption text is also the same size for both images.
Hope this helps you understand the problem and perhaps provides you with a solution to your different resolution files.
Hi Roger,
How did you select the size and dpi numbers? You description suggests you picked 300 dpi first. Did that fix the picture size or was it chosen independently.
Do you think your numbers will work for my pictures, or will I need to experiment?
I am having a problem with concept of picture size. Don't you have to maintain the length to height ratio? I do see a box that says "constrain proportions"Will that do it?
Finally, you mention you chose a "200 point " font. Does that translate to a number (6 to70) that PSE offers as a choice?
By @ROGER25366188xtps
For the concepts of picture size and resolution as well as the size of the chosen font for the text, my suggestion is to forget momentarily that you are after an automated batch process. Just practice with different single pictures to see how you have to choose your font size for your text. If you have to enter your text in an image with 4000 pixels in width or another one with only 1000 and you want the text to cover a quarter of the width, it's easy to calculate that the font for the big pictures will need to be four times the size of the small one. But, do we use calculations when we manually add text over our displayed picture? No, we create a new text layer; we try to guess a font size and check the result; from what we are seeing on the display we decide to change the font size. It's a trial and error process which may need 3 or more tries.
What is not intuitive in the text layer is that you normally chose the font size from the drop-down menu, but you also can enter the size in the input box, especially if you want more than 72, for instance 200 in Greg's example.
When you are at ease to set the font size manually for any pixel size of pictures, think about the 'batch' process which will be applied to many files of different sizes. In that case, I also suggest that you don't try to solve your problem by small step after small steps, but by big steps after big steps.
- you are starting with a set of files of different sizes and orientation
- the last step will be to play the F11 full view slideshow.
What could be the big steps in between?
Using the 'process multiple files' simple batch process does not help to solve the adaptation of the font size for the random sizes of your pictures. On the other hand, that process should not overwrite your original photos but create (export) a set of files ready for playing with F11. The obvious solution would be to start with a batch dedicated to formatting all original files to the desired width. For a standard display of 1920 pixels for instance. If you test manually which font size would be okay, that size will be also okay for the rest of the pictures, and it will be also good for the next future slideshow.
You can batch resize either in the 'process multiple files' simple process or you can use the organizer to "export as new files', followed by the 'process multiple files' to add the text in a second batch. That way, you'll have to search for the right font size only once for your batch and each new batch optimized for pictures of 1920 pixels wide.
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