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**Frank Zwolinski** · 21 May 2018, 05:32 PM

Re: Attributing Photos

Originally posted by Bill Guion View Post

Recently there was a thread (somewhere, not necessarily here) about giving attributions to photos in family trees. That started me thinking and I've decided to give it a try. My question to this group is what is the best way to do this? For instance, if I down load a photo of my grandfather from an on-line site, and I know who contributed the photo to the site, I would like to add to the photo itself something like, "downloaded from xyz.com on 21 May 2018, photo contributed by Janice Smith." I believe the original thread suggests adding the attribution to the photo's metadata.

So, in short, what software can be used to accomplish this?

-----===== Bill =====-----

Hi Bill,

I add a description, some short, some long on all my photos, by using Photoshop and these are kept in my "Reunion Pictures" file in high resolution. If I need to use one of these images in another format, I dump it back into PhotoShop and change or delete the description.

If you would like more information on my process, please just ask, either here or my email <fzwolinski@santarosa.edu>

I hope this is valuable to you,
Frank

**Bill Guion** · 21 May 2018, 05:42 PM

Re: Attributing Photos

Originally posted by Frank Zwolinski View Post

Hi Bill,

I add a description, some short, some long on all my photos, by using Photoshop and these are kept in my "Reunion Pictures" file in high resolution. If I need to use one of these images in another format, I dump it back into PhotoShop and change or delete the description.

If you would like more information on my process, please just ask, either here or my email <fzwolinski@santarosa.edu>

I hope this is valuable to you,
Frank

Frank,

Thank you. What exactly do you do with Photoshop? I'm looking to, as an example, modify the photo's metadata so that what I enter will stay with the photo itself, independent of the rest of my research information.

-----===== Bill =====-----

**Dennis J. Cunniff** · 21 May 2018, 07:48 PM

Re: Attributing Photos

Originally posted by Frank Zwolinski View Post

I add a description, some short, some long on all my photos, by using Photoshop and these are kept in my "Reunion Pictures" file in high resolution. If I need to use one of these images in another format, I dump it back into PhotoShop and change or delete the description.

I try to make sure that if the photo is in a "lossy" format, like ".jpeg", to save it in a non-lossy format (like ".tiff") after changing any information, to avoid losing resolution when the file is re-saved.

**Dennis J. Cunniff** · 21 May 2018, 07:50 PM

Re: Attributing Photos

Originally posted by Bill Guion

Thank you. What exactly do you do with Photoshop? I'm looking to, as an example, modify the photo's metadata so that what I enter will stay with the photo itself, independent of the rest of my research information.

Open the photo, go to File --> File Info...., and add the data to a field there. It will be saved with the photo when you resave it.

**kmgenealogy** · 22 May 2018, 05:36 AM

Re: Attributing Photos

Is there some reason why you can't add the info to the metadata using Photos? I'm assuming you store your photo there first. If so, click on the photo or click twice to open it up. At the top right, in the menu bar, there is an "i" in a circle. Click on it. It will bring up the "info" window. This is the metadata area. You can fill this in as you wish.

Now, those of you out there who are questioning if this works with Reunion...well, I don't know. Please set me straight if you think the Photoshop method is better. I have Photoshop Elements.

Kaye

Ok, just did some experimenting in Reunion. When you add a photo to a person in the Family View, there is a section for Comments. If you put your Attributes there, it will stay with the photo. I clicked the slideshow icon and it showed what I had written in the Comments area so I assume it will show up in the media section of a report or book.

K.

**Susan Park** · 22 May 2018, 11:38 AM

Re: Attributing Photos

If you are only interested in metadata, and not in changing anything with the appearance of the photo, then you might want to look at Adobe Bridge. It's free. It works with mac or windows, and it only organizes your photos, allowing you to add captions and keywords to all photos, plus a few other organizing extras. It will even let you add keywords to PDFs!

I used to use PhotoShop Elements for this purpose until I saw the Adobe Bridge program demonstrated at last year's Roots Tech. It was exactly what I'd been looking for and never knew existed. There are also several pretty good videos on how to use it on YouTube.

I keep all my photos in a single folder. Reunion has never had any trouble finding it. I do not use the Apple Photos app at all.

**Frank Zwolinski** · 22 May 2018, 05:41 PM

Re: Attributing Photos

Originally posted by Bill Guion View Post

Frank,

Thank you. What exactly do you do with Photoshop? I'm looking to, as an example, modify the photo's metadata so that what I enter will stay with the photo itself, independent of the rest of my research information.

-----===== Bill =====-----

Bill,

Sorry, but I don't know about "metadata" but I simply place the photo in photoshop, and yes, I usually save in tiff format, Increase the "canvas" size, so that I have a white border at the bottom of the image and type my information there. I then crop as I need to and save in whatever format I need for that purpose. If I am saving the image to my "Reunion Pictures" folder, that would usually be in tiff format. If I am printing, usually a jpg is sufficient.

I hope I have been clear.

Frank

**Kim** · 23 May 2018, 07:08 PM

Re: Attributing Photos

Originally posted by Susan Park View Post

If you are only interested in metadata, and not in changing anything with the appearance of the photo, then you might want to look at Adobe Bridge. It's free. It works with mac or windows, and it only organizes your photos, allowing you to add captions and keywords to all photos, plus a few other organizing extras. It will even let you add keywords to PDFs!

I used to use PhotoShop Elements for this purpose until I saw the Adobe Bridge program demonstrated at last year's Roots Tech. It was exactly what I'd been looking for and never knew existed. There are also several pretty good videos on how to use it on YouTube.

I keep all my photos in a single folder. Reunion has never had any trouble finding it. I do not use the Apple Photos app at all.

I'm not sure about this because it was long ago when I used Adobe Bridge, but I remember being told to avoid it for important photos, because if you add tags and comments with Bridge, you are rewriting the file, which causes a loss of data. I assume this only matters for jpegs and not tiffs, and is probably true anytime you alter the metadata.

Does anyone know about anything about this and can confirm or explain?

**donworth** · 23 May 2018, 09:43 PM

Re: Attributing Photos

I tend to avoid the use of metadata with my photos mostly because I share them with various of my cousins who are technologically challenged, and I'm not sure who in the family, many years from now, will end up with them, and whether they will have ready access to software that will display the ITPC metadata. There are have been cases where ITPC data is stripped from photos that are uploaded to the Internet.

So, despite 40 years as an IT professional, i go sort of "old school" and incorporate captions into white space added to the bottoms of the images themselves or built into the file names, figuring anybody can figure out how to find the captions that way. The one downside is that you, yourself, have less facility for searching for photos. But since I name them in the form:

WORTHDon1948XmasCardPhotoSouthPasadenaCA.jpg

or some such, I can sort photos of individuals together chronologically and searches on file names work pretty well most of the time in finding relevant photographs.

I suppose the ideal would be to ALSO input ITPC metadata but frankly that's more work than I want to do now that have scanned thousands of old family photos.

Don