Where are IPTC Caption and Headline in BB Pro?

[mwr]

I have many custom templates in original BB in which I use IPTC Caption and Headline to display info in html presentations. After I got BB Pro I discovered that they seem to have disappeared. Then I found Headline under "Origin" in the IPTC edit window but can't find Caption. I'm taking the easy way out and using original BB instead of BB Pro.

[DavidB]

I have many custom templates in original BB in which I use IPTC Caption and Headline to display info in html presentations. After I got BB Pro I discovered that they seem to have disappeared. Then I found Headline under "Origin" in the IPTC edit window but can't find Caption. I'm taking the easy way out and using original BB instead of BB Pro.

BB only supports the older (IIM) standard of IPTC data. More recent versions of BB Pro use the current XMP standard. Sadly, XMP is not a simple superset of IIM; indeed the whole transition process is rather complex. This is not Chris's fault: blame the IPTC and Adobe.

Chris has made things easier by providing an option in BB Pro to support legacy IIM data which has not been mapped into the XMP standard. I suggest that you enable this option. I also suggest that you tick the option to use the IPTC description, rather than the EXIF UserComment, as the primary caption field (the caption will be saved in both places).

You should find your caption in the IPTC/XMP 'Description' field. The HTML token @caption@ still works as I recall it did in BB.

This is all a pain, but we are lumbered with XMP now, so it is a good idea to grit your teeth and make the transition.

Hope this helps.

[mwr]

Thanks for the informative reply. The HTML tokens I'm using in templates are @IPTC_caption@ and @IPTC_headline@. Are you saying that both IPTC fields are available in BB Pro if I set some option?

[DavidB]

The HTML tokens I'm using in templates are @IPTC_caption@ and @IPTC_headline@. Are you saying that both IPTC fields are available in BB Pro if I set some option?

It's worth the effort of reading through the BB Pro Help page on HTML captions, which will give you a pretty clear idea of what has changed in this area from BB. For compatibility reasons (see my previous post), the tokens you are looking for are now named @IPTC_IIM_caption@ and @IPTC_IIM_headline@ respectively. Hopefully the updating of your templates should be a simple search-and-replace job.

To maintain compatibility with these templates, you will need to tick the option 'Also store IPTC data in legacy IPTC IIM format' in Preferences. If you do not do this, new images will not contain IIM data, and your templates will not work for these images. With this option ticked, there is an additional tab in the IPTC editor to allow the use of those IIM fields which were not mapped into the XMP standard. The fields that were mapped will be saved in both standards.

If you use DL Pro (version 2.0.x on), you need to set the corresponding option in Preferences there as well; DL Pro does not, of course, have HTML tokens.

Hope this helps.

[DavidB]

Further to my previous post, you could also use the XMP-related tokens @IPTC_description@ and @IPTC_headline@ instead of @IPTC_IIM_caption@ and @IPTC_IIM_headline@. It's still a search and replace job to change your templates. But I'd still tick the 'Also store ...' option.

Again, I hope this is helpful.

[mwr]

Thanks so much, David. When I get the time, I'll do the template conversion etc. as you described. Until then, I guess it's BB and not Pro.