How to label photos

By Greg Wocher, 19 April, 2019

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hello all,
I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to permanently label photos taken on the iPhone? I know you can sort of label photos with voiceover but its not permanent. The label created by voiceover only resides on your phone. Thanks for any help on this.

Greg Wocher

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Comments

By René Jaun on Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - 15:43

You can download ExifEditor from here:
https://itunes.apple.com/ch/app/exif-editor-und-viewer/id560004690?mt=8
Then you open the app, click the Open Button and select a photo from your library.
The app now lists a lot of parameters which you can change according to your liking.
So, you tap the Description field, choose „add/change“ and enter the value you‘d like. Then you click save.
The method is not what I‘d call an ideal one.
Firstly, you have to enter the description yourself. Of course it would be nice if one of those artificial intelligent apps would just store its description in the field for you.
The other drawback is that ExifEditor does not modify the original photo file. Instead, it creates a copy, stamps it with today‘s date (instead of the original one) and pervforms all changes in there.
However: The Adding of a description works perfectly. When you browse your library in the photos app, VoiceOver will indeed read the description you enter as you come across that new copy of the photo.

By Igna Triay on Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - 15:43

Give tap tap see a try. I'm not sure if its exactly what your looking for, but if by labling photos you mean adding descriptions... This will do just that, and when you save the picture to the camera roll, it saves it with the description automaticly. hth

By René Jaun on Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - 15:43

Tap Tap See indeed does save the description in the appropriate field, so it is announced in the photos app.
Sadly, I found that when working with already taken photos from my gallery, Tap Tap See would again not add the description to the original photo. Instead, it creates a copy of the picture with today‘s date and adds the description to that.
Even more oddly, when I just tested it, Tap Tap even created two copies of a picture from my gallery: One contained the description, and one didn‘t.
I don‘t understand why these apps just can‘t work with the original photo. Wonder if this is some kind of IOS limitation.

By Jurgen on Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - 15:43

Do you use a Mac? Then it should be easy to accomplish.
Just open the Photos app, choose the photo and open the Inspector by pressing CMD + i. Here you can add a title and a discription which will be permanently set accross all devices.
Funnily enough the title will be only visible on the Mac the discription only in iOS as the name for the photo.

By Greg Wocher on Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - 15:43

In reply to by Jurgen

Hello,
Yes I do use a Mac sometimes. I have a MacBook air. Are there any tutorials on using the photo app on the Mac? I took a look at it and to me it was a hot mess. Although that's probably due to the fact I don't know how to use it. LOL. I know I can't see the photos I take but if I could at least find a way to permanently label them I could remember what was happening at the time it was taken. For example my Dads 69th birthday was yesterday and my niece took a family picture. It would be nice to be able to label it something like family portrait dads 69th birthday.

By Madnesspersonified on Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - 15:43

Hi there! I'm not sure if you're aware, but it's possible to label each photo within the Photo app itself. All you have to do is double tap the photo with two fingers, and on the second tap simply hold down the gesture. It should open an edit field and anything you write there will be recognized within the app and some others as well. Hope this helps!

By Elijah76 on Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - 15:43

hello greg,
i usually save each photo from the camera roll to dropbox and giving it a name/ title in the edit box which pops up,
that way, i am able to permanently label an image;
and it retains the labeling across devices
arvind

By Jurgen on Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - 15:43

In reply to by Greg Wocher

Hi Greg,
unfortunately I'm not aware of a tuttorial to Photos. But you are right it's not so easy to navigate in the photos library.
But due to the fact that you'll need sighted help to create the lables anyway it should be possible directing this person through your library and labling them together.
All the best
JĂŒrgen

By Arv on Saturday, September 7, 2019 - 15:43

SnipTag app for Mac lets you add visible, printable captions as well as invisible metadata tags such as date, place, description, keywords etc. This can be done for one or multiple photos at a time, by typing or voice dictation. Metadata stays permanently embedded in the photos even when you transfer them to other photo programs or computers, making them easily findable. Website is www.sniptagapp.com and the Mac App Store link https://apps.apple.com/app/id1448677570. See this one-minute demo on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYTPpKit1qQ

By Faith2011 on Thursday, November 7, 2019 - 15:43

I was almost happy labelling as I did...the problem was that when you sent a photo to anyone else, the label would disappear. I don't want copies as well...I already have 3,500 photos on my iPhone. My only solution right now is to label on my iPad which I have not updated to 13, and trust that the the iPhone photos are suitably captioned. Here goes...!

By Carson on Friday, February 7, 2020 - 15:43

The responses to this inquiry and similar inquiries on Apple’s website are MADDENING. They offer up all sorts of things that most times evidence a failure to understand what myself and others are wanting.

WHAT we desire is essentially hash-tagging your own photos, as is done with Instagram images. Don’t give us all this geek squad stuff about exif data. It can be done with images on Instagram so it can be done with images in the iPhone app. The folks at Apple just didn’t think of making it possible to begin with and now, after being made aware that their customers want the feature, have been unresponsive for some reason.

HERE is what we want:

I took a photo of Uncle Larry, at Christmas. In the photo he is eating pumpkin pie. He has his dog Sparky on his lap.

Got it so far? Good.

I want to be able to tag the photo with multiple tags:

Uncle Larry

Christmas

pumpkin pie

sparky

Got it? I am not wanting one label for the image. I’m not even wanting a label for the image or title. I just want a means for finding photos. I’m tired of searching through over 4000 photos for images. Half the time I give up trying. And no, I don’t want to use folders because that would require saving the photo four different times as well as potentially having to create folders as well.

I want to be able to use search in my photos and if I enter any of the above tags the image will be in the search returns.

I want to be able to search “Sparky” and every image tagged with “Sparky” will pop up. If I search “pie” every image tagged with “pie” will come up. The image tagged “pumpkin pie” included.

If this were possible, when all of us take photos we would, if desired, tag that photo with one or multiple tags. I take a picture of Madge posing in front of the Lincoln Memorial and she is wearing a straw hat, I tag the image “Madge”, “Lincoln” , “straw hat”. I might also tag it “family” if Madge is family. Or “neighbor” if Madge is a neighbor.

Get it? You do this all the time with Instagram so I don’t see why anyone is struggling to understand. Or prattling about exif data.

Making this a feature should not be that difficult for apple developers. It would likely take them less than a day to make it happen. And a software update would then make it a feature. iPhone users would love it. For the life of me I don’t know why Apple has not yet done this. But then again, these are the same folks who stupidly used the universally accepted symbol for “fast forward” for the “next track” symbol in their music app.