# Best way to annotate image files...

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-annotate-image-files/337595>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 29, 2005, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-annotate-image-files/337595 "2005-12-29T17:33:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\
**Post date:** [December 29, 2005, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-annotate-image-files/337595/1 "2005-12-29T17:33:36Z")

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I’m busy scanning in a ton of photos (using an autoloading scanner 🙂 ), and I realized that for some I would like to make annotations (e.g. what someone wrote on the pack of a photo).

Between Windows and Irfanview, I found three ways of annotating:

o In Windows, right-click, select Properties, select Summary, and then type away.  
o In Irfanview, click Image -\> Information and then click Comment.  
o In Irfanview, click Image -\> Information and then click IPTC info.

None of these three seems to know about the others. In other words, I added different comments to a photo using each of these methods and I can view the different comments.

Any recommendations?

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**Author:** ![alterego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6bbea6/32.png) [@alterego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alterego)\
**Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-annotate-image-files/337595/2 "2005-12-30T02:20:52Z")

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Yes, use [EXIF](http://www.exif.org/). You can create an action in Photoshop to apply actions to an arbitrary amount of photos, and this applies to EXIF data as well. See [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EXIF) for the rundown.