JCap - Free photo captioning software

Welcome

JCap is an easy to use application for adding captions and descriptions to your digital photograph collection and then finding them later. JCap is a self-contained Java application that requires no external database to operate.

Huntington Beach, CA

I created JCap because I needed an application that I could use to caption and describe each of my digital photos, help me find them later, let me easily use those descriptions in other applications, and allow me to easily archive the images and descriptions together. The main goals being: to be able to find photos later, to help me share the photos with others in online galleries, and to be able to read these descriptions thirty years from now on whatever computer I happen to have at the time.

JCap doesn't require a separate database application or web server to run. Captions, descriptions, and keywords are stored in plain text files in the same folder as the images they describe and can be read by any application that can read text files. This means you can use any application or tool you want (notepad, grep, album generating software, your favorite HTML editor, scripting languages, etc) to read and manipulate the captions however you want.

And since the captions and descriptions are stored as text files in the same folder as the images themselves, archiving them is as simple as copying the image and the associated caption/description file to the archive location (e.g. burning to CD).

What JCap is NOT

JCap is not an online photo gallery creator. JCap does not create thumbnails. JCap is not an image editing application (in fact, JCap will never modify any of your images, ever, for any reason). There are many fine applications out there already that do those things. In fact, if you are looking for gallery creation software, the one I use (and one of the very best available) is JAlbum. JAlbum is one of many applications that can work with the caption and description data that JCap generates.

SourceForge.net

JCap uses the services of SourceForge.net for releasing files, version tracking, bug and feature requests, forums, and mailing lists. Go to the SourceForge.net project if you want to report a bug, make a feature request, be notified of new releases, etc..

License

This software is free and may be used, modified, and distributed subject to the terms of the GNU General Public License. Source code is available at Sourceforge.

Thanks

Thanks to Drew Noakes and his excellent com.drew.metadata.exif package. And to David Ekholm for his help with drag and drop.

Similar applications

Before I embarked on writing my own captioning software, I searched for something that would suit my needs. I didn't find any that were a perfect fit but these came close, and they are all free and excellent software in their own right:

iOta (KDE/Qt, Linux) - This software comes the closest to how I think photo organization/archiving should be done. The things that prevented me from using it are a) the data is stored in the EXIF header of the image itself which makes it more difficult to use with other applications that don't understand EXIF (e.g. grep or my HTML editor); b) it requires external software for a database and image manipulation; c) it doesn't run on Windows. If you are close to liking JCap but it isn't quite what you want, you may want to check out iOta.

Exifer (Windows) - Exifer is a specialized app for archiving, viewing, modifying, and restoring EXIF header data to images. However, it does also allow you to add a comment to the EXIF header. This almost worked for me except that, again, the comments are stored in the EXIF header. Also, because this application is very specialized, the user interface wasn't conducive to adding captions, keywords, and descriptions to many images quickly.

photos (PHP, web) - Simply "photos", this application does everything you need for image archiving/organization. It is an image storing, cataloging, and retrieval application for digital photos. Otherwise excellent, it has two drawbacks: a) it requires an external database (MySQL) and a web server with PHP in order to run; b) it is not easy to setup for novice to intermediate level users. It has a very complete set of features. If I were setting up an image management application for a business I would definitely consider this one.

Pixory (Cross-platform, Java) - Pixory is a unique application. Self-dubbed a "personal image server", it combines a built-in web server and database, thumbnail creation, and a gallery creator all in one. Image descriptions are stored in XML files in the same folders as the images. This application's primary purpose, however, is as an online gallery. It achieves this by allowing an administrator (you) to mark folders in your image collection as shared, manage mailing lists and send out invitations, and auto-generate thumbnails and gallery pages which visitors view by connecting directly to your computer.