difference between Titles and Captions in Photos

jfblv wrote: Why do both Titles and Captions exist? I

The reason they both exist is because they correspond to fields defined in the IPTC metadata. They are there, so it's good we have them available to us. The IPTC is used by all sorts of image viewers and editors-- it's a universal format. So they can be included with exports of pictures.

Titles:

• I keep titles fairly short-- they can be shown under thumbnails, so, really, you get one line, and that may be a pretty short line.
• On a Mac, you can sort by titles, and I use that a lot.
• An album sorted by titles in Mac Photos will maintain the sorting in iOS and iPadOS
• In iOS and iPadOS, titles don't show. Nonetheless, title info can be searched

Captions:

• Captions can be very long. For old family pictures, I include names, birth-death dates, relationships-- often for a bunch of people. Unfortunately, captions don't format, much. And you can't see much at a time.
• Searches look only in the first parts of captions, maybe the first 250 characters
• Captions can be seen in iOS and iPadOS.

I sometimes copy the title into the caption so that the information appears below a Thumbnail on the Mac, and I can see the information on an iPad. A title might be "2024 06 19 - 023 - Juneteenth" where the number serves as an index to sort by. But the index doesn't make sense if I look only at favorites on my iPad, so the caption might be "2024 06 19 Juneteenth" so I'll know what the picture is about when I look at it. Or the caption might be "2024 06 19 Juneteenth Brass Band" with more information.

The titles and captions can both been used to add descriptions to a photo.

But there is difference on how they are used on a Mac and on mobile devices.

Are you also using Photos on an iPad or iPhone? Are you syncing the devices with iCloud Photos?

• On your Mac:
  • Titles: You can see the titles below the thumbnails of your photos and videos, when you are viewing them in the correct aspect ratio, not tiled in a square grid, see: How to view the titles or filenames below the thumbnails in Photos 5.0 - Apple Community . The titles are the perfect place to add short descriptions to the photo, that you want to see, when you are viewing the thumbnails.
  • Captions: On a Mac we can only see the captions, when we open the Info for a photo. But we can put there a longer, detailed text.
  • Both the titles and captions are synced with iCloud Photos between our devices and we can see them on any synced Mac. And both the title and the caption will be saved in the IPTC metadata of the photo, when we export a version of the photo.
• On the iOS devices: On our iPhone or iPad we can only add captions, not titles. When we add a caption on an iPhone, we can see it in the captions field on the Mac, when we sync the library with iCloud.

If you are using iCloud Photos and sync your devices with iCloud, use the Captions field to add the descriptions that you want to see on all your devices. I am also adding a short title into the title field, because I want to see them below the thumbnails on my Mac.

Prairie Falcon wrote: Apple needs to have some grouchy old Senior Citizens who are empowered to ask "dumb" questions about design things.

Many of the question answerers are indeed "grouchy old Senior Citizens." Thank you for your consideration.

I use Photos Workbench ($30) to add and manipulate titles. I use titles like "2024 04 18 - 014 - Grand Canyon" with an index number like 014 to indicate the order. If, for story reasons, I want picture 17 to appear before 014, then I just change the numbers and sort by title on my Mac.

I copy a generic version of the title, like "2024 04 18 - Grand Canyon" into the caption field, because that's what shows on the iPhone. I may add details to each caption, like "2024 04 18 - 014 - Grand Canyon - Bright Angel Trail" that will show in the Info windows for all the devices. I don't want the Title to have extra info because it won't fit well in the thumbnail view on the Mac.

You can use an option-return to add a new line in the caption window on the Mac, but the results are not dependable on phones. Captions can be very long, but they can be awkward to view.

The handling of filenames has changed considerable over the years in Photos for Mac.

The more recent versions of Photos, starting with Photos 5 on Catalina, are no longer using the original filenames internally. When we import photos or videos to Photos, the media will be renamed internally with unique filenames, more details here: How Photos 5.0 on Catalina Manages original Files and Filenames .

However, Photos is remembering the original filenames and showing it to us in the Info. The original filename is also used as a default title and shown below the thumbnails, as long as we do not assign a title to the photo or video. when we sort photos by the titles, Photos will ignore the filenames and sort only by the assigned titles. This has been different in the older system versions unto Photos 4 on Mojave. Sorting Albums by Title in Photos - Changes in Photos 5.0 on Catalina

Why do both Titles and Captions exist? I think I understand from your explanation how they function but I'm not clear on why they both exist. Are they duplicative or do they serve different purposes? What was the reasoning behind having both? Thx!

Titles and Descriptions equate to the IPTC's (International Press Telecommunications Council) Titles and Descriptions fields which professional photographers and the news media use to describe their photos, assign copyright and then a description of the photo. The fields are:

Photos only makes use of some of them.

Good luck with exploring the titles, captions, keywords, filenames 😊

Thank you for the excellent clarification on why Titles and Captions both exist!