Batch Assign Information

Use this function to add or change picture information, including ratings, keywords, and picture-taken dates, for multiple photos at once.

To edit photos’ picture information, use Information | Batch Assign Information… [Ctrl+K] in the Browser. Batch assigning information is efficient when you need to change the picture information for many pictures at once. To edit the information for just a single picture more conveniently, use Image Information.

 

This window’s settings are divided out over six tabs. To quickly deactivate/reactivate a tab, and thus the settings on that tab, use the checkbox next to its name.

The values in all checkmarked tabs are used – not just those in the visible tab!

Each text field must also be activated (checkmarked) before use. Next to the text fields are arrows for automatically inserting variable text into the field. Use the variable text feature to make use of information from one field (or from the picture’s file properties) in another field. (For example, to automatically fill pictures’ Titles with their filenames, use {NAME}.)

If you turn on a field but leave it empty, then that field’s contents will be erased in all of the pictures in the batch!

Use the Basic Information tab to edit pictures’ titles, authors, copyrights, descriptions, and description authors. You can also batch-assign ratings and labels here.

Additionally, you can batch-assign pictures’ location with fields for place, city, state/province, and country.

Use the Keywords tab to assign and remove keywords in batch with the aid of the program’s keywords tree. Use Remove All to remove all picture keywords (even words that are not listed in the program’s keywords tree). This option removes the entire contents of the keywords field, even for example spaces and other characters that can cause problems.

Use the Date and Time tab to set pictures’ date and time or shift them by a certain amount. Set date values using the calendars that become active when you click Set picture-taken time and date and Shift date. Use Shift date to push times and dates forward or backward by a given amount, e.g. to go back and change the time zone in which you took a group of pictures.

Use the Custom Information tab to batch-add or batch-edit custom information types for pictures outside of what is normally available.

Use Change IPTC encoding to UTF8 to change the way IPTC blocks are stored so that extended character sets are in better agreement with the standard. However, for now, photo programs widely ignore the standard and do not recognize it. Therefore, Zoner Photo Studio does not use it by default and it can only be activated in this window.

Use Write data only where it is not already present to restrict the changes’ effects to empty fields. This makes it easier to apply batch information edits when some pictures in a batch already contain information.

Presets work the same in this window as elsewhere: you can store all of your settings for the whole window as a preset so you can reuse them later. The presets controls are at the bottom left, no matter what tab you are in. To fill in the fields in this window using the information in an existing picture, click Read in from Picture…. Click Apply to run the operation on all selected pictures. Click Cancel to exit without changing any pictures’ information.

More Information

Changing a Picture’s EXIF Time and Date