How can I overlay date, GPS coordinates, and a caption onto photos for viewing and printing on Windows?

Question

I’m looking for a Windows 10 app or workflow that can place text directly on my photos so the information appears both on screen and in printed copies. Specifically, I want to show:

- the date the photo was taken
- GPS coordinates from the photo’s metadata
- a caption/comment that I enter myself

I previously used a free program that did this, but it is no longer supported and has become unreliable. What software or method can do this as a text/metadata overlay, ideally for multiple images?

user111717 · Answer

You can achieve this in many ways. This one will use PowerShell, ExifTool and ImageMagick.

GPS extraction is very easy and has bunch of options when using ExifTool. For instance, this:

$coordinates = exiftool C:\Path\To\Photo.jpg -GPSPosition -n -S -s

will store the coordinates in a PowerShell variable in this format:

51.5041055555556 -0.074575

-S -s option makes it only output the value, while -n formats it as decimals. You can instead use e.g. -c (-coordFormat) switch to have more control about it - see documentation.

You can then add the variable content onto the image with e.g. ImageMagick. For example, this:

magick C:\Path\To\Photo.jpg -gravity Center -pointSize 100 -annotate 0 "$coordinates" -append C:\Path\To\Output.jpg

will add centered coordinates with font size 100 and output Output.jpg. -gravity defines how it's centered horizontally and -annotate the vertical offset from center. You can add the caption in a similar way. Check the documentation for many more possibilities.

How can I overlay date, GPS coordinates, and a caption onto photos for viewing and printing on Windows?

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