Handpicked Software

I’ve written elsewhere about my frustrating experiences with captions and descriptions appearing in my iPhoto books, even after I’ve been careful to delete them. In creating my last iPhoto book, I tried a couple of additional tips that seem to have solved the problem. If you think you’ve deleted all of the captions and descriptions, only to find a few wayward words in your printed iPhoto book, read the rest of this post…

Turn off automatic entry of information

The first preventative measure is to turn off the option to automatically enter photo information when you add pictures to your iPhoto book. This option is turned on by default, but it’s easy to disable. After clicking on the Create a new book icon at the bottom of the iPhoto window (or selecting New Book from the File menu) and selecting your theme, click on the Settings icon below your new book cover. Uncheck the Automatically enter photo information checkbox and click OK.

Now, when you drag photos into your iPhoto book, iPhoto won’t automatically add the file name. Unfortunately, if you’re using the Folio theme, you’ll still see other information that iPhoto has added without any intervention on your part: invitations to insert captions and descriptions of your photos, along with a copyright notice for each image. If you choose the Contemporary theme, you’ll see an invitation to enter a description for most of the images in your iPhoto book.

Review in Preview

I know of no way to prevent iPhoto from automatically entering these prompts, so if you prefer not to have them (as I almost always do), you’ll need to delete them manually. When you’ve gone through your entire book and confirmed that you see only the information you want to see, quit iPhoto (there’s no other way to save your changes). Then open iPhoto again and select Print from the File menu. Select Preview from the Print dialog. Now you can proof the file as it will be sent to Apple for printing.

It seems like a lot of extra work, but it beats paying about $40 (with shipping) for an iPhoto book, only to read “Insert a caption,” or “DSC_0046.NEF” under your favorite picture.