As you know, a picture is worth a thousand words, but a picture with a great caption can tell a whole story. When creating posts on Local Guides Connect, adding descriptive captions to your photos is crucial. It helps others understand the context of your image, whether it’s a stunning landscape, a delicious meal, or a hidden gem you’ve discovered. While many of us know the importance of captions, it’s a step that’s often missed.
Recently, I discovered a very easy and innovative way to add captions to your photos if you’re using a Windows computer. This method uses a tool you might already have on your system to generate and attach the caption before you even upload the photo to Connect!
Here is a stepwise guide to this simple process:
Step 1: Generate a Description with Microsoft Copilot
Locate the picture you want to upload on your Windows computer.
Right-click on the image file.
From the context menu that appears, find and click on the “Ask Copilot” option. This will open your image directly within the Copilot interface.
Once the image is open in Copilot, you can give it a simple command. Type: “make a description for this image”.
Copilot will then analyze the photo and generate a detailed description for you.
This is the key step that will embed your caption into the file name.
Copy the brief, one-sentence description generated by Copilot.
Go back to your image file.
Right-click on the file and select “Rename”.
Before pasting the copied text, type "Caption - " (a hyphen after ‘Caption’).
Now, paste the copied description after the hyphen.
Your new file name should look something like this: Caption - Caption - A group of local guides gathers in front of Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata for a meetup, holding a banner with event details.jpg
Thanks for sharing. My initial reaction is: this is a lot of work and do you really need to rename the file to make the caption. And I don’t think it is nessesary to add “Caption ..”. At the start of a caption.
The file name is not the correct place for captions on Connect.
Here is a sample pic with my grandson dancing at an open air concert.
@NandKK you can also add or change the caption using the Preview by clicking the pencil icon on the left below the image. Here you can also reduce the size or remove the image from the comment.
You’ve hit on the core reason why I find this method so useful, especially when dealing with many photos! @MortenCopenhagen
You are absolutely right: my insistence on renaming the file, especially with the “Caption -” prefix, stems from the observation that when you upload a photo to Connect with a descriptive filename (like “Caption - A beautiful sunset over the Victoria Memorial.jpg”), Connect automatically populates the caption field with that filename.
This is a huge time-saver! It means:
No extra effort to edit the caption after upload: Whatever your file name is, that’s what appears as the caption, eliminating the need to click, edit, copy, and paste for each photo.
Highly efficient for multiple photos: If you’re uploading a batch of images, this automatic transfer of the filename to the caption field significantly speeds up the process, as the AI-generated description (from Copilot) is already there, ready to go.
While you’re correct that the filename isn’t the official caption storage, this workaround allows us to leverage Copilot’s description generation and then have Connect automatically apply it during upload, which I’ve found incredibly helpful for workflow efficiency. It’s a pragmatic hack for quicker captioning.
That’s an excellent point, @WilfriedB sir, and thank you for highlighting the functionality within the preview mode. You’re absolutely correct that the pencil icon allows for editing the caption, resizing, or removing the image directly in Connect.
My approach of renaming the file with the “Caption -” prefix is not meant to replace this standard method but rather to offer a significant efficiency gain, especially when uploading multiple photos to a single Connect post. In such scenarios, repeatedly opening each photo in preview mode to add or refine captions can become quite time-consuming and cumbersome.
By contrast, if you’ve already renamed your files with the desired captions using a tool like Copilot beforehand, the caption is often automatically added upon upload. This eliminates the need for repeated post-upload edits in the preview, streamlining the workflow considerably and making it much less hectic when managing numerous images.
I’m really glad to know that you also use a similar method of renaming image file names to serve as captions. It validates the efficiency of this approach. As you’ve experienced, it truly does save a lot of time and effort, especially for those of us who prefer to prepare our content thoroughly before hitting “post.” Having the caption automatically populate from the filename makes the posting process significantly smoother!
Thanks for sharing your experience and reinforcing the utility of this tip!
It is a very good approach, to prepare captions beforehand, @NandKK. My way of doing that, is tagging the metadata of each of photo instead of renaming. When posting somewhere (including Connect, Google Maps or other sites), I copy my locally stored caption and most of times making minor changes depending on the context.
That’s an excellent point, @WilfriedB Sir! Thanks for sharing your method.
You’re right, preparing captions beforehand is always the most efficient way to go. Your approach of tagging the metadata is a very robust and professional solution, embedding the caption directly into the image file for consistency across platforms like Connect and Google Maps.
My “rename and prefix” method is more of a quick workaround to leverage Copilot’s AI descriptions and have Connect auto-populate from the filename. Your metadata approach, then copying and refining, is clearly a more integrated and powerful way to ensure you always have a ready-made caption.
Great to see different strategies for efficient captioning! Thanks again for your valuable input.
That procedure is very hectic by adding the caption in the preview @SaylliWalve1. I also used to do that only. But now I found and easy method, which shared with you all.
Thank you, @TusharSuradkar ji, for appreciating the idea. It really made my work much easier while posting multiple photos in a Connect post, which is why I felt it was worth sharing with everyone. Glad that it helped you.
