TOPIC: Wish List Idea: Pre-Loaded Photo Captions?

He everyone.  Here I go thinking again.  I've got to stop that one of these days!  Does anyone else think that it would be handy to be able to pre-load photo captions? I know the drop-down list works and you can select the narratives that you have used for that particular report.  But the narratives don’t necessarily match the photo all of the time.  For example I have a section on my reports called “Emergency Info”.  I include a photo showing the homeowner where the water shutoff is at the house and street; where the electrical panel and main shutoff are located; gas meter shutoff location etc.  And the caption is usually the same that I could select if it were preloaded such as “Water Shutoff at House” etc.  Yes I could write narrative worded like this but I think the photo captions could be written geared more towards the photos that will be pretty much the same for each house.

Just wondering what you guys think?

Are you adding those items to a panel of the same name? If so you can just check the 'Use as Caption' check box.

A "duh!" moment! I had not named the panels that way but I will now!  That'll solve that problem  - good idea Dominic!

I still womder if other folks think pre-loaded photo captians have any merrit?

Thanks Dominic!

This makes me think-or maybe rethink-of an idea I've been knocking around everytime I see this preloaded captions idea mentioned. It would be nice if there were the option to have all your associated  comments appear in a dropdown below the photo BEFORE you select one in the damage panel. But it would also be nice to have a second option, where each comment could have an abbreviated version which would only show up in a photo caption dropdown list. Yes, it would take time to build two lists when making your template, but it would remove the "redundancy" issue. For guys like me who are already abbreviating the comments, it would save us that step during report writing.

So your electrical might have:

   There is a reverse polarity at the outlet in the south garage wall. This is a safety hazard due to etc. etc...

But the caption doesn't need all the location, potential consequences, recommendation, etc.  It just needs to say:

   Reverse polarity outlet.

The same is true for MANY issues which have photos in the report. The comments in the report can take care of most of the custom details and the caption can be simple or general.

Now I'm only speaking from the standpoint of how I personally am doing HIP reports, but it seems like the option of a secondary photo caption comment list(as another option along with what has been discussed) might benefit many different styles of reports. At leaste the preloaded option would help those guys who use captions as their only comments.