Caption Check: see what the picture desk will see
Drop in a photo before you file it. Caption Check reads the caption, byline, credit, date and location saved inside the file, the way agency and newspaper systems do, and tells you what's missing, what's wrong and whether the file gives away where it was taken.
Private by design: your photos are opened by this page in your own browser and never sent anywhere. There's no upload, no account and nothing stored. Close the tab and it's gone.
What it checks
- The fields a desk reads: headline, caption, byline, credit line, copyright notice, date created, city and country, keywords.
- Mistakes that slip through on deadline: placeholder caption text, last year's copyright, an IPTC date that isn't the camera's date, keywords stuck in one entry.
- The two copies problem: files keep caption data twice, in the older IIM block and the newer XMP block. When they disagree, two desks can see two different captions. Caption Check shows both.
- Garbled accents: names like São Paulo or Müller turn into "São" when the IIM block doesn't say it's UTF-8.
- Fields that get cut off: the IIM standard caps the byline at 32 bytes and the caption at 2,000, and some systems enforce it.
- Location in the file: if the camera or phone wrote GPS coordinates, you'll see them before the desk does. On a protest or a sensitive story, that matters.
- Alamy Live News: switch on Alamy's rules to check the headline form (and no date in it), the caption's opening, length and credit, one headline across the set, JPEG only and the 24-hour window, as Alamy publishes them.
The Alamy Live News check is unofficial: it follows the rules Alamy publishes on its contributor pages and policies PDF, as of October 2026. Dispatches is not affiliated with or endorsed by Alamy, and Alamy's own pages win if they change.
Questions about checking IPTC captions
How do I check a photo's IPTC caption online?
Drop the JPEG, TIFF or RAW file onto Caption Check. It reads the IPTC and XMP fields in your browser and shows the headline, caption, byline, credit, copyright, date and location, with anything missing or wrong flagged. The file is never uploaded.
Does it check captions for Alamy Live News?
Yes. Switch on Alamy Live News rules to check the headline form, the caption's opening, its length, the credit line, one headline across the set, JPEG only and the 24-hour window, as Alamy publishes them. The check is unofficial and not affiliated with Alamy.
Why not just look in Lightroom or Photo Mechanic?
You can, on a laptop. Caption Check works on a phone in the browser, checks a whole set at once, and points out the problems instead of listing every field. It's also handy for a picture editor checking what a stringer sent.
Does it change my files?
No. It only reads them. To fix what it finds, use the app you caption with.
What about RAW files?
DNG, NEF and ARW are read when the caption is inside the file. Many cameras and apps keep RAW captions in a separate .xmp sidecar instead; Caption Check doesn't read sidecars yet. HEIC isn't supported.
Keep reading
- TutorialHow to write a photo captionWho, what, where, when, why, in the order the wires use.
- TutorialIPTC metadata on iPhoneThe fields picture desks read, and how to write them into a whole shoot.
- TutorialFile to Alamy Live News from an iPhoneAlamy's settings, caption format and 24-hour rule.
Fix it on the phone you shot the job on
Dispatches writes headline, caption, byline, credit and location into a whole shoot at once on an iPhone, then sends it to the desk. On the App Store for iPhone (iOS 26 or later), with a 14-day free trial.