Annotating images

rewa · 2025-09-23T06:11:15+00:00

I have been using Zotero for ower 10 years, adding thousands of JPEGs to document entries and annotating a large number of individual JPEGs I produced in archives. For example, for a single JPEG, I noted the date of the historical document, noted names, described the content, made comments and so on. Since my last update of Zotero I notice this possibility is gone, I can still see the old notes but cannot even correct them. For new JPEGs there is no alternative besides the title or tagging field (both much to small) or producing an individual parent entry for each single JPEG. And this would pose the question how these parent entries can be regrouped in a document. In the forums it is suggested to fuse images to a Pdf and then attach them to the entry, but this is a lot of work and does not allow anymore to find back specific images with their own name (like IMG2495), as far as I can see.
It would be a pity to have go back to an earlier version of Zotero since the new one has many advantages. But I wonder why this specific feature that has been so useful has been abolished and if it is planned to reintroduce it. Am I the only one with this working method?

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u551327/ppk2phqkojai89hggtyw.png

FHeimburger · 2025-09-23T07:21:52+00:00

I used to do that (individual image files attached to Zotero items), but I have since switched to PDFs (using the technique detailed here which is pretty efficient https://boiteaoutils.info/2019/02/traiter-de-grandes-quantites-dimages-au-retour-des-archives/ ).
I also suspect that a lot of people are doing what you are doing here using Tropy which was developed to handle archival photography.

rewa · 2025-09-23T07:25:33+00:00

Thank you for this, I will have a look at the boîte à outils.
I tried Tropy before but found the system complicated and lengthy. Above all, Zotero is great because you can store and find everything in one place

FHeimburger · 2025-09-23T07:31:29+00:00

I find Tropy very efficient, but, like you, prefer having everything in one place - in particular being able to tag across primary and secondary sources gets me in a much better position to start writing.

rewa · 2025-09-23T07:38:13+00:00

yes, so the question remains, why a very useful feature has been dropped. Until now, I see only work around solutions, nothing that would be better than before. I will probably opt for combining of my images in pdf though, since I already do it a lot for copies by camera of articles/books.
thanks for evoking zotfile in your article, I will install it again.

FHeimburger · 2025-09-23T07:40:27+00:00

Zotfile did not migrate across to Zotero 7. But the annotations are now handled by the Zotero PDF reader so you do not need it for that.

rewa · 2025-09-23T07:50:40+00:00

ok, I seem to have missed some developments in Zotero :-). thanks for the information

rewa · 2025-10-02T07:01:34+00:00

I relaunch my quest for an answer to the problem of annotated JPEG images. Why has this feature that has been so useful been abolished and is there any hope that the old way will be restored in a future version?
I also wonder how to treat all the thousands of images that are already in my Zotero library: it does not seem possible to merge series of JPEGS into one Pdf inside Zotero. The suggested solution to transform the annotation of an image into a classic note is no help, the created note is for all the series collected in one document, the link to the specific image disappears.

rewa · 2025-10-07T08:37:40+00:00

[Merged back from another thread — D.S.]

I put my question inhere, although the subject is slightly different, because I got no answer to my previous posts on the

problem of annotated JPEG images. Why has this feature that has been so useful been abolished and is there any hope that the old way will be restored in a future version?
I also wonder how to treat all the thousands of images that are already in my Zotero library: it does not seem possible to merge series of JPEGS into one Pdf inside Zotero. The suggested solution to transform the annotation of an image into a classic note is no help, the created note is for all the series collected in one document, the link to the specific image disappears.

FHeimburger · 2025-10-07T09:21:58+00:00

I don't think there is a very good way of handling that specific use case. It was probably always a very marginal practice
I have some sets of archival documents that have the same set-up - one entry with lots of JPG archival photos attached and annotations in the file annotations. You could select all the image files in zotero, drag them to a (temporary) folder on your computer and then merge them into a PDF there (using imagemagick, for example). You would still need to add the annotations back into the PDF.
I suspect there should be ways of scripting some of what you need, but am not good enough at that to know exactly.

rewa · 2025-10-08T14:24:34+00:00

Thank you for your answer, but I would have liked to get an "official" answer to my question (I suppose you a rather a user?). I can't understand why in the forums some questions are answered and others not. There is no explanation for this change in the documentation either. I will try again in the developer section.

dstillman · 2025-10-08T14:45:01+00:00

@rewa: Please don't post to multiple threads for the same issue (or post to the developer list if you're not a developer). I've moved your posts back to this thread.

As @FHeimburger says, this is not a common way of using Zotero, so it's not something we've designed for. Creating a single (OCRed) PDF from the images would be a much better approach, and would allow you to use all the annotation features of the built-in reader.

Embedded attachment notes were always an esoteric feature, used mostly by third-party plugins (e.g., ZotFile stored PDF outlines there), and they don't really reflect how Zotero is designed to be used. They also add too much technical complexity with some newer features in Zotero, such as the ability to add images to notes.

I'm afraid there's no great automated solution for your existing library, though as @FHeimburger says, there would be ways to script it, using the web API to save generated PDFs back to the library. As a lower-tech solution, you could also drag multiple images into Zotero notes and copy the comments into the note under each one, but a PDF would be a better long-term solution.