If you find yourself typing the same captions, credits, or descriptive phrases over and over when cataloging your images, Text Expansion is your secret weapon in Photo Supreme. With it, you can type a short abbreviation, like locpar, and instantly expand it into “Paris, France – Eiffel Tower District”. It’s fast, consistent, and eliminates the chance of mistyping or forgetting standard wording.

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Why It Matters

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• Speed: Drastically reduce typing time for repetitive text.

• Consistency: Every occurrence of your standard terms is spelled, capitalized, and punctuated identically.

• Flexibility: Keep multiple sets of expansions for different projects, clients, or workflows.

• Error Reduction: Prevent typos in critical metadata fields.

• Scalability: Works with small phrases or entire paragraphs.
   

Your First Text Expansion List

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Step 1 - Create or Import a List

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• Go to Preferences → Text Expansion.

• You can:

  • Create a new list inside Photo Supreme.

  • Import a CSV or TSV file if you already have abbreviations elsewhere.​
    
    Example CSV structure:
    locpar,Paris France – Eiffel Tower District
    sigjs,John Smith Photography © 2025
     

Step 2 – Link Your List

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• Create or link one or multiple lists to your workspace so Photo Supreme knows which expansions to use.
   

Step 3 – Trigger Expansions
 

• Type your abbreviation in any metadata field.

• Photo Supreme underlines it with a curly highlight.

• Press Ctrl + Return to expand it (or right-click if there are multiple matches).

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Why Use Multiple Text Expansion Lists?

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Photo Supreme lets you link more than one text expansion list at the same time. This isn’t just a storage choice, it’s a way to separate your expansions by context so you can keep them organized and avoid clutter.

Practical reasons for multiple lists:

• Project separation: One list for a travel photography project, another for a corporate catalog, so each set of expansions contains only what’s relevant.

• Client-specific terms: Keep separate lists for different clients so you don’t mix up brand styles, taglines, or formatting.

• Language variants: One list for English captions, another for French, another for Spanish. Switch or combine them depending on your audience.

• Specialized macros: Have one list with general metadata expansions, another with macro-heavy technical info for exports or reports.

• Team workflows: If multiple people use the catalog, each person can have their own personal expansion list without touching others’ shortcuts.

The benefit:

With multiple lists, you avoid having hundreds of unrelated abbreviations in one giant file. It keeps your abbreviations short and easy to remember because you don’t have to make them overly unique to avoid conflicts. You just keep them in the right list.

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Example:

• In your “Travel” list: locnyc → “New York City, NY, USA”

• In your “Corporate” list: locnyc → “New York City, Corporate HQ – 25th Floor”
   

Both can exist without conflicting, because you only load the relevant list(s) for the task at hand.

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Level Up: Advanced Macro Usage

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Text Expansion doesn’t just insert static text; it can work with macros for dynamic, context-sensitive output.

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Example Macro:

locnow,Location: %xmp:photoshop:City, %xmp:photoshop:Country

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Typing locnow could become:

Location: Paris, France

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Nested Text Expansions – The Power Move

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Once you’ve mastered simple abbreviations, you can unlock an even more powerful trick: nested expansions. This is where one abbreviation references another, allowing you to build modular, reusable text blocks that can be combined in countless ways. Think of it like LEGO for your metadata: instead of retyping big chunks of text for each new abbreviation, you create smaller building blocks and reuse them inside other expansion

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Create a base expansion that holds commonly reused text.

sigjs,John Smith Photography © %yyyy

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Reference that base expansion in another abbreviation by simply typing the base abbreviation inside

capfull,%xmp:dc:title – %textexp:sigjs

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• You type capfull in a field, followed by Ctrl+Enter

• Photo Supreme first replaces %xmp:dc:title with the actual title from your metadata.

• Then it sees %textexp:sigjs and expands that to “John Smith Photography © 2025” (or whatever year the photo was captured).

• The final expanded text becomes:

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Eiffel Tower at Sunset – John Smith Photography © 2025

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Why This is Useful

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• Consistency: Your signature, location format, or project tag will always be identical, no matter where it appears.

• Easy Updates: If your signature changes, you only update it in one place, and all nested expansions automatically reflect the change.

• Reduced Repetition: You don’t have to remember or retype every part of a longer phrase.

• Scalability: Perfect for multi-lingual metadata; you can swap base expansions without touching the nested ones.

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Why This is Powerful

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• One update, everywhere: If you change your signature, you edit sigjs once, and every expansion using %textexp:sigjs is instantly updated.

• Keeps text consistent: Perfect for brand names, project tags, or standardized captions.

• Dynamic combinations: Mix and match titles, locations, dates, and signatures without retyping.

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Pro Tip 1

 

Nested expansions work beautifully in Transfer Profiles too. You can set up automated naming or captions so that every exported file already has your full formatted text without any manual typing.

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Pro Tip 2

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Photo Supreme also lets you assign the same abbreviation to multiple possible expansions.
When you type that abbreviation and trigger expansion (either with Ctrl + Enter or by right-clicking the curly-underlined word), a small selection menu appears. From there, you simply choose the version you want; perfect when one shortcut could have several variants, like:

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addr,123 Main Street, Springfield
addr,456 Elm Street, Springfield

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A Real-Life Example: Text Expansion for a Wedding Photographer

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Let’s say you’re a busy wedding photographer, juggling multiple shoots every month. Every wedding has a familiar set of key moments you’ll want to describe when adding captions or metadata later, but typing them out in full every single time is tedious and error-prone.

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With Photo Supreme’s Text Expansion Lists, you could create one specifically for “Common Wedding Moments.” For example:

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prep_bride,Bride getting ready in the bridal suite with makeup artist and bridesmaids.  
prep_groom,Groom preparing in the dressing room with groomsmen adjusting ties and jackets.  
first_look,The emotional first look between the bride and groom before the ceremony.  
aisle_walk,Bride walking down the aisle accompanied by her father.  
vows,Exchange of wedding vows at the altar in front of family and friends.  
ring_exch,Bride and groom exchanging wedding rings during the ceremony.  
first_kiss,Newlyweds sharing their first kiss as a married couple.  
confetti_exit,Couple exiting the ceremony under a shower of confetti and cheers.  
first_dance,Bride and groom enjoying their first dance together at the reception.  
cake_cut,Couple cutting their wedding cake, smiling for guests and cameras.  
 

Now, instead of typing “Bride and groom enjoying their first dance together at the reception” every time, you simply expand first_dance in the Caption field, and the full description appears instantly.

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You can even take it a step further by creating a second Text Expansion List for Wedding Settings, which you edit before each shoot. This list might contain personal details such as the couple’s names:

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bride,Jane  
groom,John

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Then, in your Common Wedding Moments list, you could write:

first_dance,%textexp:bride and %textexp:groom enjoying their first dance together at the reception.

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When you now expand first_dance in the metadata field, Photo Supreme replaces it with:

Jane and John enjoying their first dance together at the reception.

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This way, you only update the Wedding Settings once before each event, and every description in your Common Moments list becomes instantly personalized for that couple. Less typing, fewer mistakes, and a lot more time to focus on the photos.

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Wrapping Up

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Text Expansion in Photo Supreme isn’t just a convenience feature: it’s a workflow multiplier.

Whether you’re speeding up repetitive captions, ensuring perfect brand consistency, or building powerful nested expansions that pull in live metadata, it transforms how you enter and manage text. By starting small with a few key abbreviations and gradually introducing macros and nesting, you can create a library of reusable text snippets that will save you time on every project. And because everything is centralized, any change you make to a base abbreviation, ripples instantly through your entire catalog. It’s a simple idea with big results: type less, think less, and let Photo Supreme do the heavy lifting so you can focus on what really matters: curating and sharing your images.

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Set up your first abbreviation today, trigger it with a keystroke, and watch your workflow transform.

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