A review workflow for Magento 2 product image alt text

Collect the public URLs for the product images you want to review. Start with a limited set of important products or one category instead of sending the whole catalog through a new process at once.

Keep the SKU, product name, store view, and image role beside each URL in your source sheet. AltCaption uses the image URL for generation. Those catalog fields remain your reference when you copy an approved description back into Commerce.

AltCaption needs an HTTP or HTTPS image URL it can fetch. Do not paste Commerce admin credentials, session URLs, or private media links into the queue. If the catalog images are not public, keep the review inside an approved internal process instead of opening access just for generation.

Decide what each gallery image contributes before generating text. The base image may need the product name and main visible attributes. A detail view should identify the material, fastening, label, or feature it shows. A size chart or comparison graphic may need its important information in nearby page text instead of a long alt attribute.

Adobe assigns product images roles such as Base, Small, Thumbnail, and Swatch. One uploaded image can have more than one role, so keep the role in your source sheet for review; do not paste role names into every description unless the role changes what a customer needs to know.

Paste the image URLs into the AltCaption bulk Review workspace. Occurrence rows stay separate when the same URL appears more than once, which is useful when an image needs different review notes or page context.

Generate only the selected rows. Edit the drafts, mark their status, filter the queue, and remove rows that do not need text. The workspace resumes from local browser storage, and the versioned Alt text manifest JSON gives you a file you can save and import later.

I use statuses to keep generation and approval separate. A generated draft is not ready just because it exists. I check it against the product record and image role, edit it, then mark the row approved only when the wording can be copied into Commerce.

The manifest keeps the occurrence rows, statuses, edits, and review metadata on the device. There is no account sync or shared review queue. Export the JSON when you need a recovery copy, then import that file into the Review workspace on the browser where you will continue.

Adobe's current catalog guide puts the Alt Text field in the product image detail view. Open Catalog, edit the product, expand Images and Videos, select the image, enter the approved description, and save the product.

Store views need an extra check. Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source can inherit the default image alt text or keep a store-view-specific value. Confirm the Store View selector before replacing a translation or an intentional local description.

Review the default scope before translating a batch. A useful source sheet has one row for the default description and separate rows only where a store view needs different wording. That makes inherited values visible and avoids copying the same English draft over localized text.

Work through a small product set first. Copy the approved text, save the product, and reload the storefront product page. Inspect the rendered image element and confirm that its alt attribute contains the expected text for the selected store view.

If the admin value and storefront value differ, stop the batch and trace the theme or storefront rendering path. Fixing the saved catalog field is only useful when the customer-facing page renders it on the intended image.

Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source store each product image's Alt Text as the image label. In Admin, the Alt Text field in the image detail view saves to the image's label value, and a product CSV carries the same value in base_image_label, small_image_label, thumbnail_image_label, and additional_image_labels.

Export the products from System > Data Transfer > Export, then keep only the columns the import needs: sku, store_view_code, the image columns you are changing, and their label columns. Leave store_view_code blank for the default scope. Add a store view code only on rows where that store view needs different wording.

Keep each image path the same as the export. When an image path in the CSV matches an image already on the product, the import updates its label instead of adding the file again. That behavior comes from the current Magento source, so test it on a staging copy with two or three SKUs before you run a whole category.

Import the file with Add/Update. Then open one of those products on the storefront and inspect the gallery image. If a label is still blank, the current Magento product page gallery uses the product name instead, so every unlabeled image in that gallery gets the same text.

In the current Magento source, the import splits every image label column on the Multiple value separator, and the default separator is a comma. That includes base_image_label, even though it holds one label. A label such as Aster running shoe, three-quarter front view is cut to Aster running shoe because the import keeps only as many labels as there are images in that column.

Change the Multiple value separator to | on the import screen and use | between paths in additional_images and between labels in additional_image_labels. Then commas inside a description stay intact. The separator applies to every multi-value column in the file, so this only works cleanly with the trimmed CSV above. Do not paste | into a description.

AltCaption does not connect to Adobe Commerce or Magento Open Source, write through the API, install an extension, or import the CSV for you. It drafts descriptions from public image URLs and keeps the review queue in your browser. You copy the approved text into the label columns and run the import in Commerce.

For a catalog that needs automatic writes, use a reviewed API script or a Commerce extension with the permissions and rollback path your team accepts. The local workflow is useful when you want to check the descriptions before granting another system catalog access.