Putting Metadata to Work
Text and images copyright Tim Grey, all rights reserved

I’m often impressed by the ability of photographers to remember a tremendous amount of information about their photographs. Quite often they are able to look at an image and immediately recite where they were, what time of year it was, what time of day it was, what lens they were using, what shutter speed and aperture they used, and much more. The human brain is an incredible thing, indeed.

But one of the things I love most about computers is that they allow you to store a tremendous amount of photo information, relieving you of the burden of remembering so much. Digital photographers can take full advantage of this by putting metadata to work.

Metadata is data about data. In the case of a digital image, the file itself is data. But within that file can be a wealth of data about that image data, in the form of various types of metadata.

Photoshop makes it easy to view and modify the metadata for your digital image files through the File Info dialog box. To get started, open an image and select File > File Info from the menu. The dialog box includes a list of sections on the left, as well as a main area where the various data fields are displayed.

Click on Camera Data 1 on the left side, and you’ll see a list of attributes for the current image. This is information added to your digital photographs by the camera as soon as the image is captured. This is EXIF metadata, which is part of the Exchangeable Image File standard. This data is intended to be read-only, meaning you can view it but you can’t modify it, although there are software tools available that allow you to modify this data.

You’ll notice that the EXIF metadata displayed in the Camera Data 1 section relates to the camera itself, listing various attributes of the camera and capture settings. This is a great way to review your images and learn about what settings produced the best result. For example, you could compare the shutter speed reported for various images of a flowing stream to find out which produces the best result, helping you learn what settings you might want to use in similar situations in the future.

Seeing the information recorded by the camera can be very helpful, but you can really tap the full power of metadata by working with the fields you can modify yourself.

For example, going back to the Description section that is the default when you open the Image Info dialog box, you’ll notice there are a series of fields allowing you to describe the photo and the photographer. This is a great way to make note of copyright information. It won’t necessarily encourage people to respect your copyright, but it can be a useful tool to demonstrate ownership of an image for a variety of purposes.

To make changes, simply enter new values for any of the fields desired. At a minimum, I recommend including your name as the Author, setting the Copyright Status to Copyrighted, including a basic Copyright Notice, and providing your website address if you have one in the Copyright Info URL field.

One of the most powerful fields is Keywords, found in the IPTC Content section. This is an industry-standard field that allows you to define keywords for the image you can search on later. Adobe Bridge, for example, allows you to search for images based on metadata, including keywords. Also, many stock photography agencies and other consumers of photographic images use the IPTC Keywords field for indexing photos. To add or modify keywords, simply enter values in the Keywords field of the IPTC Content section, separating each keyword by a semicolon.

Taking the time to enter at least basic metadata for your images will help ensure you’re able to find the right photo much more quickly later. One way to search for the right photo is to use Adobe Bridge. Navigate to the folder that contains the images you want to search for (for example, your main “photos” folder on an external hard drive) and keep the Include All Subfolders checkbox checked if you want to have the search look through images in all folders within that folder. Then select Edit > Find from the menu in Bridge. You can then specify Criteria to be used for finding the photos for which you’re looking. For example, you could select Keywords from the first dropdown, select “contains” from the second dropdown, and then enter a keyword such as “Ocean” in the text box. Click Find to start the search, and you’ll see all the images that match the criteria you specified.

As you can see, metadata provides an incredible way to record a tremendous amount of information about each image directly within the image file. This provides a significant advantage for photographers by providing reference info, embedded data for recipients of the images, for organizational purposes and as a search tool. By taking the time to enter metadata for your images, you’ll maximize the value you’re getting from each image, and you’ll greatly increase the chances you’ll be able to find just the right photo whenever you need it.

Tim Grey (www.timgrey.com) has authored or co-authored nine books and hundreds of magazine articles related to digital imaging for photographers. He also publishes the Digital Darkroom Questions (DDQ) e-mail newsletter. Tim is Director of the Pro Photo Community team at Microsoft, serving as an advocate for professional and advanced amateur photographers.

Feel free to send your comments on this article to the at NatureScapes.Net.

All content on this site is copyrighted material as indicated. Unauthorized use or reproduction is prohibited.