Hot answers tagged metadata
40
The key is adding some specific tags every time you import.
I use Aperture (which is Mac-only,) but Lightroom has similar capabilities, as does iphoto.
What you need to tag depends on what you shoot, and what you think you might be looking for someday, but this works for me:
The people in the pictures. I use Apple's "Faces" feature to tag people in the ...
19
Focal length is a measure of the lens's ability to bend light. As such this figure doesn't change when you use a smaller sensor. What actually happens when you use a smaller sensor is that your field of view narrows. Field of view is dependant both on the focal length and the format (the size of your film or sensor). The ubiquity of 35mm film among amateur ...
16
Picasa stores faces information in the .picasa.ini files:
[test.jpg]
faces=rect64(1eb1929f885e),15441a598f9f1866
backuphash=29866
The id numbers can be found in the contacts.xml file which stores all the contacts of your pictures:
<contact id="15441a598f9f1866"
name="Test Test"
display="Test"
modified_time="2010-05-13T17:19:46+01:00"
...
16
Someone referred me once to Exposure Plot. This is a free Windows utility which is very simple. It shows you graphs of different parameters, one of them being focal-length.
If you already use image management application like Lightroom or Bibble Pro, then you can also usually see that data in the filter interface.
For Lightroom for example, you need to ...
15
I sometimes do a little bit of stock photography, where tagging is extremely important to get your images appearing in sales correctly.
I aim to tag all of my stock photos by thinking about the following:
People - who is in the shot?
Places - where was this taken? Include significant places, streets, towns, cities, countries, regions. Alternatively, use ...
14
The values are arbitrary and meaningless, and only serve to confuse people. The EXIF standard seems to imply that if the tag is missing, 72 is the (still-meaningless) default. However, it is apparently mandatory for the TIFF standard, from which the JPEG/EXIF format basically inherits everything. So maybe it has to have some value to properly comply with the ...
12
It is in the EXIF data, but the info is under Canon tag. For any EXIF-related tasks, I wholeheartedly recommend ExifTool by Phil Harvey.
Here's an example of a real file (which coincidentally was shot with Canon 450D)
$ exiftool -canon:"WB_RGGB*" -canon:"*temp*" MG_5366.CR2
WB RGGB Levels As Shot : 2270 1024 1024 1520
WB RGGB Levels Auto ...
12
Privacy reasons are certainly the main concern.
The second concern is bandwidth. Stripping EXIF information makes images considerably lighter at web-sizes. This makes it a better experience of 99% of viewers who do not care about how the image was made.
Lastly, the information may not exist. A lot of images on the web are composites, be it HDR/Exposure ...
11
It doesn't make a lot of sense to organize photos by something that is already in the EXIF data, like the date the photos were taken. I organize my photos in folders by event/location. The most important thing is to make sure you tag as much as possible when you import. The chances of going back later to tag are basically nil, so you need to make sure to do ...
11
Adobe's XMP metadata standard supports information defined by the Metadata Working Group (MWG), which includes a definition of how to store face tagged data. See:
Adobe XMP: http://www.adobe.com/products/xmp/standards.html
MWG: http://www.metadataworkinggroup.com/
where you can click on the specifications, download the PDF, and then look at page 51 ...
11
There is not. IPTC, another image metadata standard, also does not contain a "People" field. There's a Contact field, but that is used for contact information for the photographer.
Most people I know will store people as keywords. The main debate is whether or not to include spaces (would a photo of me be tagged as aaronhockley or as "aaron hockley"?). ...
11
Most of the time you have more use of the position from where you took the photo.
If you know from where the picture was taken, you can often from the photo see exactly which direction the camera was pointed. If you know the position of the subject, you might be able to see approximately which direction it was taken from, but seldom the exact position.
Of ...
10
In addition to the obvious things like keywords, I use a metadata preset in Lightroom to automatically add my name, contact information, website URL, and copyright information to every photo as it is imported.
Proving copyright infringement is significantly easier if you have contact info in the metadata, since most infringers aren't savvy enough to remove ...
10
If you don't want to pay for Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture, you could go with Apple's iPhoto or Google's Picasa.
I'm most familiar with iPhoto; it does a fair amount of hand-holding when it comes to organizing photos. Smart Albums are really nice; you write the filter logic, and iPhoto shows you the matching photos on an ongoing basis. Works wonders for ...
10
I wrote mine up here:
http://www.chuqui.com/2010/10/some-thoughts-on-lightroom-keywords/
it's gotten really nice feedback and been pointed to by a good number of bloggers, and it works really well for me.
10
EXIF is a standard that programs such as Photoshop support. Within the standard is a reservation for 'Maker Notes' or custom EXIF fields that camera manufacturers use for a variety of reasons (such as shutter count in Canon 1D series). Many of these Maker Notes are used by the camera manufacturer for internal purposes, and while exposed within the image, are ...
9
The most important are the ones that are needed to help the decision at hand. This will depends on the context and who looking at images.
For everyone:
Date & Time - Are probably most important. They are often different than the file-data since that may reflect when the files were copied, shared, sent, edited, etc. To look for a photo of an event or ...
9
Anyone with an editor can open a TIFF and save it again without the metadata. I don't think there is any way to lock the metadata from being stripped out.
You could look at digital watermarking, such as Digimarc
8
Lightroom (on a Mac at least) has its own database, which it calls a catalog, which is stored and backed up separately from your image files. It's called 'Lightroom Catalog.lrcat'. There is an option in 'Catalog Settings' to 'Automatically write changes into XMP'.
The following page tells you more about how Lightoom handles metadata and adjustments:
...
8
ExifTool can do that for you.
Example from the linked page:
exiftool -AllDates-=1 DIR
This would set all date fields in image in the directory DIR back one hour.
ExifTool is very powerful when it comes to manipulating meta data in images. I would recommend to practice on copies of the files to get the command to do what you want, before unleashing it on ...
8
This article claims to provide a method for getting the shutter count for the 7D.
In short, you install gPhoto2 and run the command:
photo2 --get-config /main/status/shuttercounter
Version 2.4.11 (released on Apr 17th, 2011) has been tested and works with 500D.
A little warning: under Ubuntu Linux, my first attempts failed because of the following error: ...
8
The machines auto crop the photos to the correct aspect ratio for the print (which annoys me when they don't offer the ratio the pictures were taken in!) so I assume they detect the orientation by looking for the longest side.
I can't say this with 100% certainty, but I think if this weren't the case I think there would be masses of complaints from people ...
8
I just found the answer.
Lightroom will change the date/time easily by selecting the image you know the proper time for, then select all others to be changed - similar to how develop sync settings works.
After the selection is made, click
Metadata -> Edit Capture Time
Select Change to a specified date and time
Enter the proper date and time for that ...
8
I'm answering the more general question about EXIF data, rather than the specific question about the lens serial number.
It probably depends on how paranoid you are, and how much you have to hide (for example if you have a security clearance or are committing activities that might be illegal (or could become illegal in the future) or violate social norms, ...
8
The EXIF specification for JPEG metadata says:
The date and time of image creation. In this standard it is the date
and time the file was changed. The format is "YYYY:MM:DD HH:MM:SS"
with time shown in 24-hour format, and the date and time separated by
one blank character [20.H]. When the date and time are unknown, all
the character spaces except ...
8
Privacy and default export settings (like Itai said) do play an important role but there's another factor
A photographer may research a location, travel there in the right time of year, wake up at unreasonable hours to get there on time for sunrise - again and again and again waiting for the perfect weather, obsess about the exact camera location and take ...
7
I've been using Picasa version 3.6. In addition to tags and geo-tagging, it also recognizes (some) faces and can attach "name tags" to photos. I use separate folders for the date the photo was taken grouped by months and years, e.g. Photos\2010\07\0720.
Picasa orders the pictures by folder and date, or album and I can also search by tag, person, or ...
7
To be honest I'd probably use some photo management software for managing the exif data. It's likely to be more powerful and allow for various batch operations. If you're on Linux, you could try one of the ones listed under this question.
But if you insist, you could try
the exif viewer plugin which will let you see the exif data;
the save for web ...
7
It looks like there is a library which can change + add exif meta data: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openexif/
So I'm wondering what your source was that said the fields are locked?
There is also a very good tool called ExifTool which allows very extensive changing of the meta information.
There is however a warning about changing meta data, you have to ...
7
It turns out that Automator has an Aperture "Extract Metadata" action that has access to all of the EXIF fields.
I was able to solve my problem using a simple Automator workflow that performs the following steps:
(Aperture) Get selected items
(Aperture) Extract Metadata -- With the option for "Tabbed Text" output.
(Text) New Text Document
I have ...
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