Street Photography Magazine

Always use metadata in preference to

proprietary solutions when keywording your

images – this approach is more flexible and

helps to keep your options open should you

decide to switch to a different system later on.

In spite of the obvious advantages, metadata

still has its drawbacks, not least the various

standards in current use and the different

ways these are implemented from product to

product.

There is no simple solution, so the

following sections detail the advantages

and disadvantages of the various available

formats. Combined with your own

preferences and the metadata that has

already been applied to your images, these

should help you to develop your own

successful keywording strategy.

Exif – More Than

Just Camera Data

Most digital photographers will have heard of

the Exif (Exchangeable image file format)

metadata standard used by virtually all digital

cameras to save shooting information along

with visual image data. Exif data includes

information relating to the camera

manufacturer, image orientation (i.e., portrait

or landscape), shooting date, aperture and

exposure time. These are standard tags that

are (supposedly!) the same in all digital image

files and can be interpreted by all types of

image management software.

Maker Notes: In addition to standard tags,

image metadata also contains maker notes,

which are additional data fields defined and

filled according to the camera manufacturer’s

own specifications. This is where data such as

the camera model and lens information is

stored. Maker notes vary in their form and

content between manufacturers and camera

models. Making all currently used maker

notes readable would involve an enormous

effort on the part of software manufacturers

and doesn’t make commercial sense. Most

photographers consider maker notes to be a

useful source of additional information, but

Image Database Software | Metadata

All about Metadata

Modern cameras like the Nikon D7000 can

be programmed to add optional copyright

information to image Exif data

Just about every image browser

can read Exif metadata. The

data shown here was extracted

using the donationware

FastStone Viewer.