Absolute Beginner's Guide to Digital Photography

(Ann) #1
much sense to you as instructions for setting your VCR clock. This, of course, meant
you forgot them immediately. However, technologies and standards such as EXIF,
DPOF, and DCF come in handy when you need to move images from the camera.

EXIF 2.2
The Exchange Image Format is a digital camera standard for recording important
exposure and camera information in JPEG files created when an image is captured.
Digital cameras have adopted the EXIF 2.2 (also called the “Exif Print”) standard,
which was developed by the Japan Electronics and Information Technologies
Industries Association (JEITA).
The EXIF standard creates an image “header” in JPEG images that includes impor-
tant exposure information, camera information, and thumbnail images of the
photo that was just created.
Some or all of the following EXIF information is recorded with each picture:
■ White balance
■ Flash
■ Exposure mode (auto, manual, bracket)
■ Exposure time
■ Light source
■ Subject distance
■ Subject area
■ Captured scene type (portrait, landscape,
night scene)
■ Digital zoom
■ Custom rendered (special effects)
■ Contrast
■ Saturation
■ Sharpness
■ Gain control

You can view EXIF data in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements in several places:


  1. Open Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and choose Window, File Browser.

  2. Click once on an image in the file browser and then look at its metadata
    (data about data) in the left side of the browser window. If you don’t see the
    file information in the left side of the file browser, click the double arrows to
    display the other half of the file browser (see Figure 2.9).


24 ABSOLUTE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TODIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY


tip


The EXIF 2.2 standard also
uses the sYCC format,
which is larger (in colors)
than the sRGB standard color
space. The beauty of this
larger color space is that
EXIF images do not get
“clipped” when an image is
edited onscreen in the sRGB for-
mat. Instead, smart applications
like Photoshop ask whether you’d
like to keep the existing color
profile.
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