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You might already be familiar with metadata in the context of digital photography.
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Digital cameras, for example, add a variety of information about your photo
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into the file for the photo itself. Of course, with older images that were
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not captured with a digital camera, that metadata is going to be lacking.
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But we can add our own metadata, to add additional information about the photo.
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In Photoshop we can access the metadata directly, by choosing File and then File
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Info from the menu. As you can see, if we look at the camera
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data tab, there isn't much information here.
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There's a field for camera make and model, for the owner of the camera, the
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lens and focal length that were used, the exposure settings, etc.
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But that information is not here, because this image was not captured with a
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digital camera. And therefore, the information about how
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the picture was taken is unknown. However, we can add additional details
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about this photo. If we take a look, for example, at the
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description tab, you'll see that there's already some information about this
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particular photo. It is a photo of a post office in
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Birmingham, Alabama, photographed in about 1906, and it is owned, effectively,
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by the Library of Congress. You'll note that the copyright status is
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public domain. This is indeed a public domain image,
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meaning there is no copyright protection for it.
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We can also add additional details. For example, we can add a description of
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the photo, if we have additional details. Under the IPTC metadata, we have
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additional fields we can choose from. So for example, if we know the exact date
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that the image was created, we could add that to the metadata.
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We could add additional details about the location of the photograph itself.
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We can add a headline, description, keywords, a variety of additional
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information about this image. For example, I can add some keywords here.
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I'll just click into the field, and I'll type Post Office.
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And I could also add some additional information, for example about the location.
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I'll go ahead and type Birmingham, and Alabama, as additional keywords.
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And I could add additional information, scrolling through all of the various
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fields and adding whatever information that I feel will be helpful.
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And this can be especially useful later, when you want to come back and revisit a photo.
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When you initially scan an original image, you'll of course probably have
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some level of information about that image, the location is was photographed,
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who is in the photo, etc. But with time, you might forget some of
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those details, and so adding information via the File Info dialog in Photoshop,
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can be very, very helpful. And because these are standard metadata
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fields, you'll be able to view this metadata in other applications.
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So for example, if you browse your images with Adobe Bridge, you'll be able to look
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at the metadata panel and view this information.
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And if you use other software tools, you'll similarly be able to view this metadata.
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So it can be very helpful to add pertinent details about your photos into
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the metadata using the File Info dialog. And once you're finished, all you need to
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do is simply click OK. And then save your image, and all of
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those details will be saved within the metadata for the photo.