Chapter 3. Metadata

image with no caption

In order to get a good understanding of metadata, it’s necessary to look at it from a number of different angles. We’ll start by dividing metadata into broad classes that reflect the “cost” of the metadata, mostly measured in how much effort it takes to create the information. Then we’ll take an extended look at what metadata can describe and how you can use it to organize your images and improve your efficiency. In the last half of the chapter we’ll get more technical, looking at the underlying schemas and how they store metadata. Finally, we will look at some ways to handle and preserve metadata.

  • Metadata: An Introduction

  • Classes of Metadata

  • Ownership and Licensing Metadata

  • Image Content Metadata

  • Describing Images with Keywords

  • Prioritizing Images with Ratings

  • Grouping Images

  • Metadata Schema

  • Metadata Handling

  • Tagging Images with GPS Data

Metadata: An Introduction

Metadata is a term that generally refers to data about data: for digital photographers, it means information about your photographs. This ranges from the mundane (which format an image is in or where it’s located) to the sublime (what kinds of concepts the photo helps illustrate). Different bits of metadata are called tags, and a particular tag will refer to some specific property of an image file. You can attach tags, such as keywords, to your images so that you will know what a picture is about (see Figure 3-1 ...

Get The DAM Book, 2nd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.