If you’ve played around with digital files, you’ve likely come across the terms EXIF and IPTC.

An easy way to think of these terms is to consider EXIF as camera created data (for example the date and time the photo was taken, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, wether the flash fired or not – and so on), and IPTC is data added to identify the photographer, outline usage rights, attach captions, keywords and so on.

EXIF stands for Exchangeable Information File Format, and IPTC is an abbreviation for International Press Telecommunications Council – but you might as well forget that, as it’s how you use these data sets that counts.  You might also have seen the term XMP – this isn’t a schema in the same way EXIF and IPTC is, but a system Adobe created for making a text file that stores metadata (Adobe Camera Raw and/or Photoshop users will have seen these XMP files at some stage)

All the DAM applications like MediaPro, Lightroom, Aperture and so on allow you to add data on import, or later when you feel so inclined.  Adding keywords etc on import is the recommended approach, but there’s no crime in doing it later.

An attribute of DAM applications like those named above, is that you can search on any of these fields – on their own, or in combinations.  For example, if you wanted to find a picture you shot in Paris a couple of years ago with your new wide angle lens, you could quickly search on the keyword “Paris” and the lens focal length – almost instantly you’ll be presented with all the pictures that meet those criteria.

If you’re lazy, then at least on importing your photos you’ll automatically get the EXIG (camera generated data) and that’s there for future searches – but it’s surprisingly useful to add to the IPTC fields.  You don’t have to complete every field option, and you can apply the same settings to a batch of photos – no need to enter it on a per-photo basis.

It’s a good idea to use the offered fields to identify yourself as the photographer, you can add your phone number, email, and/or a web address.  Comments fields also allow you to spell out permitted usage (or not) and while none of this may prevent someone stealing and using a photo of yours, it goes a long way to stating your intent – and better supports your case for damages.  On the other hand, you might want to make your work available under the Creative Commons licensing system – so you can add information on this within the IPTC fields.

It’s worth thinking about GPS metadata too.  You can manually, or in some cases automatically, include a map reference showing where the picture was taken. This needs some thought though, do you really want the actual map reference for your house showing if you post a photo taken in your living room? (Nice TV, good looking home theatre – thanks for including your address co-ordinates!).  Other times you might have taken a shot where you went to some trouble, and you don’t want to make it too easy for a copy-cat reproduction, so choosing not to include GPS data might also be helpful on these occasions – but generally, it’s a good thing. It can help locate photos in new ways, and it’s interesting to see how new applications can work with this data (one of the current apps of interest is Trey Radcliffe’s “Stuck On Earth.”  If you have an iPad, it’s well worth checking out – not just for the visuals, but because it’s an all-GPS app that would have been near impossible to manage without access to this location data)

This screen grab shows part of the Metadata panel in Aperture. This info panel is showing a mix of EXIF and IPTC data, and the panel fields can be highly customised, batch filled, auto filled or manually completed. Each and any field can be searched on - in isolation, or in partnership with other fields.

Probably the most useful metadata you can add, is ratings, so DAM it five, will go into more detail about the Star system

Rating images

Every software app that I know of uses a five star metaphor for rating photos – and each of these is activated the same way, by using the 0 through 5 numeric keys (while you have five stars, you actually have six choices as zero stars is a rating too).

From the get go, you want to think about confining the highest rating of five stars to just a handful of photos. Think of something that’s worth 5 stars as being one of your killer shots for your portfolio. If it doesn’t make the grade, it doesn’t get a five, or a four, or a three for that matter.

A good way to visualize the allocation of stars across a catalogue is to think of a pyramid with five  layers. Imagine the bottom slice of the pyramid, this is the pile of 1 stars, on the level above, you find the 2 stars – and so on up to the top layer with five stars.  Each slice (or layer) on the pyramid is of course a lot smaller than the one below it as you head toward the apex – and that’s a good way to think of how you hand out stars.  Scarcity of the higher stars means they have more value, and are allocated rarely. You might have hundreds, or thousands, of one-star photos, but only 15 or so five-star images.

The reason for this is that the star ratings become next to useless if you don’t use them judiciously. It’s unlikely you have a portfolio jam packed with five-star images, so only your very best work should be awarded this rating.

One strategy is to import a batch of photos then go through and assign one star to everything that is likely worth keeping (later you can delete all the “no-star” images – but for now leave them there). Once this pass is complete, go through the one-star images and upgrade better images to two-stars. Next, go through the two’s and from here you might process some and on completion bump the edited versions to three-stars.  There are so many ways to approach the star ratings that you’ll find a system that works for you – the only thing to remember is to go easy on handing our four and five stars – remember the pyramid.  You’ll appreciate this later when you’re searching for images in your library, as these star levels will prove really handy.

You might be thinking, “But I use 5 stars on a shoot-by-shoot basis to identify the best from the project.” If you like to work that way, try making four stars the best rating of the shoot – and five if you truly think one of those four-star images genuinely makes the grade for your portfolio.

Some applications allow a minus-one rating for “rejects”, but even if yours doesn’t, you might choose to use 0 stars as a flag to search later when looking for images to delete.

Another approach is to assign colours to images. There are countless ways you can use colour labels. For example, you might assign yellow to mean “To process”, green to “Ready to print”, yellow for “Client picks” and so on. Once you use colours in combination with stars, you can search for things like three-star and above pics that the client selected.  This starts to get very powerful very quickly. And it’s easy to do.

A partial screen grab from Adobe Lightroom's Grid view showing some Star ratings and one colour rating - in this case Green for "Ready to print".

And other attributes?

Star ratings are only one type of attribute.  As you think thorough your DAM strategy you’ll want to consider the following terms (and we’ll go into these in more detail in future articles)

• Metadata – what it is, and how to use templates
• IPTC – captions, ownership data, and so on
• EXIF – camera or scanner settings
• Keywords and controlled vocabularies
• GPS – do you want to include this data – automatically or manually?
• XMP – for recording all this info and transferring it between applications

A key point is to stick within recognised schemas, as that way the information is going to be recognised by any application that can open the file.  In other words, only put keywords in the field labelled ”Keywords” – there’s a world of pain ahead if you freestyle with the fields. Speaking of keywords, be sure to use sufficient words to be clear – for example, you might want to assign the words “Sport” and “Cricket” to a photo of your Cricket team, it will be there when the photo is opened in other applications – and by adding the word “Sport” you have differentiated the photo from an insect.  But more about that later…

Next in DAM it #4; EXIF and IPTC.