Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [253]
Image metadata
Maybe you are wondering what all the information in the Metadata panel is useful for. Well, quite a lot actually, especially if you are running a photography business or are an amateur who shoots lots of digital photographs. Metadata is usually defined as being ‘data about data’ and the concept of metadata is one you should already be quite familiar with. Librarians use metadata to classify and catalog books in a library – in the old days you would have used index cards to search by an author's name or by the title of a book. Everything is now computerized of course and it is possible to record much more information about individual files and use this information to carry out more sophisticated searches and crossreference files.
Powered by XMP
In 2001, Adobe announced XMP (eXtensible Metadata Platform), which to quote Adobe: ‘established a common metadata framework to standardize the creation, processing and interchange of document metadata across publishing work flows’. Adobe has already integrated the XMP framework into Acrobat, InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. XMP is based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language), which is the basic universal format for using metadata and structuring information on the Web. Adobe has also made XMP available as an open-source license, so it can be integrated into any other systems or applications. Due to Adobe's enormous influence in this arena it means that XMP has now become a common standard in the publishing and imaging industry. Adobe and also third-party companies are now able to exploit the potential of XMP to aid file management on a general level as well as specific needs such as scientific and forensic work.
File Info metadata
The File Info dialog (Figure 11.41) has been around since the early days of Photoshop, but it seems that until recently only a few people had bothered using it. The File Info dialog is designed to let you inspect all the metadata relating to an image document as well as edit the IPTC image metadata that relates to the picture content. Photoshop has always supported the information standard developed by International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC), which was designed to help classify and label images and text files using metadata. In early versions of Photoshop, you could access the File Info via the Photoshop File menu and use it to title an image, add the name of the author, add keywords and inspect the camera capture metadata. File Info is still there in Photoshop, but if you highlight an image, or group of images in Bridge, you can also access the File Info dialog via the Bridge File menu, or by using the keyboard shortcut. The File Info dialog contains 11 sections, some of which are user-editable, such as the Mobile SWF section shown in Figure 11.41, while other sections, like the Camera Data section, provide information only. You can use File Info with single or multiple image selections to edit the IPTC metadata, add your name as the author, mark the images as being copyrighted, add a copyright notice, etc. Marking an image as being copyrighted has the extra advantage of adding a copyright symbol to the title bar of your image window whenever anyone opens it in Photoshop.
After configuring the File Info settings you can also save these as a metadata template. For example, you can select an image, enter some basic custom metadata such as author name, copyright tag, etc., then follow this by going to the Import/Export options (discussed in Figure 11.42) and save as a new metadata template. Or, you can go to the Tools menu and choose ‘Create Metadata Template…’. This opens the dialog shown in Figure 11.44, where you can edit the required metadata template settings. Once