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scheme for cataloging camera information. You may find it interesting to read the EXIF metadata that is contained in your digital camera files, as this will tell you things like what lens setting was used, when a photo was taken and the serial number of the camera. This could be useful if you were trying to prove which camera was used to take a particular photograph when there were a lot of other photographers nearby trying to grab the same shot and also claiming authorship (such as when shooting among a large gathering of other photojournalists). The EXIF metadata can describe everything about the camera's settings, but the EXIF schema cannot be adapted to describe anything but the camera data information. Even so, EXIF metadata searches are useful where you may wish to isolate the photos shot with a particular camera and lens combination or where you may wish to filter all the photos that were shot using a particular ISO setting.

Some of the metadata items that can be listed in the File Info and Metadata panel include things like GPS metadata, where if GPS coordinates happen to be embedded in a file, you can crossreference these with another application such as Google™ Earth. Currently it is quite tricky to marry up the GPS metadata from a track log file recorded using a GPS device and get the time zones and clock times to match, but still very useful information to have available. Other items have specific uses such as the DICOM metadata section items which have been specifically designed for embedding important medical data information in medical images.

The amount of metadata that can be recorded has now grown to the point where the File Info… has become extremely crowded. One of the niggles I have with the current updated design of the File Info dialog is that, from a photographer user's point of view, the information we need to access and edit is now scattered all over the place. Where the File Info options were once quite limited, the File Info dialog was actually much easier to manage and work with.

Future uses of metadata

It is quite scary to consider the number of freely distributed digital images out there that contain no information about the contact details of the person who created the image. Imagine a scenario in the future where metadata can be used to embed important information about usage rights and do so using an industry-agreed format (as is already the case with IPTC data). Imagine also that a third-party developer could service a website that allowed interested purchasers to instantly discover what specific exclusive usages were currently available for a particular image. You could even embed a self-generating invoice in the image file. If someone tried to strip out the metadata, you could use an encrypted key embedded in the file to re-import the removed metadata, and/or update specific metadata information. I predict that metadata will offer a tremendously powerful advantage to individual image creators who wish to distribute their creative work more securely over the Internet and profit from legitimate image rights purchases.

Edit history log

If the History Log options are enabled in the General preferences (Figure 11.46), an edit history can be recorded in either the file metadata, as a separate text file log, or both. The edit history has many potential uses. An edit history log can be used to record how much time was spent working on a photograph and could be used as a means of calculating how much to bill a client. In the world of forensics, the history log can also be used to verify how much (or how little) work was done to manipulate an image in Photoshop. The same arguments could apply if validating images used to present scientific evidence. In the case of images that have been processed via the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in, the Camera Raw metadata section also stores a record of the Adobe Camera Raw (or Lightroom) settings used.

Figure 11.46 To record a history log, the History Log option must first be checked in the Photoshop General preferences. A history log can be saved to the