Metadata is pretty cool. You can attatch a lot about yourself and who you are, to help you tag your own libraries, or just help you keep organized, or help other people search you. It's pretty easy to do anymore, my OS makes it easy.
Metadata. We’ve heard the word over and over. If we use Adobe Bridge, or select File Info inside any of the Adobe products, we interact with metadata. But why bother with metadata? In this post, let’s look at why we might want to pay more attention to and actually use metadata.
Metadata is descriptive information. It becomes especially useful and important when our images and our designs are sent out into the world. Applying good metadata assists in finding our images again. It lets us share more information about our work and our images with others. It lets us attach copyright information. Metadata travels with the file.
The Metadata panel inside Adobe Bridge is somewhat overwhelming, which is the very reason why I ignored it for so long. But, by reducing the info being shown, and making use of the more pertinent fields, metadata becomes much more manageable and useful.
Below is the default Metadata panel inside Adobe Bridge:
Metadata Panel
Unless we deal a lot with audio files or video files, or work within a hospital or medical environment, the Audio, Video, and DICOM (digital imaging and communications in medicine) options are overkill. Let’s customize our Metadata panel to show only the information that is pertinent to our environment.
Open the Metadata Panel menu by clicking at the top right of the Metadata Panel and select Preferences.
Set Preferences for Metadata Panel
In the Preferences panel we’ll turn off (or on) only the information we want to see and to edit. We can turn off entire tabs – which we’ll do with the Audio, Video, and Dicom tabs by deselecting them in this list. We’ll also go inside File Properties, IPTC Core, and Camera Data to select or deselect the fields.
Turn Off/On Metadata Fields
We now have a customized Metadata Panel that shows pertinent and relevant information.
Customized Metadata Panel
Some of the information in the Metadata panel is fixed, such as File Properties and Camera Data. Some of the other information is editable. Many of the fields in the IPTC Core tab are such. The pencil icon to the right of each field indicates that the field is editable. Click on a pencil to enter information in any of the editable fields.
Editable Metadata Fields
We can enter our contact information, state our copyright, and add keywords and location information in this panel. Enter the information that is relevant for your file. This information will travel with the file.
We can also set up a Metadata template so that we do not have to re-enter information over and over. To create a template, click on the flyout menu at the top of the Metadata Panel and select Create Metadata Template.
Create Metadata Template
Any information that has already been entered will display in the Create Metadata Template dialog box. Enter a name for the template and any additional information. Click on Save.
If we want to apply the same information to another file, select the file or files in Adobe Bridge, open the flyout menu of the Metadata panel and choose Append Metadata. Click on the name of the template we just created.
Metadata information is also used in searches. If we do a File/Find within Adobe Bridge, we can specify where to search then enter the criteria info. We can specify to search within the Metadata information.
Find File
Taking the time to enter the metadata information ensures that this information is never lost. Plus, many image management programs incorporate this information into their system, thus making your work more visible to the rest of the world.
[Tutorials]
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