The object of this lesson is to familiarize yourself with the many aspects of the EXIF file and ways to manipulate it for submitting your photos to a wire service, or just to help catalog your own photo collection. For our purposes we will use one of the most popular pieces of photo editing software, Adobe Photoshop (in this case Version 7), used by most professional photographers. Although I'm unfamiliar with Adobe Photo Elements 3 the process should be similar. The graphics might be a bit heavy on this page but by the time your read this really, really, really, really long sentence they should be finished loading.
Definition: EXIF stands for Exchangeable
Image File Format.
It was developed by the Japanese Electronics Industry Development
Association (JEIDA) in an effort to simplify and standardize the
exchange of data between imaging devices and software. Exif is a
variation of JPEG, used by almost all digital cameras to record
extra interchange information to image files as they are taken.
The type of information stored in a file varies by camera model, but
it can include such things as date and time a photo was taken,
resolution, camera settings used for the shot, amount of compression
applied, color information, whether or not the flash was fired,
shutter speed, name of the camera owner, and so on.
Most photo manipulation software released after 2001 supports the
reading of Exif information, however, if you want to ensure that the
information is retained within your picture files, you must use
software that supports Exif.
The Exif information is lost if you save a picture in a program that
doesn't support it. There is also specialized software specifically
for extracting and editing Exif data.
How to Find the EXIF file:
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Open Adobe Photoshop 7
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Open the photo you wish to edit (preferable one taken with your digital camera)
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In the top left corner, Click on FILE, then---->File Info...
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You'll see this window pop up:
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Here you can fill in a title for the photo, your name for the author, the author's position, a caption for the photo, who wrote the caption, the name of the job you were assigned to, etc.
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Click on the pulldown menu for Copyright Status and choose 'Copyrighted Work'.
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Type in your copyright notice. HINT: Hold down the ALT key and type 0169 to get the © symbol
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Enter your website URL. This will let anyone who views your file go back to your website easily.
