Weekend With Shades - Sunday - July 5

THE CREATIVE TOOLBOX
BY DENISE OLSON
A Monthly - Weekend With Shades - Column

Remember the days when you picked up your photos at the drugstore and then sat down with a soft lead pencil to carefully document the details on each one before they were forgotten? Neither do I. Even though I’ve been pretty good at documenting my photos, there are many times that effort consisted of notes on the envelope the film-processor gave me - in ink no less.

Digital photos are revolutionary in many ways - and documenting their contents is one of them. The digital file that is your photograph actually contains a lot more than just the image. It also contains metadata. Huh? Wikipedia says it best: “The simplest definition of metadata is that it is data about data - more specifically information (data) about a particular content (data).” Your photo file contains information about the image as well as the image itself.