Recently I began to offer my help to artists newer then myself, to give them critique on any one of there favorite photos. While I by no means claim to be a great photographer, I do know a decent bit about the subject. Being someone who loves helping and passing on my knowledge, I gladly gave this advice out for free, simply for the asking.

One of the biggest aids to me in giving critique is the Exif data in most peoples photos. It allows me to see a photo, and if I see something off or I personally think needs changed, I can scour through the data in the photo and figure out what they might need to change to get a better result, giving them a much more detailed critique of there photo. As this thread wore on, more and more I found a large number of photos submitted without this data, or data that was corrupted.

At first I talked with each person individually, told them what it was if they did not know, and explained why I personally think it is a very useful bit of information to keep in your works. But when I began to see the large number of photo's sans Exif data, I figured I would try and write up a nice little article and spread the word to the masses.

Article Sections:

Forward: What Is Exif?
Exifs Usefulness
Exif Preservation
In Closing
Appendix

Forward: What Is Exif?

You might have heard this funny little acronym, or see it pop up here on DA or other places, and had no idea what it meant.

Taken From Wikipedia:

"Exchangeable image file format (Exif) is a specification for the image file format used by digital cameras. The specification uses the existing JPEG, TIFF Rev. 6.0, and RIFF WAV file formats, with the addition of specific metadata tags."^{^1}

Confuse you a bit more? Simply put, Exif allows the camera your taking your lovely photos with, to pass on information about the shot such as exposure, the camera settings, time and date, and much more. This data is stored in the image file itself using metadata. What this means for us is, we can view the properties of an image in anything from photoshop, to just using the properties link in the right click menu of Windows, to view information about when we took a photo, what settings we shot it at, and more.

You can see an example of this data by looking around to a good portion of the photos here on Deviant Art and looking at the description. To the right of where the artists put there description of the photos, underneath where it tells you the view/download count of the art, and below the thumb code, you will see a nice little chunk of information about the photo. While DA just gives basics such as the type of camera, shutter speed, aperture, etc. there is usually even more information from lens type, to even whether the camera was help vertically or horizontally.

Exifs Usefulness

Other then just reminding you how you took a particular photo, or when you took it, Exif can provide information to other programs which might need camera setting information to say correct lens aberration, or accurately create a panorama from multiple photos. This is data, that without Exif you would have to personally enter by hand, and entirely off of memory.

But Exif is useful outside of just what you can do with it, it allows other photographers viewing your work online to get not only an idea of how you took a particular photo, but also allow other possibly more experienced photographers to give you more advanced critique right off the bat by knowing the settings you shot a certain photo in, without having to ask and hope you remember. With many a people asking for "Advanced Critique", it would make sense to have this data in the photos to allow the other artists your hoping will give you critique, some ammo by which to do it.

Exif Preservation

I hope now you both understand what Exif is, and how it is useful to both yourself and to other photographers out there. If this has persuaded you to make sure it is preserved in your art, here are some common reasons that it is lost, along with easy fixed to help preserve this information.

Where The Data Is Lost

Exif can be lost in any number of ways, from the before you even shoot a photo through your cameras settings, or during post processing through various programs or general corruption of the file data.

Most of the time the data is lost in post processing by the users choice of either program, or settings used to save the image file. Certain older programs such as versions of Adobe Photoshop prior to PS6, will not keep the metadata in the image when saving it after editing in said program. Some other programs may purposely not save the data after using there program for various reasons, usually to get you to pay for a full version of there software, as opposed to the freeware/trial version you might be using.

Deviant Art itself can also be blamed for the lost of data in some photos. As I stated above, DA shows a small portion of the Exif data contained in a photo by the description. More data is contained in these photos, but whenever an artist lets DA re-size there work, the new image is missing the aforementioned data.

There are many other ways Exif can be lost through the camera itself, or other programs such as the ones a person might use to convert RAW files into submittable formats such as JPEG or TIFF. For a more comprehensive list of the problems with and surrounding Exif format please have a look at Wikipedia entry listed below in the Links section below.

Possible Solutions

While I can't come up with ways to solve every possible reason for loss of Exif data in photos submitted here at Deviant Art and anywhere else for that matter, I can provide simple solutions to the everyday causes.

As stated, the most common cause is certain programs removing the data, or not being able to save it to begin with. The simplest solution of course is to no longer use that program. But of course simple isn't always the answer, in case of some people, the program they use in editing there photos are ones they either can afford, or love using.

The solution I most often give people with this problem, is using program like Photoshop ver.6 and up, or GIMP, to combine the original photo with the Exif data, and your new edited photo missing the data.

For example, lets say you are removing noise from a photo using Neat Image, a noise reduction software that can be used free, but while being used free does not save metadata in the final noise reduced output image. Then using GIMP in this example, you could open both the original file, and the one with the noise reduction, and copy and paste the image from the new file into the old, and save this as your final image. You get the same photo you normally would have using Neat Image, but with the Exif data intact.

This technique can be used in many cases where the program is at fault for stripping the data, and can be done even without the expensive Photoshop since GIMP is a free program and saves Exif Data. Even Microsoft Paint will retain Exif information and can be used in this manner.

If the reason for the loss of data is because of resizing images on Deviant Art, you can use the same program as I mentioned above to resize your images yourself. Once again you can get GIMP for free, or use any program on your computer that can resize images and retain metadata. Microsoft Paint (at least on Vista) will not strip the metadata from an image when saving it.

In Closing

I hope this article persuades you to take notice of Exif data, and to see its uses to convey the information in your photos. If anything, if this article has taught you a bit about something, and you leave a little wiser, then I have done my job.

While I don't doubt not everyone cares about showing this information, and there are probably some photographers out there are so stingy about there techniques they wouldn't dream of even letting others see how they shot a photo, I hope you take into account both others possible uses for this data in learning, or as a way to get better critique on your photos.

As Always, Enjoy
Corey E.
Deviously Educational Artist

Appendix

Sources

^1: Wikipedia Exif Entry - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchangeable_image_file_format

Links

Exif Problems - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchangeable_image_file_format#Problems
Adobe Photoshop - http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family/
GIMP Image Editor - http://www.gimp.org/