Photo metadata

Overview

Metadata embedded in an image file travels with the file. Photo CMSs (Photo Mechanic, Lightroom, Capture One) and wire intake systems read a photo's caption, credit, and rights from its IPTC and XMP blocks — not from a separate document or the email it arrived in. If the caption, credit, alt text, and license are not inside the file, they are gone the moment the photo is downloaded, forwarded, or re-uploaded.

One exiftool pass writes the EXIF, IPTC, and XMP layers together and leaves every other tag (camera settings, shot time) untouched.

A capable model already knows the field names. The hard part is not the mechanics — it is the judgment below. Lead with that.

When to use

• Prepping press photos for a wire so partner newsrooms can search, credit, and republish them
• Adding required photographer attribution and a reuse license before publishing or sharing
• Batch-tagging a shoot (a folder of images)
• Making images accessible (embedded alt text) and rights-clear (copyright or Creative Commons)

When not to use: editing pixels (this is metadata only); writing alt text for an HTML <img> (use accessibility-compliance); preserving web pages as evidence (use web-archiving).