FANTASTIC!! This was just the information I was looking for. My father, who did a lot of genealogy work, had a saying, "If you don't mark your photographs before you die, you will NOT go to heaven." He would have sought you out to give you a big hug. He marked the back of hard copy photos and used some front of the photo labeling for digital photos - in an added border space. But nonetheless, there remains a large number of unidentified photos from the late 1800's that he collected from near and distant relatives - who are no longer living. I'm doing a lot of time consuming investigative analysis to piece some of them. That effort helps if there are young kids or infants in the photos - narrows down the date of the photo.
Just watched 3 of your presentations from prior Roots Tech. Cannot believe I never knew about the "Details Pane" in the view options on the Windows10 Explorer screen. I wish I had seen this FOUR YEARS ago. I had bemoaned that Windows 10 lost the easier way to add Metadata that was available in older version. Thank you.
One of the small developments made since this video was uploaded is how phones name photos. My android names photos starting by date YYYYMMDD and then a series of numbers I never pay attention to. My iPhone 4 always named photos as IMG####. While both do/did have the date taken metadata, I've found it much nicer to have this information in the file name. I rename files by the same format and then add subject, for example, 20241012 - That One At Unsinkable Molly Brown's House 01 Not having to pull up the metadata for the date is a small but significant improvement in my life.
I am in favor of whatever makes your life easier! You can always use a short caption as a filename and add additional information to the metadata if you need to. One caveat that I've run into with long filenames: if you upload them to Dropbox or other cloud storage apps, the app adds characters to the file link and sometimes they get too long to download properly onto someone else's device. For instance, you may be able to upload it without a problem, but someone on a PC or Mac may try to download it and get an error message that the filename is too long. Just something to be aware of. The example you gave should be perfectly fine; it's not that long. Also beware of using special characters in a filename that can truncate a filename or make it unusable. Here is a list: Illegal Filename Characters # pound. % percent. & ampersand. { left curly bracket. } right curly bracket. \ back slash. < left angle bracket. > right angle bracket.
A few comments. Since this was produced, there is yet another standard, and IPTC is being slowly phased out XMP is replacing IPTC as more useful. But for the moment, both should be written. On the PC, use exifer to see what is stored as metadata in the file. It can show all metadata (it can be an overwhelming amount of data as there are over 2000 different fields that can be set). Copyright information goes in 3 places in the metadata. EXIF, IPTC, and XMP. (Sigh). There are several different date fields that should be used correctly, but not every program uses them correctly. Date Time Original is the date the photo was taken. It is in both EXIF and XMP. Date Time Created is the time the file was created. It shows up in both EXIF and XMP. But some programs use this instead of Date Time Original, and at least one uses EXIF:Date Time Original, and if that doesn't exist, uses EXIF:Date Time Created before inspecting XMP:Date Time Original. (Sigh) My personal feeling is that no web site should ever strip the copyright information from a photo, and that all should show it. Same goes for contact information.
@@alisonarmstrongtaylor6191 I really like where Google photos has come. It started out as just hey photo storage feature of Google Drive and now has became its own app is very popular. The official recognition application is out of this world and makes it a whole lot easier to find photos of a particular person or pet. The sharing capabilities are out of his world as well and it really makes it one of the best photo applications out there today. I always thought it would be my backup but another RUclipsr convince me that Google photos is not a backup unless your photos are backed up somewhere else. Since being convinced I've also started backing up my photos to Shutterfly since it has unlimited storage. My device doesn't have the capability of storing as many photos and videos as I create and I tend to change devices pretty rapidly over time.
Okay this is a little outdated. You said generally you have to have a program to store the photos in to upload to cloud storage but I'm not sure if that's entirely true. Yes you need the program but that's only to facilitate that upload from your device to the cloud.
No doubt some of the details are outdated; this was a presentation from three years ago and there have been a lot of changes in metadata technology since then. Hopefully it still contains some information that many may find useful.
@@alisonarmstrongtaylor6191 yes very useful information. I'm watching your other RUclips videos right now and I'm also sharing them with some family members. I love to see more RUclips videos like this regarding archiving photos in photo history and metadata. My aunt recently passed away and I'm sure there's a bunch of new photos that will be acquired pretty soon and it just had me wondering about my parents and their photos.
Great question. Adding metadata will NOT degrade your image. Only using tools that mess with the image data (such as color correction, etc.), if overused on a jpeg, will affect the image data negatively when compressed.
Really discouraging that the metadata doesn't travel automatically with the photo. I struggle with having multiple copies of photos on my machine as it is. I wonder if now (2021) this is still accurate.
Hi Pamela, the whole point of putting information into the metadata is that it WILL travel with the photo. But there are some pitfalls if it's not done right, which is what I tried to explain in the presentation. The method I describe here using Bridge, Windows, etc. are still useful and available-but there are many new apps that have come out since then that facilitate metadata use.
It's an interesting video, but the downside is that you're likely never gonna find these old photos, because "digital" is very fragile, and requires fancy equipment to view which no single person on earth could make from scratch. Where as a real photo just needs to be kept dry and stored somewhere. It just requires eyeballs to view.
7 years later and your info is right on! Thank you so much.
This is the most thorough, most general, and most helpful series of videos on archiving old family photos I've encountered online.
Thank you, Matthew, glad they are helpful!
FANTASTIC!! This was just the information I was looking for. My father, who did a lot of genealogy work, had a saying, "If you don't mark your photographs before you die, you will NOT go to heaven." He would have sought you out to give you a big hug. He marked the back of hard copy photos and used some front of the photo labeling for digital photos - in an added border space. But nonetheless, there remains a large number of unidentified photos from the late 1800's that he collected from near and distant relatives - who are no longer living. I'm doing a lot of time consuming investigative analysis to piece some of them. That effort helps if there are young kids or infants in the photos - narrows down the date of the photo.
Bruce Clingman I like your father! 😀
Absolutely fantastic! Thank you so much!!!!
Just watched 3 of your presentations from prior Roots Tech. Cannot believe I never knew about the "Details Pane" in the view options on the Windows10 Explorer screen. I wish I had seen this FOUR YEARS ago. I had bemoaned that Windows 10 lost the easier way to add Metadata that was available in older version. Thank you.
You are welcome! Glad it was helpful.
Love the presentation. Have recommended it to genealogy groups that I have come across.
One of the small developments made since this video was uploaded is how phones name photos. My android names photos starting by date YYYYMMDD and then a series of numbers I never pay attention to. My iPhone 4 always named photos as IMG####.
While both do/did have the date taken metadata, I've found it much nicer to have this information in the file name. I rename files by the same format and then add subject, for example, 20241012 - That One At Unsinkable Molly Brown's House 01
Not having to pull up the metadata for the date is a small but significant improvement in my life.
I am in favor of whatever makes your life easier! You can always use a short caption as a filename and add additional information to the metadata if you need to. One caveat that I've run into with long filenames: if you upload them to Dropbox or other cloud storage apps, the app adds characters to the file link and sometimes they get too long to download properly onto someone else's device. For instance, you may be able to upload it without a problem, but someone on a PC or Mac may try to download it and get an error message that the filename is too long. Just something to be aware of. The example you gave should be perfectly fine; it's not that long. Also beware of using special characters in a filename that can truncate a filename or make it unusable. Here is a list:
Illegal Filename Characters
# pound.
% percent.
& ampersand.
{ left curly bracket.
} right curly bracket.
\ back slash.
< left angle bracket.
> right angle bracket.
A few comments.
Since this was produced, there is yet another standard, and IPTC is being slowly phased out XMP is replacing IPTC as more useful. But for the moment, both should be written.
On the PC, use exifer to see what is stored as metadata in the file. It can show all metadata (it can be an overwhelming amount of data as there are over 2000 different fields that can be set).
Copyright information goes in 3 places in the metadata. EXIF, IPTC, and XMP. (Sigh).
There are several different date fields that should be used correctly, but not every program uses them correctly. Date Time Original is the date the photo was taken. It is in both EXIF and XMP. Date Time Created is the time the file was created. It shows up in both EXIF and XMP. But some programs use this instead of Date Time Original, and at least one uses EXIF:Date Time Original, and if that doesn't exist, uses EXIF:Date Time Created before inspecting XMP:Date Time Original. (Sigh)
My personal feeling is that no web site should ever strip the copyright information from a photo, and that all should show it. Same goes for contact information.
Excellent presentation. Thank you so much for sharing.
Picasa was bought by Google right? It's modern day Google photos correct?
That's correct.
@@alisonarmstrongtaylor6191 I really like where Google photos has come. It started out as just hey photo storage feature of Google Drive and now has became its own app is very popular. The official recognition application is out of this world and makes it a whole lot easier to find photos of a particular person or pet. The sharing capabilities are out of his world as well and it really makes it one of the best photo applications out there today. I always thought it would be my backup but another RUclipsr convince me that Google photos is not a backup unless your photos are backed up somewhere else. Since being convinced I've also started backing up my photos to Shutterfly since it has unlimited storage. My device doesn't have the capability of storing as many photos and videos as I create and I tend to change devices pretty rapidly over time.
Okay this is a little outdated. You said generally you have to have a program to store the photos in to upload to cloud storage but I'm not sure if that's entirely true. Yes you need the program but that's only to facilitate that upload from your device to the cloud.
No doubt some of the details are outdated; this was a presentation from three years ago and there have been a lot of changes in metadata technology since then. Hopefully it still contains some information that many may find useful.
@@alisonarmstrongtaylor6191 yes very useful information. I'm watching your other RUclips videos right now and I'm also sharing them with some family members. I love to see more RUclips videos like this regarding archiving photos in photo history and metadata. My aunt recently passed away and I'm sure there's a bunch of new photos that will be acquired pretty soon and it just had me wondering about my parents and their photos.
Very helpful as I am new to metadata.
If you add metadata to a JPG does it re-compress and thereby lossy some of the data?
Great question. Adding metadata will NOT degrade your image. Only using tools that mess with the image data (such as color correction, etc.), if overused on a jpeg, will affect the image data negatively when compressed.
Really discouraging that the metadata doesn't travel automatically with the photo. I struggle with having multiple copies of photos on my machine as it is. I wonder if now (2021) this is still accurate.
Hi Pamela, the whole point of putting information into the metadata is that it WILL travel with the photo. But there are some pitfalls if it's not done right, which is what I tried to explain in the presentation. The method I describe here using Bridge, Windows, etc. are still useful and available-but there are many new apps that have come out since then that facilitate metadata use.
It's an interesting video, but the downside is that you're likely never gonna find these old photos, because "digital" is very fragile, and requires fancy equipment to view which no single person on earth could make from scratch. Where as a real photo just needs to be kept dry and stored somewhere. It just requires eyeballs to view.
I mean I looked up the topic because I want to be able to do this, but I just have this very impermenant feeling about all digitized info.