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Metadata is information stored in your image file that provides more information about the photo.
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Some website owners decide to have metadata removed from images on their website to decrease the file size of their images — but you might not want to strip the metadata of your image if you want to share things like the camera model, copyright info for the image, etc.
Not all possible metadata is included in every image file. Some information is added by your camera. Some may be added in processing.
For instance, my camera does not have a GPS chip and does not include GPS data unless I have it connected via Bluetooth with my phone. I often will just add in the GPS data, if I want it, in Lightroom along with other information I want to include such as any copyright information for the image, captions, etc — things that aren’t included with my camera.
Types of Photography Metadata
EXIF
Exif metadata includes information from your camera such as the camera make and model, lens used, aperature, shutter speed, focal distance, and GPS coordinates, if any.
IPTC
IPTC data includes things like the title, keywords, photographer name and copyright restrictions — things that are usually included in post-processing (at least in my “workflow”).
XMP
XMP is an Adobe standard. I am less familiar with this, but it is a format for embedding information such as description, keywords, etc into an image file.
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Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
- Descriptive metadata – the descriptive information about a resource. It is used for discovery and identification. It includes elements such as title, abstract, author, and keywords.
- Structural metadata – metadata about containers of data and indicates how compound objects are put together, for example, how pages are ordered to form chapters. It describes the types, versions, relationships, and other characteristics of digital materials.
- Administrative metadata – the information to help manage a resource, like resource type, and permissions, and when and how it was created.
- Reference metadata – the information about the contents and quality of statistical data.
- Statistical metadata – also called process data, may describe processes that collect, process, or produce statistical data.
- Legal metadata – provides information about the creator, copyright holder, and public licensing, if provided.
Metadata is not strictly bound to one of these categories, as it can describe a piece of data in many other ways.
