Frank Leahy's post on
How to Make Photos More Searchable got me thinking about the future of digital photography. With digital cameras enabling people to take more photos than ever, it's going to be more important to have some way to organize those photos beyond having fancy software like
Adobe's Photoshop Album. The one promising aspect of digital photos produced by most digital cameras today is the
EXIF data it produces. EXIF data is typically comprised of the technical data about the photo such as shutter speed, aperture, date/time it was taken, etc. However, it can also contain data like the GPS coordinates of where the photo was taken and also comments the photographer might have about the scene. Imagine a digital camera that knew where the picture was taken. All of this stored inside the image file.
I might have hinted about the benefits of EXIF in
my previous post, but to explain further, making good use of EXIF data gives digital photography enthusiasts a great way to catalog and archive their photos. It will also enable them to search through these archives better without the need for complex software or databases.
Making use of EXIF data in my photos is my current pursuit. Now that I've got a
gallery that displays my photos EXIF data. I am looking at creating a PHP application that will allow me to edit the user comments attribute of a photo's EXIF data. Currently, I'm looking at using
jhead to be able to write to the EXIF headers of an image since PHP currently only supports reading from the headers. If that doesn't work, I plan on just using software to edit the EXIF data.
Photo Studio is a free application that will allow me to view and edit my EXIF data before posting the photo on the web.
I'm hoping that more software and hardware vendors begin to take EXIF seriously and realize its potential for enhancing the digital photography experience. The promise of digital photography shouldn't be just about the image. The data that supports that image is just as important.
