What Is Metadata and Why Is It Useful for Your Digitised Photos?

When you digitise a collection of old family photographs and videos, you end up with digital image files that are much easier to store, copy, and share.

But you can do more with those files than simply look at the photographs. You can also add information about them, such as when a photograph was taken, where it was taken and who is in it.

This information is called metadata.

What Is Metadata?

Metadata is simply information about a digital file.

With a digital photograph, some metadata may already be there. For example, a photograph taken with a digital camera or phone often includes when it was taken, what camera was used, and even the location.

With old family photographs, however, that information doesn't exist in the digital file. The original photograph may simply be a print from 1965, with no digital record of when or where it was taken.

Once you digitise that photograph, you can add this information yourself.

What Can You Add to a Digitised Photograph?

You can add the information that helps explain the photograph.

For example, you might have a photograph showing several members of your family at the seaside. You could add:

Date: 1965

Location: Scarborough

People: Mum, Dad, John and Susan

Description: Family holiday

You can also add keywords or other information, depending on the software you use. The important thing is that the photograph now has some context attached to it.

Why Is This Useful?

This becomes especially valuable over time.

You may know exactly who is in an old photograph today. You may remember that a particular holiday was in 1975, or recognise the house where your grandparents lived.

But other family members may not know these things, and eventually nobody may be left who remembers. Adding the information to the digital photograph means those details can be recorded rather than relying on someone's memory.

It can also make a large collection easier to search and organise. If your photo software supports searching by dates, locations, people, or keywords, the information you add can help you find particular photographs without looking through the entire collection.

How Do You Add Metadata?

You don't normally need to do anything complicated. Many computers and photo management applications allow you to add information to digital photographs. The exact options vary, but you can add a date, location, description, people, and keywords.

You can work through your collection and add whatever information you know.

You don't need to create a complicated system. Even something as simple as recording who, where and when can make a significant difference.

What If You Don't Know Everything?

You don't need exact details.

If you know that a photograph was taken in the 1960s but don't know the precise year, you can record an approximate date. If you know the location but cannot remember everyone in the photograph, add the names you do know.

You can also ask other family members.

Looking through a collection of digitised photographs together can be a good way to identify people and places you may not recognise yourself.

Metadata Doesn't Change the Photograph

Adding metadata doesn't mean altering the photograph itself.

You are simply adding information about the digital image. The photograph remains unchanged. This means you can keep your digitised files as they are while gradually adding information to make the collection more useful.

A Digital Photograph Can Tell More of the Story

Digitising your old photographs preserves the images, but the photograph is only part of the story. Knowing who is in the photograph, where it was taken, when it was taken and what was happening can be just as valuable.

Metadata gives you a simple way to record some of that information alongside your digitised photographs, so that the stories behind your family memories are less likely to be forgotten.