Metadata Studio Metadata Studio

The Metadata Studio is a multi-functional Studio for inspecting and editing information about the contents of photos.

In the Photo and Selections Personas it hosts Histogram, Scope charts (for examining image luminance/chrominance) and metadata for camera images. Most metadata is editable here.

In the Develop Persona, it displays GPS location about a photo's shooting location, which can be edited.

About histograms

The histogram gives a valuable 'heads up' of the Red, Green, and Blue values present in your image, layer, or current selection, which is useful for deciding if colour or tonal correction is needed.

The light blue values indicate the overlap of the RGB channels (not the luminosity). Purple represents where the red and blue channel representations overlap.

Metadata Studio

Studio Preferences To display specific channels:
Studio Preferences To show the histogram for a selected layer or selection:
  1. Select a layer or make a selection.
  2. From Studio Preferences, select Current layer only or Marquee selection only, respectively.

About Scope charts

The Metadata Studio also provides a variety of charts which allow you to examine the distribution of luminance and chrominance in an image, allowing you to judge whether tonal or colour correction is needed. It can be used as an alternative to, or in combination with, the histogram in the same Studio.

Scope chart and photo
The Scope chart displaying the Intensity Waveform for the adjacent photo.
Studio Preferences To choose a Scope chart:

About Metadata

You can use the Metadata Studio to add new metadata to an image or edit existing metadata.

The contents of the Studio's fields are saved as part of Affinity Photo documents and optionally included when exporting to other image file formats.

Additionally, you can use the Studio to inspect EXIF metadata that describes the hardware and shooting settings used to take a photo. EXIF metadata is not editable in Affinity Photo.

Metadata Studio showing general image description and author details

The Metadata Studio showing the File category.

Metadata categories

The Studio's fields are organised into several categories. Use the pop-up menu to switch between them. The following categories are available:

For additional guidance about each field's expected contents, refer to the IPTC Photo Metadata User Guide's Field Reference Table. Many fields in the Metadata Studio accept freeform text; the guide contains examples of common practice.

Choosing what metadata to record

Setting metadata is optional. The following properties are recommended as the minimum to be populated:

1 Image-based searches conducted using Google can display this metadata. Further details are available online at this IPTC article.

Ask your organisation or client whether it has its own guidance on which metadata it requires to be recorded and how the data should be expressed.

Metadata in exported images

To include metadata from all the Studio's editable fields when exporting a PNG, JPEG, TIFF, PSD or EPS file using the Export command on the Document menu, turn on Embed metadata.

Most EXIF data will also be included; in particular, some lens information may be omitted.

Exported PDFs include the contents of the Title, Author and Keywords fields, which you can set in the Studio's File category.

About Locations

For raw files only (in Develop Persona), the Location section of the Studio allows you to review and set the GPS metadata of your raw image if needed.

Raw images from cameras with built-in GPS capability will show the recorded image location automatically. For all other cameras, the image location can be set manually from the Studio instead.

Location

Options

The following options are available:

SEE ALSO: