Sunday, January 18, 2015

Optimizing Lightroom Metadata for Fine Art

In Lightroom, you might have seen the Metadata panel and wondered what it's for. For the longest time, I thought it was just junk that I didn't have to worry about unless I wanted to see the camera settings for a photo.

Why Bother With Metadata?

I recently learned that you can and should use the Metadata panel to annotate your photos, particularly photos of artwork! Here's why:

It's Saved Into the File

The metadata you enter is saved into the file itself when you export. That means that when you send a curator, gallery, or patron a file, whatever you enter is attached to the file. Galleries often have so many files that it's easy to lose track of

It's Used By Flickr, Facebook, Google Plus, SmugMug, Etc.

Your metadata is also used by apps/websites such as Flickr. The title and description typically gets auto-filled from your file's metadata, if it exists.

Enter once, see everywhere. If you enter titles, captions, and/or descriptions directly into Lightroom, you don't have to waste time entering them again everywhere that you upload the file.

How You Enter Metadata in Lightroom

I care mainly about the Metadata panels under Library and Map.

Use the Library Module

The Library module is where you enter most of the metadata. See the right panel, lower half:



From the Library module, some of the data can automatically get populated via a preset, since it's the same for all your artwork:

  • Copyright: Something like "© 2015 A. Roy Greenfeld". Use your full artist name or pseudonym, as you would use in an exhibition.
  • Copyright Status: Copyrighted
  • Creator: Something like "A. Roy Greenfeld". Use your artist name, as in the copyright.

Then, here is what you should enter manually for a painting:
  • Title: The formal title of the painting, as you would print it on an exhibition card. If it doesn't have a title, Untitled is better than nothing.
  • Caption: You have a couple of options.
    • If you wish to post this more formally, use any description text that you might use in the work's label card in an exhibition.
    • For informal posting online, you can add personal, first-person notes that speak to your audience about your work. This is better for practice studies done with reference photos that need attribution.
You don't have to use these fields, but you can:
  • Copy Name: Use only if you created a virtual copy of the painting in Lightroom. For example, if you create a 16x20 cropped copy of a painting with extra contrast, call it "16x20 extra contrast". When you export a copy, that text can be appended to the copy's filename.
  • Sublocation: For example, "Washington Monument" if this is a painting of the Washington Monument, to distinguish from Washington, D.C. Or "Tenderloin" if you want to distinguish the Tenderloin neighborhood from San Francisco.
  • Rating: There are several ways to use this:
    • Fastest: Use either 5 stars or unrated. 
    • For more control:
      • Rate the painting itself on a scale of 1-5.
      • Rate the photo of the painting on a scale of 1-5. Four stars means that you might retake the photo; 3 or fewer means that you probably should reshoot.
  • Label:
You'll probably want to leave these fields as-is:
  • File Name: Doesn't matter
  • Folder: It's just the folder containing the file.
  • Capture Time: By default, this is the time you took the photo. If you want, you can change it to the time you painted the painting, but I prefer to leave it as-is.
  • Capture Date: By default, this is the date you took the photo. If you want, you can change it to the date  you painted the painting, but I prefer to leave it as-is.
  • Dimensions: The pixel dimensions of the photo before cropping.
  • Cropped: The pixel dimensions of the photo after cropping.
  • Exposure: The shutter speed and f-stop of the photo.
  • Focal Length:
  • ISO Speed Rating: 
  • Flash: Whether the flash fired.
  • Make: The make of the camera. Usually the brand or company, e.g. "OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP"
  • Model: The camera model.
  • Lens: The lens you used on the camera.
  • GPS: The GPS data recorded by your camera, if your camera is capable of recording this and if you have set it up to record GPS info.

Optional: Map Module Metadata

If you want, you can enter more geographic data from the Map module. I usually don't bother, but you can use these fields:
  • City: Where you painted the work.
    • Consider using the name of the nearest internationally-known major city, e.g. "Los Angeles" even if you live in a place near LA like Burbank or Echo Park.
    • Alternative: be more accurate if you wish to keep this data for mapping/storytelling purposes.
  • State/Province: Spell this out, e.g. "California" rather than "CA". This helps international viewers who might not know the abbreviation.
  • Country: Use the full verbal name.
  • ISO Country Code: Use the 2- or 3-letter code as defined by ISO 3166. If I use this, I prefer the 2-letter codes.
  • GPS: The GPS data recorded by your camera, if your camera is capable of recording this and if you have set it up to record GPS info.
  • Altitude: The altitude data recorded by your camera, if your camera is capable of recording this and if you have set it up to record altitude info.

Find Anything Wrong?

The above is for Lightroom 5.5. If there are any changes for newer versions of Lightroom, or if I made any mistakes, I welcome comments.

No comments:

Post a Comment