Silent Sifter 2.6 – Organize with EXIF, IPTC, JFIF and TIFF Metadata.

In Silent Sifter 2.6, we’ve added support for photo metadata, including EXIF, EXIFAUX, IPTC, TIFF, and Maker (i.e. Canon, Nikon) metadata for ultimate flexibility in organizing your photos.

For many of you this first part you already know, but for those without an understand of what photo metadata is, here is an overview.

What is Metadata?

There is a plethora of information stored in every photo you take, automatically, by your digital camera. Information about how your camera was configured when the photo was taken, like aperture, ISO speed, shutter speed, and more. Information about the photo itself, pixel width, capture date, GPS coordinates, and more. Information about the camera that you took the photo with, the maker, the model, the lens model, and more.

In addition, there are metadata attributes that can be added to photos explicitly by a person, such as captions, keywords (aka tags), keyword hierarchies, copyright notices, star ratings, and more. These are usually added using programs like EXIFTool, Adobe Lightroom, Aperture, iPhoto, Picasa, etc.

There are hundreds of these metadata values, hidden within every image file. Each camera populates them in their own way, some populating many values, and others populating just a few. Each photographer uses their own mechanisms for tagging, keywording, categorizing, and labeling their photos. Oh, and by the way, they get stored in many different formats with different names, because metadata has evolved over the years and uses various ‘sections’ of data, like EXIF, EXIFAUX, IPTC, JFIF, TIFF, and many more.

It’s a lot to absorb, if you haven’t heard of it before, but metadata is not a new idea, it’s been around a long time. A lot has been written that we would not want to try to duplicate. To learn more about it, visit these websites:

If you have another website you would recommend to learn about metadata, please post in the comments!

New in Silent Sifter 2.6

In previous versions of Silent Sifter, we gave you access to a handful of metadata, some of it pulled from photo metadata, and some of it pulled from the file, or Spotlight, and in some cases, all three. You had access to CameraMake, CameraModel, CreateDate (which uses many of the metadata sources and finds the best available date that the photo was created), PixelWidth, PixelHeight, VideoDuration, and a few more. You could combine these values into powerful folder structure or filename patterns, and use them to filter your files.

Now you can do all of that with any photo or spotlight metadata for any given file.

You can use each metadata item just like any other token; combining them with the original Silent Sifter tokens into folder structures, and filenames, even using token options to format the metadata to your preference.

Because there are so many fields, and they are used so many ways by different cameras and photographers, it’s hard for us to tell you what they all are, or how you might use them. We can give you some examples, and then you should give it a try yourself. All of this information is also included in the Advanced Configuration section of the Help document.

How To Access Metadata

The way that you access these metadata fields is by providing the key to where the data is stored, and using that key as a token.

The syntax for metadata keys are as follows: specify the name of each section in the metadata, followed by the ‘.’ delimiter, until you finally provide the name of the field you would like to access.

For example: image.Exif.ApertureValue

If the value does not exist within a given file, then the metadata will simply not be returned, and the rest of the folder structure/file rename/filter will continue.

All token options are available for use on the metadata keys, the same with all other tokens.

Note that date fields in metadata are stored as plain text, so they do NOT allow date formatting options

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Photo Metadata Examples

Usage	Result
image.Exif.ApertureValue	3.625
image.Exif.BrightnessValue	2.61785141635489
image.Exif.DateTimeOriginal	2013/04/01 10:47:24
image.Exif.FocalLength	4.28
image.Exif.ShutterSpeedValue	3.90625
image.ExifAux.ImageNumber	254
image.GPS.Latitude	32.969
image.IPTC.keywords	Beach,San Diego,Vacation
image.IPTC.StarRating	3
image.MakerNikon.ISOSetting	0,200
image.TIFF.Copyright	Copyright 2013 FW Photography
image.TIFF.ImageDescription	Sunset Photo at La Jolla Shores
image.TIFF.Software	Adobe Photoshop

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Metadata Key Examples

image.ColorModel
image.DPIHeight
image.DPIWidth
image.Depth
image.Exif.ApertureValue
image.Exif.BrightnessValue
image.Exif.ColorSpace
image.Exif.ComponentsConfiguration
image.Exif.CompressedBitsPerPixel
image.Exif.Contrast
image.Exif.CustomRendered
image.Exif.DateTimeDigitized
image.Exif.DateTimeOriginal
image.Exif.DigitalZoomRatio
image.Exif.ExifVersion
image.Exif.ExposureBiasValue
image.Exif.ExposureMode
image.Exif.ExposureProgram
image.Exif.ExposureTime
image.Exif.FNumber
image.Exif.FileSource
image.Exif.Flash
image.Exif.FlashPixVersion
image.Exif.FocalLenIn35mmFilm
image.Exif.FocalLength
image.Exif.FocalPlaneResolutionUnit
image.Exif.FocalPlaneXResolution
image.Exif.FocalPlaneYResolution
image.Exif.GainControl
image.Exif.ISOSpeedRatings
image.Exif.ImageUniqueID
image.Exif.LightSource
image.Exif.MaxApertureValue
image.Exif.MeteringMode
image.Exif.PixelXDimension
image.Exif.PixelYDimension
image.Exif.Saturation
image.Exif.SceneCaptureType
image.Exif.SceneType
image.Exif.SensingMethod
image.Exif.Sharpness
image.Exif.ShutterSpeedValue
image.Exif.SubjectArea
image.Exif.SubjectDistRange
image.Exif.SubjectDistance
image.Exif.SubsecTime
image.Exif.SubsecTimeDigitized
image.Exif.SubsecTimeOriginal
image.Exif.UserComment
image.Exif.WhiteBalance
image.ExifAux.AFInfo
image.ExifAux.Firmware
image.ExifAux.FlashCompensation
image.ExifAux.FocusDistance
image.ExifAux.FocusMode
image.ExifAux.ImageNumber
image.ExifAux.ImageStabilization
image.ExifAux.LensID
image.ExifAux.LensInfo
image.ExifAux.LensModel
image.ExifAux.LensSerialNumber
image.ExifAux.OwnerName
image.ExifAux.Regions
image.ExifAux.SerialNumber
image.GPS.Altitude
image.GPS.AltitudeRef
image.GPS.DateStamp
image.GPS.GPSVersion
image.GPS.ImgDirection
image.GPS.ImgDirectionRef
image.GPS.Latitude
image.GPS.LatitudeRef
image.GPS.Longitude
image.GPS.LongitudeRef
image.GPS.MapDatum
image.GPS.Status
image.GPS.TimeStamp
image.IPTC.Byline
image.IPTC.Caption/Abstract
image.IPTC.CopyrightNotice
image.IPTC.DateCreated
image.IPTC.DigitalCreationDate
image.IPTC.DigitalCreationTime
image.IPTC.Keywords
image.IPTC.ObjectName
image.IPTC.StarRating
image.IPTC.TimeCreated
image.JFIF.DensityUnit
image.JFIF.IsProgressive
image.JFIF.JFIFVersion
image.JFIF.XDensity
image.JFIF.YDensity
image.MakerCanon.ContinuousDrive
image.MakerCanon.ImageSerialNumber
image.MakerCanon.MaxAperture
image.MakerCanon.MinAperture
image.MakerCanon.UniqueModelID
image.MakerCanon.WhiteBalanceIndex
image.MakerNikon.ColorMode
image.MakerNikon.FlashSetting
image.MakerNikon.FocusMode
image.MakerNikon.ISOSetting
image.MakerNikon.LensType
image.MakerNikon.Quality
image.MakerNikon.SharpenMode
image.MakerNikon.ShootingMode
image.MakerNikon.ShutterCount
image.MakerNikon.WhiteBalanceMode
image.Orientation
image.PictureStyle.HueAdjustment
image.PictureStyle.Monochrome
image.PictureStyle.PictStyleColorSpa
image.PictureStyle.PictureStyle
image.PixelHeight
image.PixelWidth
image.ProfileName
image.TIFF.Artist
image.TIFF.Compression
image.TIFF.Copyright
image.TIFF.DateTime
image.TIFF.ImageDescription
image.TIFF.Make
image.TIFF.Model
image.TIFF.Orientation
image.TIFF.PhotometricInterpretation
image.TIFF.ResolutionUnit
image.TIFF.Software
image.TIFF.XResolution
image.TIFF.YResolution

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