The picture knows

I first heard about EXIF meta data years ago when we were rolling out cameras and movie making equipment to media classrooms. I remember being so surprised that those pictures contain such a wealth of extra information that I didn’t know about..

EXIF, by the way, stands for Exchangeable Image File.

Once I realized all the information that was packed into an image file (other than the image of course), I went on a kick and edited it out before I shared my image files with anyone. Keeping my privacy intact, don’t you know.

Like most people, I suspect, I just got lazy and stopped worrying about it. It’s even worse these days. I suspect, like many people who keep a smartphone on them most of the time, that I’m not alone. I take pictures and then go ahead and share it. For the most part, I don’t even bring images into a photo editing program any more. Lazy? Probably.

On the other hand, I like the actual image that a camera will take and am fully aware of how phoney a photo image program can make a picture when used in the hands of an inexperienced person.

But, back to EXIF. It helped hit the fan over the weekend when the White House took some pictures of the President “at work” in the hospital. Some curious folks took the image that was shared to social media and explored the EXIF data with interesting observations.

Twitter has thoughts about those photos of Trump working at Walter Reed

The photos released by the WH tonight of the president working at Walter Reed were taken 10 minutes apart at 5:25:59 pm and 5:35:40 pm ET Saturday, according to the EXIF data embedded in both @AP wire postings that were shared by the White House this evening. pic.twitter.com/EzeqIkGdf7

— Jon Ostrower (@jonostrower) October 4, 2020

So, just how difficult is it to get this information? It’s actually ridiculously simple.

PC
Right click on the image, select properties, and then the Details tab.

Macintosh
Open the image in the Preview application, select Tools, and then Inspector.

Voila!

Or, if you are looking for an even quicker way, you can just upload the image or the URL pointing to the image at this website. http://exifdata.com/

Try it with an image on your computer or something that you find on the web. There’s quite a bit more about the image that you’ll find there. It’s actually helpful and can help you become a better manager of your camera and the resulting images.

The more you know, the better off you are.