I’m always surprised to find that there are still some photographers who send out photographs without metadata, and in particular without the information that clearly claims their copyright, names them as creator and gives contact details.
The place where this information needs to be is in the IPTC data, and any software worth using to edit your images will have some relatively easy way to add it. It’s certainly a breeze with Lightroom which I use, and simply a matter of adding the information once to your import preset. Though you do also have to remember to update the copyright date once a year – something to put as a reminder in your diary for each New Year’s Day.
Some photographers confuse this IPTC data with the EXIF data which your camera probably offers to write to your pictures, but it is quite separate. Of course it’s a good idea to also do this, but it really doesn’t matter too much, and these fields are often not read by software that displays EXIF.
The other IPTC field that should always have some content in pictures you release to others is of course the caption (aka description) field, where the usual ‘5W’s’ apply – Where, When, Who, What and Why (I think in a more useful order than usually given, with my captions for today starting ‘London, UK. 28th July 2018.’) I also always add a Headline, which defines a set of images on a particular subject or event, while the details in captions may sometimes differ.
But captions are always specific, applying to a particular image, and not a part of the process you can readily automate, though you may well synchronise them across a particular set of images. I usually write a general caption for an event, then after synchronising go through each picture, altering or adding to this as appropriate.
The other IPTC field worth always filling in is the keywords, and again though there are various aids to doing this, it should also be specific to the event and image.
This post was prompted by seeing the post IPTC Metadata Conference on the BPPA website, which contains some similar information and also gives examples on how to add the data in Lightroom Classic, Photoshop and Photo Mechanic. There are some subtle differences in my approach, but certainly not in the overall advice that this is something you should always do for every image you send out.
I think a more sensible approach is to ensure that every image you bring into your computer has the three absolutely vital fields – Creator, Contact and Copyright – automatically added.
I use both Lightroom and Photoshop, but Lightroom is the basis of my workflow for digital images, with PS just getting the occasional call when more dirty work is needed (and particularly for retouching scanned negatives.) Probably it would be possible to set up some more automatic method of entering IPTC data with PS, but one of my many reasons for preferring LR is how it automates the process for entering three of what the BPPA article calls the ‘Four Cs‘.