PhotoME

I don't do too many software reviews. But some tools are indispensable. Digital photos contain all kind of data. It even contains metadata. What's metadata? Metadata is data that describes data. That's what makes it meta. What's in there? What are all of the fields? Lightroom has limited metadata information viewing capabilities. But, you'd be amazed by what the camera manufacturer keeps track in the metadata, such as:

• Camera temperature
• Firmware level
• Calibration
• Shutter release half press time
• Profiles
• Pixel scheme
• Contrast
• Saturation
• Shutter counter
• ...

And much more. To see why your photo didn't turn out the way you expected, first examine your photo metadata. For the Microsoft Windows computers there is a free software: PhotoME. PhotoME does not have an OSx version. For OSx, you will have to use ExifTool. PhotoME stands for Photo Metadata Editor. PhotoME displays all the metadata, even the one that it doesn't understand.

And now time for some techno babble. PhotoME supports all the Exif tags v2.21, the IPTC v4.1, the ICC profiles v4.2.0.0, JPEG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, Digital Negative RAW and almost all common camera RAW file such as Canon RAW v2 (CR2), Canon Thumbnail (THM), Epson (ERF), FujiFilm (RAF), Hasselblad (3FR), Kodak (KDC, DCR, K25), Konica/Minolta (MRW), Mamiya (MEF), Nikon (NEF), Olympus (ORF), Panasonic and Leica (RAW, RW2, RWL), Pentax (PEF), Sony (ARW, SRF and SR2), Creo Leaf Capture (MOS) and the RAW format Digital Negative (DNG).

The current version of PhotoME is 0.8 Beta. The beta version is limited in that it can't write to the metadata. The final version of 0.8 will allow you to write to the metadata. If you need to write and change your metadata, you can use version PhotoME version 0.79.

PhotoME allows for:

• Detection of destroyed metadata. It doesn't always work, but there are times when PhotoME works miracles.
• Creation of new IPTC tags
• Show a CIE chromaticity diagram of an ICC profile
• Show the GPS position in Google Earth or Google Maps

The user interface is not great, because it doesn't follow the standard Windows functions, but except for that, it's a great tool to have. Here's a sample screen.