Personal Digital Archiving: Adding Descriptions to Digital Photos

Writing descriptions on the back of paper photos is a good practice because someday the descriptions may help refresh your memory or help others understand the content or context of the photos. Similarly, adding descriptions to digital photos is a good practice. Photo editing sofware such as Camtasia or Photoshop enables you to insert text descriptions into a photo file; that text will be readable separate from the photo image. So if you send a digital photo to me into which you’ve embedded a description, I should be able to see the text through my computer or smart phone.[1] Digital cameras automatically add textual data into each photo file, such as the shutter speed, time, date and even the geographic location. Photography professionals routinely add descriptions into their digital photos for business reasons.