Metadata questions and answers
Q1. What is meant by ‘metadata’?
A1. Data about data.
Q2. What metadata might be stored as well as the picture in a picture file?
A2. E.g. Picture dimensions, creation date, copyright information, keywords, software used.
Q3. Why is metadata stored along with information about the actual picture in a picture file?
A3. So it can be displayed properly in a browser or other application, so that the copyright owner can be contacted if someone wants to use the image, so the image can be found using browsers by using keywords, so the creation software can be identified.
Q4. What is the colour depth of a picture?
A4. This is the phrase used to describe the number of bits used to store information about the colour of each pixel in a picture.
Q5. What is the resolution of a picture?
A5. This is the term used to describe the number of bits in an area of a picture, which determines whether a picture is very sharp or a little lacking in detail.
Q6. Apart from the resolution and colour depth, what else does a browser need to know before it can display a picture in the browser properly?
A6. The height and width of the picture.
Q7. What is 'copyright'?
A7. This is the term used to describe the legal rights someone has to some intellectual property such as an image they have made or taken with a camera.
Q8. What are 'tags' used for?
A8. Tags are words you can add to e.g. a picture which makes the picture much easier to find using a search engine.
Q9. What is a watermark?
A9. This is a very faint image often added to documents as a security measure as it is hard to remove and so appears when copied.
Q10. Why are owner's details sometimes part of the metadata of an image?
A10. You may need to contact the owner and ask permission to use the image.