Editor which preserves image metadata?

[nickdu]

Unfortunately it looks like there was some object on my lense or mirror which produced an unwanted result in some of the pictures I took. For the most part it's only noticable when that part of the picture is of a blue sky. So my plan is to copy/paste another part of the sky from the picture over the unwanted artifact (if there's an easier way to get rid of this please let me know).

Since I didn't have Photoshop I figured I would try mspaint to see if that would work as an editor. While I was able to edit the picture and remove the unwanted artifact, the problem I encountered was that when saving the file all the metadata was overwritten. It's not a huge deal, but it would be nice to retain the date/time since I think the online site I upload to retains that information.

Since mspaint had this problem I figured I would download the trial version of Photoshop and try that out. Surprisingly, to me at least, it suffered from the same problem.

Does anyone know of an image editing tool which will retain the image metadata?

By the way, this is my first time using Photoshop so maybe there is a way around this. I plan on posting to some photoshop forum to see if there is some setting I can make to override this behavior.

Thanks,
Nick

[Martin in Montreal]

I'm not at my image computer but I believe that BB Pro will allow you to copy metadata (EXIF info) from one file to another. Edit your picture in your image editor and [save as] a new name. Then copy the EXIF from the original to the copy.

[DavidB]

Which metadata was lost? I use Photoshop Elements 4 (having had no need to upgrade further), and that preserves a great deal of metadata, though not always in a format that other programs can read. You need to make sure that you save in a format that supports metadata; for all its well-known limitations, I think that JPEG will be your best bet. I think that MS Paint only saves in bitmap format, which does not support metadata.

Martin is correct in saying that BB Pro can copy metadata (both EXIF and IPTC); I was doing just that myself only 10 minutes ago. The best thing is to copy your image(s) to another folder, edit it or them, and use Tools|EXIF copy ... in BB Pro. The dialogue is pretty much self-explanatory.

By the way, your artefact may be the result of dirt on your camera sensor, so you might wish to follow the manufacturer's instructions for cleaning the sensor. It's bit hairy the first time you do it, but with reasonable care (including using only products specifically designed for the task) it's fairly straightforward. If this is the problem, the healing tools in Photoshop do a really good job of fixing it.

Hope this helps.

[nickdu]

Thanks, I'll try out your suggestions. By the way, I was surprised myself to see that mspaint can save to bmp, jpg, gif, TIFF, and PNG.

Nick

[nickdu]

And in reply to your question regarding which metadata was lost I would say all of it. Again I'm new to this stuff. When I use BBPro to open an image it shows a bunch on metadata on the right hand side of the main view listed under summary. This has among other things: date & time, shutter speed, metering mode, etc. All of this was gone and was replaced by a few pieces of metadata, all new.

What I did was export to PNG in BBPro. I then edited in mspaint and saved back to the image I had opened in mspaint. I also tried the same procedure in Photoshop. The results were the same in both, all the summary information was lost and replaced by a few pieces of new information.

Nick

[DavidB]

What I did was export to PNG in BBPro.
I'm 99% sure that PNG does not support metadata. It's not conventionally used for photographic images. So you probably lost your metadata on that initial conversion.

For newcomers, the best advice is to stick with JPEG unless and until you encounter its limitations. If you are worried about data loss during (for example) repeated editing, use native Photoshop PSD (or TIFF) during the edit stage, and export back to JPEG at the end; these processes should preserve most if not all of your metadata. And it's always a good idea to edit a copy of your image, as you have been doing.

Hope this helps.