Metadata

Manage metadata in Tonfotos

In this article

Photo metadata stores a wealth of information about your pictures, from camera models and settings to shooting dates and geolocation. This data may be embedded in the file or placed alongside it, serving as a powerful tool for organizing and analyzing photos. The types of metadata depend on the format. The two most popular formats are EXIF (digital photography standard, built into the file header) and XMP (additional more powerful standard, either built-in or kept in a separate "sidecar" file).

Tonfotos reads metadata in different formats and displays all details in the File information pane. It also lets you edit the basic metadata to keep your library organized, remove sensitive details from files you're going to share, and use the metadata to rotate images without losing quality.

WARNING: Tonfotos supports editing the metadata only for JPEG, HEIC, TIFF and PNG files.

Viewing metadata in Tonfotos

Select the photo and press CtrlP or click in the upper right.
In the File information pane, you can first see the most important metadata that is also editable in Tonfotos:
- Dates of creation and last change 1
- Title 2
- Comment 3
- Location, both coordinates and shown on an interactive map 4 To zoom the map, double-click the left and right mouse buttons. To move the map, click and drag it around.
Below see also the camera info 5. For example, you can find out if the photo was taken with the front or back camera of your smartphone.
After that, see the list of Additional Metadata 6 with all technical details.

File information with location, date, and all camera details

Editing metadata

Tonfotos lets you modify some essential fields in metadata. These modifications are saved to the image metadata, which alters the image file contents. Because of this, it stops being a duplicate of files that were its exact copies before.

Title

Use the title to add a meaningful description to the image. Anyone with whom you share this photo can easily see the title, even if they don't use Tonfotos: most image viewers and operating system file explorers can show the image title.

In Tonfotos, the title is displayed at the bottom of the image both in the view mode and in the slideshow. To turn off showing the titles, select File > Preferences... or press Ctrl, (for Windows), or Tonfotos > Preferences... or press Control, (for macOS), then disable the Show Title over photo switch.

To add or edit an image title, press CtrlT, select Photo > Edit Title..., or right-click selected photos in the Events tab and select Edit Title... You will be redirected to the File information pane where you can enter the new title. If the image already has a title, you can just click within its text in the File information pane to edit it.

Comment

Use the comment to add any notes you want. The comment is available in the file properties in the operating system, and many image viewers can show it. It's a bit more difficult to get to than the title, though, so use it for some additional or non-essential notes.

To add a comment, press CtrlShiftT, select Photo > Edit Comment..., or right-click the selected photos in the Events tab and select Edit Comment... You will be redirected to the File information pane where you can enter the comment. If the image already has a comment, you can just click within its text in the File information pane and edit it.

Date

You can correct the date the picture was captured. Older cameras often have incorrect date settings because of low battery, so you may want to change them to keep the dates in your library relevant.

To change the creation date, press F3, select Photo > Edit Creation Date..., or right-click selected photos in the Events tab and select Edit Creation Date... Enter the new date, time, and time zone.

When you change the dates for multiple photos, Tonfotos offers a smart way to update the dates: instead of using the same date and time for all selected files, you can shift the date by the same amount. This is useful if you had the wrong date set on your camera to begin with, but its clock was going and the time difference between photos is correct. You need to set the correct time for just one file to have all other files set to their right time too.

Shift the date one month backward for all selected files, keeping the same time

Location

You can correct or add the image location. This is useful if your camera doesn't save geolocation, or if you received the converted or exported photos without the location.

To change the location, press F4, select Photo > Edit Location..., or right-click selected photos in the Events tab and select Edit Location...

Tonfotos lets you search for places in the list 1, but it only includes large cities and you may not find your exact town. In that case, you can choose a place nearby, then move the geotag around on the map 2 to set the exact location.

Different ways of editing image location

Alternatively, enter the latitude and longitude of the location manually 3. For example, you can use Google Maps to get the location coordinates: search for the place you need, right-click the exact location, and then click the numbers to copy the coordinates.

To remove location data, click No location in the Photo location dialog.

NOTE: Tonfotos uses Yandex maps to show you the image locations. This feature works only when you have an active Internet connection. Adding the latitude and longitude manually is possible at any time.

Removing sensitive details

If you'd rather not share geolocation or camera data when sending your photos to someone or publishing them online, Tonfotos has the solution for you.

Simply export the photos with Metadata: Include unchecked. This ensures that all metadata is erased from the exported photos, while the originals in your library stay intact and can still be filtered and organized with the help of their metadata.