Metadata Editor

Metadata Editor edits dozens of metadata fields, organized into ten categories: General, Creator Contact, Location, Editorial, Rights & Licensing, Technical, Classification & AI, Scientific — Taxonomy, Scientific — Observation, and Archive. Work in Individual mode to edit one file at a time, picking the fields you want and seeing each value validated as you type, or in Batch mode to apply the same fields across many files at once.

Field-type validation checks emails, URLs, dates, and coordinates; multi-value fields such as Keywords, and the names and codes of organisations featured in the image, use a chip-based editor; and IPTC limits are enforced (for example, the Category field is capped at three characters). All changes are written through ExifTool.

Every IPTC Core field is covered, including Creator's Job Title, Job Id, and the creator's full contact address (city, state or province, postal code, and country). So is every IPTC Extension field except Image Region, which Metadata Review shows but the editor cannot draw, and the two Encoded Rights Expressions. The most recent additions are Additional Model Information, Model Age, Other Constraints, Max Avail Height and Width, and AI Prompt Writer Name. Model Age and the two Max Avail sizes take whole numbers only, and a photo can list several model ages; for a model under 18, use Minor Model Age Disclosure instead of an age. Fields that IPTC defines in both the legacy IPTC block and XMP are written to both, and the two-letter Country Code you pick is stored as the three-letter code other tools expect. Searchable lists such as Media Topic jump to the names that begin with what you type.

Some fields hold whole records, and a photo can list several: licensors, copyright owners, artworks or objects, products shown in the image, image creators, locations shown in the image, image registry entries, genres, contributors, the controlled-vocabulary terms the image is about (CV-Term About Image, where Media Topics live), and the people shown in the image with their details. Location Created — where the photo was taken — holds a single record. Both location records sit in the Location category beside the older Location fields, and the three are kept separate: editing one never changes another. Each record type appears once in the field list, by its name; choosing it shows each record on its own card, where you can change it, add another, or remove one. A licensor's card shows the full address and both phone numbers, and an artwork's card shows every detail, including its creators' identifiers: removing a creator also removes that creator's identifier, and adding a creator adds none. A product's card holds one identifier; a photo whose product already lists several keeps them unchanged. A CV-term's Media Topic is picked from the searchable Media Topics list, or typed for a term of another vocabulary; picking a Media Topic also sets the record's CV-Term CV ID to the Media Topics vocabulary unless you typed one yourself, and replaces the record's CV-Term name with the topic's name; a name you type after picking is kept, and typing a term of another vocabulary leaves the name as it is. A person's card lists the person's characteristics below the name, identifier and description, each characteristic with its own four boxes; adding a characteristic puts the cursor in its first box. An image registry entry's Item Id and Organisation Id, a genre's CV-Term ID, a contributor's Identifier and a CV-term's Media Topic show "Required by IPTC" when left empty on a record you add or change, but never stop you saving. Details a record holds that the editor does not show, such as a title or name in another language, are kept as they are when you save. In Batch mode these fields use the same Add, Replace and Clear as any other field, chosen first and then filled in on one record card: Add writes the record only to photos that have none of that kind yet and skips the rest, Replace gives every selected photo exactly that one record, and Clear removes them all. Archyv counts the selected photos first, tells you how many an Add will skip, and asks you to confirm before replacing or clearing.

The four date fields — Date Created, Date/Time Original, Modify Date, and Metadata Date — are read the same way everywhere in Archyv, so the value shown here matches Metadata Review and the Find Existing / Find Missing filters. The Date Created shown uses a photo's own Date Created when it has one, and otherwise the camera's capture time, so a camera-original RAW file that carries only its capture time still shows a Date Created. Editing Date Created writes the photo's own Date Created field.

While the editor has unsaved changes, the file list is locked (a lock symbol shows why); Start writes the changes and Refresh discards them.