Cataloging with Photo Supreme

Cataloging Concept

What are Assets and what is Metadata?

Cataloging refers to the process of creating a list for inclusion in a catalog. In asset management, a catalog serves as a reference index that helps you organize, manage, and retrieve your assets.

Typically, you will use Photo Supreme to manage images and related files. This software can handle both image and non-image files, such as videos, text documents, and other types of files. Therefore, the term "files" is more accurate for describing the assets managed in Photo Supreme. In this document, we will refer to "images," but this can be substituted with any file type you wish to manage with the software.

Your images possess attributes, properties, and characteristics. Examples of these attributes include the file name, file size, and the folder on your disk where the file is stored. When you capture an image with your digital camera, it not only saves the image pixels but also records descriptive information about the technical aspects of the image. These technical details, known as Exif data, typically include information such as the camera brand, model, recording date, pixel dimensions, aperture settings, focal length, lens model, lens range, and more. These also qualify as "attributes" of your asset. Some cameras equipped with GPS chips automatically embed GEO coordinates into the image file, sometimes including location details such as the country and city.

Photo Supreme simplifies the management of these attributes for your assets (images, videos, etc.). The collection of attributes from your assets is referred to as "metadata". Metadata is the general term used to describe this information. In simpler terms, metadata encompasses the set of attributes that define your asset; for example, the title of an image is a common type of metadata.