Is anyone aware of an Android app that's designed to add metadata to photos taken with the phone? The ones I've found all seem to be very limited. I'm particularly interested in being able to pre-store XMP copyright and creator, as I can do with my Nikon DSLR. For that matter, is this possible on any mobile OS app?
Obviously, I can do this with am IMatch metadata template, but it would be nice to be able to move metadata additions as far upstream as possible. See, for example, http://photometadata.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-cant-i-insert-metadata-at-capture.html
Let your camera vendor know that you would like to specify this data right in your camera and that they should create an XMP record when they store the image on your card. This would be the easiest solution but I'm not sure the camera vendors listen.
Tip
An easy solution (which may or may not work for you) is to specify the data as the EXIF user comment in-camera and then transfer it with an IMatch Metadata Template from the EXIF user comment to whatever XMP data you want directly during import.
You can access the contents of the user comment via
{File.MD.XMP::exif\UserComment\UserComment\0}
Using the substr function you can even split your user comment into multiple parts and assign them to different XMP tags, e.g. a copyright and creator and shooting ID or something. That's how I do it (and many others) and it allows me to specify all this in-camera and let IMatch do the rest.
If camera vendors catch up with metadata standards 10 years in use, they may allow us to add more data in-camera. Especially the recent 'camera' models are basically Android phones with a more elaborate lens system attached. And if your camera runs Android anyway and has a decent-size monitor, there will be apps which deal with such issues.
Thanks for the tip re UserComment. I should be able to apply that for my Nikon DSLR. Unfortunately, options for any metadata fields are extremely limited (or non-existent) for smartphone cameras (perhaps the options are better for Android cameras, but I don't know). I think smartphone makers are even more unaware of metadata options than camera makers...
QuoteI think smartphone makers are even more unaware of metadata options than camera makers...
The product cycles are very short for smart phone hardware and the 'added value' of implementing and supporting proper metadata is near nil for the vendors. Unlikely they will spend money on that, unless there is real demand and having support for XMP will give them an edge and generate more sales. Or when the market is saturated enough that everything that helps to generate a few more sales will be considered...