Mastodawn

Is there an accepted standard (or just some good examples) of how to include provenance metadata within computationally produced images

My specific use case is graphs generated by plotly (python) saved as png where I'd like to record some things like date, software version, data version in the image metadata

There are exif elements for date and "software" but is there a better solution than just shoving info in the description and/or title field? Something that can survive passage through a presentation an added bonus!

(And yes, I do want this in the image metadata, not as a separate file, I'll use the same info to write out a separate manifest)

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Paco Hope Mar 25

@cameronneylon You know about EXIF, so you know about embedding metadata in the image file itself. EXIF defines zillions of possible fields, not just free-text fields like description.

What's not working? No EXIF field whose title/purpose seems right for the provenance you're trying to store? PNG processing software won't handle the metadata right? PNGs need to be compatible with older systems that don't support EXIF stored in the files?

What is going wrong?

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Cameron Neylon Mar 25

@paco Nothing going wrong (well not yet anyway). Was wondering whether someone had already done something or if there was any standard approach, specifically for scientific images where people tend to have strong opinions about how things should be done.

Should be able to use pillow or pngmeta to add the metadata. Just a question of whether I can add value by choosing a specific format or location

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Paco Hope

@cameronneylon Cool. I won't offer an opinion, then, becaus I don't really have useful experience to guide it. But I will probably lurk in the replies because it is a fascinating question.