View Photo Information and Metadata

In this video, we’re going to look at how it can view the metadata or the information about a photo or video in the Photos app on the Mac. Now I’m going to show you with macOS Big Sur, but it does work the same way in older versions of macOS. As long as you use in the Photos app and updated version of the Photos app, let’s take a look at how we view our metadata in the Photos app on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac.

So I’m in my Photos library here and let’s take a look at this photo here. What I would like to do is see what camera was taken with. I want to see the date. Maybe I’d even like to see what shutter speed it was. Well, we can do this with the Photos app. All we have to do is just select it. I click on it to select it. i, don’t open it up. I have it selected here. We can see the blue border. Now what I do is I go up to the toolbar and you’re going to see this little I, and when I click on this, we have a new window that opens up and we can see we have our information window.

In this window, let’s go ahead and move it to the right here a little bit, in this info window what I can do is see when the photo was taken, I can see the name of the photo, and if I wanted to add a title, I could even add a title. I can also see that this has been favorited. But in addition to that, what I’m able to do is see what camera I was taken with. This was taken with my Panasonic DMC ZS3. It does not have any lens information with it, but I can see what the pixel sizes as well as the actual file size. And I can see what type of file it is. I want to see where it was taken. I added geolocation to this photo. We can see it was taken in Durango.

Let’s take a look at another photo. I do not have to close this window to view the information of another photo. All I have to do is just select it. So I’m going to swipe up here and what we’re going to do is go to this photo here. I select it, and in my info window, I can see the name of it, when it was taken, as well as what camera was taken with. This particular photo also has lens information. I can see what the ISO was as well as the f-stop and even the shutter speed. This particular photo also has keywords. So we can see that I added a keyword of cruise to this.

We’re going to swipe up and take a look at another one. This does work with both photos and videos. So we’re going to go to this photo here. This is about Beth and myself,, and we can see it has Beth and myself in there, because I have them in the people.

So, depending on what information is embedded in the photo, you’re going to see different metadata here. If I go to a photo that does not have any location information in it, I’m going to swipe up here. This particular photo here of an apple press does not have any location data in it. So when I select it, what I’m able to do is assign a location. And again, this does work with videos as well. This is a video here and we can see when it was, and as well as the file size and what type of file it is.

So that’s how we view the information or the metadata of photos and videos in the Photos app on the Mac. All you have to do is just select the photo or video you want to view the information from, and then you go up to the toolbar and click on the i. You’ll see a new window that opens up and all of the embedded information of that photo or video are going to show in that window. Some of the information you can change such as adding a title, adding keywords and assigning locations, where other information you cannot change such as what camera was taken with and the lens information.

So that’s how we view the information of a photo or video in the Photos app on the Mac.