A photo metadata editor for Mac — dozens of fields, one photo or a whole batch

A photo’s metadata is its record: who took it, when, where, what it shows and who owns it. When the record is right, the photo can be searched, credited and licensed years later by someone who never met you; when it is wrong or empty, the photo is a picture of something, by somebody, at some point. The trouble is that filling it in has always been slow — one file at a time in a Get Info panel — or has happened inside one app’s catalogue, where a caption typed in Photos never reaches the file and never reaches anyone else.

Archyv is a Mac app with a Metadata Editor built for that job. It edits dozens of fields across ten categories, one file at a time or the same fields across a whole batch, validating each value as you type and writing the result into the file itself through ExifTool. Below: what the editor covers, choosing between the two modes, editing category by category, writing photographer credit across a batch, and previewing, backing up and verifying the result — and, at the end, where Photos, Preview and Finder stop if you would rather not install anything.

What the editor covers

The fields are organised into ten categories: General, Creator Contact, Location, Editorial, Rights & Licensing, Technical, Classification & AI, Scientific — Taxonomy, Scientific — Observation and Archive. Everyday work lives in the first five — a title, a caption, the creator’s name and contact details, where the photo was taken, who owns it and on what terms. The scientific categories serve natural-history collections, and Technical and Archive serve provenance for a stock library or an archive.

Every value is checked as you type. Emails, URLs, dates and coordinates are validated against their format, multi-value fields such as Keywords use a chip-based editor, and the IPTC standard’s limits are enforced — the Category field, for instance, is capped at three characters. All changes are written through the bundled ExifTool.

It works on images including JPEG, TIFF, PNG, HEIC and RAW formats such as CR3, and on video in MP4, MOV and M4V. Cloud files must be downloaded and accessible before editing.

Individual or Batch: pick the mode first

Select the files in the Folder Navigator and choose Metadata Editor from the process bar; the editor opens automatically. The Mode control at the top is the first decision.

Individual edits one file at a time. You pick the fields you want, see each value validated as you type, and move through the selection with Previous and Next, applying each field’s value as you go. It is the mode for photos that need different metadata — a caption per frame, a location per stop on a trip.

Batch applies the same fields across every selected file at once. A shoot that shares one client, one rights statement and one location is a batch job: set the values once, and every file gets them. Publishing workflows, stock-photography preparation, archival documentation and client deliveries with specific attribution requirements are the usual reasons to reach for it.

Edit category by category

You work in one category at a time. Select it to filter the field list, then choose a field from the dropdown — it shows only the fields in that category that apply to the file type. Enter the value, watch the inline validation, and click Apply to commit the field. Repeat for the next field, or the next category.

Dates go in as YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY:MM:DD HH:MM:SS so they validate. 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 the editor shows matches Metadata Review and the Find Existing and Find Missing filters. Date Created shows a photo’s own Date Created when it has one and otherwise the camera’s capture time, so a camera-original RAW file still shows one; editing it writes the photo’s own Date Created field.

For a multi-value field, add the values one at a time or paste a comma-separated list. When everything is applied, click Start to write the changes. The log shows the validation results and each file’s write status, and a summary lists the successful updates and any validation errors.

Write the photographer credit across a batch

Creator and copyright fields can be edited like any other, but for the common case — putting a name and a year into a whole shoot — Archyv has a dedicated process. Photographer Attribution takes any combination of first name, last name and year, and writes the name into the standard creator fields: EXIF Artist, IPTC By-line and XMP Creator for images, and the QuickTime Author atom plus an XMP Creator sidecar for videos. The year, four digits between 1900 and 2100, sets the capture-date fields.

Three modes match three intents. Add writes only into files whose photographer fields are empty, leaving existing attribution untouched — the mode for filling gaps. Replace overwrites whatever is there — for correcting or standardising a collection. Clear erases the photographer fields, the year date fields or both, according to the scope checkboxes. A mixed selection of images, videos and RAW files is handled in one run, with the right fields written for each; RAW support covers CR3, CR2, NEF, ARW, DNG, ORF, RAF, RW2 and more. The fields travel with the file through later moves, renames and sharing, which is why the copyright guide recommends attributing before delivery.

Preview it, back it up, then verify it

Two settings stand between you and a batch you regret. Simulation Mode, in General Settings, runs any process and reports the results in the log without changing your files; turn it on, read what would happen, turn it off and run for real. The automatic backup setting — Create backup before metadata modifications — copies each file before it is changed, so a file exists as it was before the write.

Afterwards, Metadata Review is the check. It opens a read-only window that never modifies a file, with the metadata organised into tabs — Quick View for the fields you check most, then IPTC for descriptive fields such as keywords, caption and copyright, EXIF for camera settings, and the metadata-category tabs — and moves through hundreds of files with the arrow keys. Quick View combines fields across sources, so Photographer reads Artist, Creator and By-line together, and a custom tab can hold exactly the fields a check needs: a Copyright Check tab with Copyright, Creator and Rights, say.

Where Photos, Preview and Finder stop

If you would rather try the built-in tools first, here is what each one covers.

Apple Photos edits a title, a caption, keywords and a location through Get Info, and does it well — inside its library. The fields it exposes are a handful of the dozens the IPTC standard defines, there is no creator contact, rights or licensing block to speak of, and what you type lives in the library database; it reaches a file only on export with the metadata options ticked, and never touches an original sitting in a folder on a drive.

Preview shows metadata thoroughly — EXIF, IPTC, GPS on a map — in its Inspector, and edits none of it. Finder’s Get Info shows less and edits only comments and tags, which are Finder’s own attributes rather than anything inside the file.

ExifTool on the command line edits every field there is, for free, one command per field with no validation and no preview; when the list of fields is long or the batch is mixed, that is where a front end earns its place — the ExifTool GUI guide covers the trade-off.

Next: the Metadata Editor reference covers the categories, modes and validation in full, Photographer Attribution covers the three modes and the fields written, and Metadata Review covers the read-only check. To add keywords to a whole batch, see adding keywords to photos in bulk; to write copyright and credit specifically, see adding copyright metadata to photos.