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Records you can rely on: originals, edits and metadata

By Review.LivePublished 3 min readHow we write

A letter from the owner's lawyer asks for "all photographs of the east retaining wall, in native format with metadata". Half your photos exist only as screenshots in monthly reports. The best one was cropped, circled in red and saved over the original, and the file now says it was last changed three weeks after backfill.

Seen over a shoulder, two hands hold a phone sideways with its camera set to RAW, framing a bare white interior room.
Photo: charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

The original photo file carries data the camera wrote into it, including the date and time and, where location is on, the position. The standard for that data keeps the time a picture was taken apart from the time the file was last changed, so an edited or re-saved copy can look newer than the event it shows. When a record is questioned, the first questions are usually whether it is the original and whether it has changed. Some owners specify it: one public university's standard requires photos exactly as originally recorded, without alteration or editing.

Habits that keep a record trustworthy

  1. Keep the original file at full size in the project, not only the copy pasted into a report.
  2. Edit a copy, never the original. Crop, mark up or annotate a duplicate, name it as an edit ("_markup"), and keep both.
  3. Do not let screenshots stand in for photos. A screenshot is a new image made at a new time; go back to the original file.
  4. Correct by adding, not overwriting: add a correction saying who made it and when, and leave the original entry visible.
  5. Note where each time came from when photos arrive late: the file's own capture time, or one somebody typed in.
  6. Record a checksum for key files and exports. A checksum is a file's digital fingerprint: the smallest change to the file changes it completely, so a later match shows the file has not changed since.
  7. Export originals at closeout, not just reports: the files, their data and a list of what each one is.

Common mistakes

  • Saving a markup over the original.
  • Sending screenshots or report pages when originals are asked for.
  • Deleting a wrong photo instead of adding a correction.

Checklist

Records that hold up

  • Originals kept at full size, in the project
  • Edits saved as named copies
  • No screenshots standing in for photos
  • Corrections added, originals left visible
  • The source of every typed-in time noted
  • Checksums for key files and exports
  • Originals exported at closeout

Check your understanding

Why does a marked-up photo saved over the original weaken the record, even if the markup is accurate?

Show the answer
The original was the evidence of what the camera captured and when; the markup is someone's later reading of it. Once the original is gone, nobody can check the markup against it, and the file's own data now shows a later change. Keeping both lets the markup explain and the original prove.

Sources

  1. Exchangeable Image File Format (Exif) FamilyLibrary of Congress, Sustainability of Digital Formats · accessed
  2. Exchangeable image file format for digital still cameras: Exif Version 2.3 (CIPA DC-008-Translation-2012)Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA) and JEITA · accessed
  3. Fixity and checksums (Digital Preservation Handbook)Digital Preservation Coalition · accessed
  4. Section 01 32 33, Photographic Documentation (Guidelines and Design Standards)University of Colorado Denver | Anschutz Medical Campus · Colorado, United States (one public owner's standard, shown as an example of what owners may specify) · accessed

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