Getting started with image processing skills and knowledge

[TechBang]

I'm new to the media world.  Until now I used to know only to click pictures or record videos, never went behind the lens to understand image processing, conversions, transformations, thumbnails etc.  I need to get started with all these but dont know how and where to start from.  Help and training, if any, provided would be appreciated.

[BogdanH]

Hi,
Here, we are mostly talking about writing/editing "metadata" inside image files and less about editing images (pictures).
Let me explain.. for example: we "know" that image has size (resolution) measured in number of pixels horizontally/vertically. What we are interested on here is the question, where and how is this value stored inside image file. On the other hand, we aren't that much interested about image resizing processes here.
Image file contains many data, which can be divided in two major parts:
1. image data: that's what you see when you open a image file on your monitor (or print on paper)
2. data about image (metadata -data about data): where inside image file is Date and Time of when photo was taken, saved? How to change that data? How/where to save photographers name into image file, etc.

ExifTool is very specialized tool for manipulating metadata. Is that what you're interested on? Anyway, to be able to use ExifTool successfully, some basic knowledge (about metadata) is required. Where to start? As usual, Google can be usefull.. then reading posts in this forum (and elsewhere).

Bogdan

[Phil Harvey]

Bogdan posted while I was typing, but I'll post this anyway...

I think you're in the wrong place if you want to learn about image processing.  ExifTool is used only for processing metadata only, and does not process the images themselves.

But if you want to learn about metadata, a good place to start may be the MWG documentation.  Start with chapter 2 of their document.

- Phil