Copyrighted 
What the Copyright tag is
Almost every JPEG, HEIC or TIFF from a camera or phone carries an EXIF block: a list of numbered tags that describe how the picture was made. Most of them record exposure, lens and time. Two of them record people. Artist (tag 0x013B) names who made the image, and Copyright (tag 0x8298, 33432 in decimal) holds the copyright notice.
Both tags come from the TIFF specification and sit in the first image directory, IFD0, next to the camera make and model. The EXIF standard, published by CIPA and JEITA, adopted them. Version 2.3x is what most cameras and phones write today.
The standard describes the field as the copyright notice of the person or organisation claiming rights to the image, with the date and the rights. A typical value looks like this: © 2026 Jane Smith. All rights reserved.
Photographer and editor in one field
The tag has an unusual structure. It can hold two notices: the photographer's first, then the editor's, separated by a NUL byte (a zero). The editor is someone who holds rights in an edited or published version, such as a publisher.
- Photographer only:
© 2026 Jane Smith - Photographer and editor:
© 2026 Jane Smith, a NUL, then© 2026 Harbour Press - Editor only: a single space, a NUL, then the editor's notice
Few programs show the editor part. Many stop reading at the first NUL, so anything after it is easy to miss. If you only need one notice, which is almost always the case, write the photographer part alone.
ASCII, length and the © sign
EXIF 2.3x types the field as ASCII, and it sets no maximum length, so a full sentence fits. Strictly, ASCII has no © character. Many tools store it anyway as UTF-8, and most current readers display it correctly. Some older software shows a stray character in its place. If a reader you depend on garbles it, (c) or the word Copyright is a safe fallback.
A newer edition of the standard, EXIF 3.0, adds a UTF-8 text type. Support for it is still uneven, so the ASCII form remains the one every reader understands.
Leave the field empty when you have nothing to say. The standard treats an empty Copyright tag as unknown, which is more honest than a placeholder such as a camera model or Copyright on its own.
Who reads it
Because it sits beside the camera data, the EXIF notice is the one most likely to travel with a file. It is read by:
- photo editors and catalogues such as Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photoshop;
- command-line tools such as exiftool;
- digital asset management systems and many publishing workflows;
- many interchangeable-lens cameras, which can also write it. Set your name once in the camera's copyright menu and every frame carries it.
The iPhone Camera app has no such setting, so phone photos start with this tag empty.
What happens to the tag after that depends on the software that handles the file. Some export dialogs and many websites remove metadata to save space or protect privacy. The only way to know is to check a file after it has been through the process. The free copyright checker reads the tag in your browser without uploading the photo.
How it relates to IPTC and XMP
The EXIF tag is one of three places a photo can state its copyright. The IPTC Copyright Notice (2:116) is the field agencies and newsrooms read, and XMP dc:rights is the layer Adobe software and many web tools use. The Metadata Working Group, formed by camera and software makers, published guidance that treats the three as one logical field and asks software to keep them in step.
In practice they drift apart. A camera writes an old studio name into EXIF, an agency adds its own IPTC notice, and an editor updates only XMP. The photo then names two owners, depending on which program opens it. That is a conflicting photo, and it is worse than a blank one, because each reader believes a different answer.
Reading the tag yourself
To see the raw value, including any editor notice after the NUL, exiftool prints it with exiftool -Copyright -Artist photo.jpg. In a browser, the checker shows the EXIF notice in its own column beside IPTC and XMP.
If the tag holds a camera model, a software name or the word Copyright on its own, it was probably filled by a default setting. Treat it as empty and write a real notice.
Setting it without harming the photo
Writing a metadata tag should never touch the image data. A careless tool decodes and re-saves a JPEG while it writes, which costs a little quality every time. Tools that rewrite only the metadata avoid that loss.
Copyrighted writes the EXIF Copyright and Artist tags together with the matching IPTC and XMP fields, where the format has them, without re-encoding the image. It reads each file back before it replaces the original, so a write that doesn't say what you asked for is never kept.
Questions
What is EXIF tag 0x8298?
It is the Copyright tag, 33432 in decimal, stored in the first image directory (IFD0) of a photo's EXIF block. It holds a text copyright notice, optionally followed by a NUL byte and an editor's notice.
Can my camera write the copyright automatically?
Many interchangeable-lens cameras have a copyright setting that writes Artist and Copyright into every frame. The iPhone Camera app has no such setting, so iPhone photos need another tool to add it.
Is the EXIF Copyright field enough on its own?
It is widely read, but agencies often look at IPTC first and many web tools read XMP. Writing the same notice into all three layers gives every reader the same answer.
