When adding photos, Excire Foto reads the existing metadata and automatically adds AI keywords after the analysis. Keywords already stored in the photos or XMP files are imported if the option "Load keywords from photos" is enabled in the "Metadata" tab of the preferences. It is enabled by default.

After that, you can continue to maintain the keywords and metadata manually, add your own keywords, add or change metadata, etc.

All information is initially only available within the Excire Foto database.

If you want to make keywords and metadata available to other applications, you will need to save them to the photos using the menu command "Store metadata".

There are settings that can be used to adapt the behavior of Excire Foto to the way other programs work.

Metadata can be saved either directly in the files or as a separate file (so-called sidecar files) in .xmp format.

These xmp files basically have the same name as the associated photo file, only with the extension ".xmp".

Metadata can only be saved directly in some file formats (e.g. JPG and PNG), but RAW files do not offer this possibility. Here it is always necessary to save in .xmp format. This is not a limitation of the software, but specified by the RAW format.

Starting with Excire Foto 2027, the command asks which keywords to save before writing: Excire keywords (all, confirmed only, or none), custom keywords, and the names assigned to faces.

In the export dialog there is an option to save metadata with the new photos on output or not ("Store metadata for exported photos").

In the preferences (macOS: Excire Foto → Preferences, Windows: File → Preferences), the "Sidecar files" tab contains the option "Always use sidecar files". It uses sidecar files for all file types, even if they would allow metadata to be saved directly. This option is disabled by default.

This setting is recommended only for advanced users who work with programs that also exclusively use sidecar files for metadata or offer a corresponding setting option.

If this setting is enabled, metadata such as keywords is appended to the existing metadata when saving, so keywords from other programs are not accidentally overwritten. This is the default setting and is recommended for most users. If it is disabled, the metadata from Excire Foto replaces the existing metadata. This can be useful if you have removed keywords in Excire Foto and want them to be removed from the files as well.

Many programs, like Excire Foto, offer the possibility to mark photos with colors and stars. While the star rating is stored internationally uniformly as a number from 1 to 5, the color rating depends on the language used (red, yellow, green, blue, purple).

Excire Foto uses German or English as the default language here, depending on the user's language.

If color markers are not visible after saving in another program, it may be because that program has stored the color markers in a different language. In this case, you can adjust them in Excire Foto.