Attach metadata to image

Assuming my question here gets answered what are the options to attaching meta data to an image in my thumbs folder?

I thought of placing an xml file in the folder which contains the filename and then the description of it but feel this to be a little clunky.

For various reasons I can't use a database in this project which is very limiting.

Is there a way to write meta data to the jpg file?

The problem i'm trying to solve is that I need to display the image along with a short description of开发者_StackOverflow what it is. kinda like a caption if you like.

Any thoughts would be very welcome.

thanks.

I have written an application that writes metadata into the image file itself into the various namespaces IPTC, EXIF, IFD and XMP. The code is available here. You can use the code to write/read metadata to and from the images. Hope this helps.