The Active Captions® SDK was developed in order to provide for the ability to add searchable and viewable metadata to JPEG photos. Unlike other metadata formats such as EXIF, Active Captions® metadata can also be displayed IN a photo. Other conventional technologies that provide textual captioning to JPEG photos simply burn the text into the photo, thus destroying the pixels on the area that the text resides. Active Captions® patented mechanism provides a virtual layer inside the JPEG using standard JPEG markers that allow the text to be either displayed in the photo or hidden at any time at the user’s option. Active Captions® enabled photos allow the user to edit or remove the text on demand. Furthermore, this text can then be used for searching, thus creating in essence an Active Caption.