© 2009 IPTC
Metadata are critical to photo business
They are critical by providing important information about the image and by describing it properly. IPTC Photo Metadata is made to describe and administrate photographs and to provide the most relevant rights related information. This way metadata makes visual content easily accessible by human language terms or machine readable codes.
Major activities
- Creating standards for photo metadata:
the IPTC Photo Metadata 2008 standard was released in July 2008, see below the Standards section - Maintaining a list of software which claims to be compatible with IPTC Photo Metadata standards
- Discussing the improvement of photo metadata with users, software implementers and other standardisation bodies at the annual Photo Metadata Conference
- Fostering the wide and consistent use of photo metadata
- Linking photo metadata to metadata for generic and media-type agnostic use
Standards
The IPTC developed and maintains these three standards:
IPTC Core - now part of IPTC Photo Metadata 2008 standard
The IPTC Core standard provides the same set of metadata as it was used from IIM - but its the technical implementation is based on Adobe's XMP technology. This way it provides a maximum in backward compabitibility at the level of semantics while it is implemented into latest technology.
IPTC Extension- part of IPTC Photo Metadata 2008 standard
IPTC Extension is a supplemental standard to the IPTC Core. It provides new additional metadata and it refines some of the existing ones.
IIM - Information Interchange Model
News about IPTC Photo Metadata
Photo Metadata Conference 2009
"Metadata in a Multimedia World"
This is the title of the 3rd international Photo Metadata Conference which will be held on Thursday, 4 June 2009, in Dresden, Germany
... with speakers from Corbis, Adobe, SAA, epa ...
Details can be obtained from the Conference website.
It is organized by the IPTC and Ifra and held in conjunction with the CEPIC Congress.
In 2009 the Photo Metadata Conference will focus on the use of metadata across the boundaries of the traditional photo business, extending primarily into the video content business. Driven by the requirements of web publishers the exchange of visual media using photos, graphics and video the area of "visual content" is merging into a single business. What does this mean for those who have a stake in this business across media types, do we have to go back to the drawing board to create a new set of common metadata?
10 Oct 2008: IPTC and PLUS welcome Metadata Group Guidelines
The International Press Telecommunications Council and the PLUS Coalition have welcomed the "Guidelines for Handling Image Metadata" for software developers that were recently published by the Metadata Working Group.
The Metadata Working Group is a consortium of leading companies in the digital media industry that was formed in 2006, current members are Adobe, Apple, Canon, Microsoft, Nokia and Sony. The goal of the group is to increase interoperability of digital image metadata across all software, hardware and services.
Read the full statement of the IPTC Photo Metadata Working Group.
Read the news release of 10 October 2008.
17 July 2008: IPTC Photo Metadata 2008 standard relased
This document specifies IPTC Core version 1.1 and IPTC Extension 1.0, both are schemas to be used with XMP to annotate photo metadata.
The draft was approved at the July 2008 meeting of the IPTC and the final specification document is available for DOWNLOAD.
PHOTO METADATA IN A NUTSHELL
Support and discussion
The IPTC moderates two discussion forums on photo metadata:* Generic issues
* XMP specific issues