© 2010 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 Standards: IPTC Core and IPTC Extension, 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 - part of the IPTC Photo Metadata Standards
The IPTC Core standard defines the same set of photo metadata fields as used from IIM but its technical implementation is builds on Adobe's XMP technology. This way it provides a maximum in backward compatibility at the level of semantics while it is implemented into latest technology.
IPTC Extension - part of the IPTC Photo Metadata Standards
IPTC Extension is a standard to extend the set of IPTC Core fields. It provides new additional metadata and it refines some of the existing ones.
IIM - Information Interchange Model
News about IPTC Photo Metadata
July 2009: new version of Photo Metadata Standards
Photo Metadata Conference 2009
"Metadata in a Multimedia World"
This was the title of the 3rd international Photo Metadata Conference which was held on Thursday, 4 June 2009, in Dresden, Germany
Details can be obtained from the Conference website.
It was organized by the IPTC and Ifra and held in conjunction with the CEPIC Congress.
This year the Photo Metadata Conference focussed 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, does the photo industry 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
Specifications
For both IPTC Core and IPTC Extension: the latest Photo Metadata Standards documentSupport and discussion
The IPTC moderates two discussion forums on photo metadata:* Generic issues
* XMP specific issues
Subscribe to Photo Metadata feed
A feed in the Atom 1.0 format is providing all changes to Photo Metadata standards