AMSTERDAM - The Netherlands -- 11 October 2004 - IPTC's well known digital photo header has gotten its first major revision in nearly a decade, as IPTC delegates approved expanded choices for describing and cataloging photographs.

Voting at its autumn meeting in Amsterdam, delegates from more than 40 of the world's leading news agencies and news industry vendors approved a plan that will easily allow IPTC's metadata to fit into such best-selling software packages as Adobe Photoshop CS. Named the "IPTC Core" XMP Schema, the standard is both a roadmap and a glossary of data that describes photographs.

The IPTC headers are a popular set of metadata for digital image files, and have been in common use for a decade. The IPTC data fields describe such diverse attributes as the name of the photographer, the date and place of the photo and the subject matter. By expanding the types of data and providing a structured list of possible values for some data fields, photographers, editors, resellers and consumers will be more likely to find the photo they want in ways that fit easily into their work flows.

The expanded photo metadata integrates IPTC's Subject-NewsCodes, part of the overall metadata syntax known as NewsCodes that can be applied to stories, graphics, photos, multimedia files -- anything of value to the news industry. NewsCodes can be used within IPTC's XML standards, such as NewsML, or with other XML schemas. They can also be used alone, completely outside XML.

"This is the biggest single move toward a standardized method of describing photographs since newspapers began experimenting with digital photo archives in the early 1990's," said Walter Baranger of The New York Times, an IPTC member. "Previously, every news agency invented many of its own terms for describing a picture, but IPTC's new guidelines provide a way for important information to be described consistently even between languages, and then survive the editing process so that it can be archived along with the photo."

To allow this important subset of IPTC metadata to work within Adobe's XMP framework, the IPTC has approved version 1.0 of the "IPTC Core" XMP Schema. This new XMP schema reflects virtually all of the traditional IPTC headers fields and adds a few new ones. It redefines how values from the legacy IPTC header can be mapped to the new Adobe XMP structure, and it recognizes the important role of XML in the sharing and storing of photographs. This was developed by a joint working group of the IPTC, Adobe Systems Inc., and the IDEAlliance.

"Adobe has a long history of working with partners to move industry standards forward and IPTC's commitment to expand the scope of metadata associated with digital photographs should be commended by every creative professional," said Mark Hilton, senior director of Creative Professional Products at Adobe. "By working with IPTC we have built on XMP's extensibility within Photoshop CS and Adobe Creative Suite to express critical metadata throughout the workflow, from camera click to article archive."

“IDEAlliance is partnering with IPTC to define standardized metadata fields to streamline data capture, management, workflow, aggregation, delivery and reuse of digital images“ said David Steinhard, President and CEO of IDEAlliance, on joining this metadata redefinition effort. “Our philosophy is to recommend existing metadata specifications wherever possible - developing new fields in IDEAlliance namespaces only when fields do not already exist in other specifications. The current project will bring IPTC metadata fields into compatibility with the IDEAlliance XML/RDF-based PRISM metadata framework and enable IDEAlliance members to make use of IPTC Core metadata directly."

Based on this specification, Adobe will provide "custom panels" for its Creative Suite software, including Photoshop CS and the working group is currently creating a set of comprehensive guidelines for users and implementers to easily adopt this standard. The full set of specifications, guidelines, custom panels and online user support will be available by the end of this year.

SportsML version 1.5 approved

In other business, IPTC members gave unanimous final approval to SportsML version 1.5, a specialized XML markup standard for sports content -- results, schedules, standings, team statistics and virtually any other sports-related data.

SportsML content is already being delivered by providers of sports content, and its use will no doubt grow as news agencies such as The Associated Press continue development of SportsML-related products. Newspapers, broadcasters and sports-related web sites are among the businesses that can take advantage of SportsML's flexibility and simple but powerful data structure.

As with all IPTC standards, SportsML is available at no cost and without royalties.