Research & Testing

Rights information tells people how they may legally use an image. It usually includes the name of the creator, who owns copyright, and details of how the image may be used.  This information can be embedded in the image file, so it is attached to the image like a label stuck to the back of a print.

Copyright law in virtually all countries requires that people check image rights before using an image publicly and to comply with them, and in some countries there is a specific requirement to check rights data, including embedded data.

But, you need software tools to embed and read rights data. Which ones work best?

The standards organisation IPTC has tested commonly available software to find out how effective different tools are in writing, editing and reading rights data in an image.

IPTC has tested more than a dozen programs which are available for free or with a price below 150 US Dollar/Euro/British Pound.

The test measures two results for each piece of software:

• How it helps the Creator of a photo add and edit rights information
• How it helps the User of a photo find and read rights information

 IPTC tested the software to see if the following data fields are available for use:

• The creator of an image (photographer)
• Copyright Notice
• Rights Usage Terms
• Date the image was created

The test results are shown as traffic-light-like icons, one covering the Creator requirements and one covering the User requirements:

	= all the tested fields are available
	= all the tested fields are available and use the latest standards for this purpose (IPTC Extension and PLUS)
	= at least Copyright Notice and Creator are available
	= Copyright Notice and Rights Usage Terms are not available

Notes for Experts

 (1) IrfanView supports only the IIM data format and not XMP.