An updated version 2.25 of NewsML-G2 is available as Developer Release

•  XML Schemas and the corresponding documentation are updated
• the Structure Matrix Excel sheet is updated

Packages of version 2.25 files can be downloaded:

• All XML Schemas plus Structure Matrix from https://www.iptc.org/std/NewsML-G2/NewsML-G2_2.25.zip 
• The same without XML Schema documentation in HTML: https://www.iptc.org/std/NewsML-G2/NewsML-G2_2.25-noXMLdocu.zip    
• New: in the newsml-g2 repository on GitHub: https://github.com/iptc/newsml-g2

All changes of version 2.25 can be found on that page: http://dev.iptc.org/G2-Approved-Changes

An important decision was taken: the Core Conformance Level will not be developed any further as all recent Change Requests were in fact aiming at features of the Power Conformance Level,  changes of the Core Level were only a side effect.

The Core Conformance Level specifications of version 2.24 will stay available and valid, find them at http://dev.iptc.org/G2-Standards#CCLspecs  

After 12 years of collaborative work on establishing and implementing photo metadata standards, IPTC, the global technical standards body of the news media and related industries, announced Adobe Systems Incorporated is joining as a Voting Member. Adobe’s membership was announced at IPTC’s Spring Meeting today in London.

“Adobe is a key player in the media production ecosystem, so we are thrilled to welcome them as a member of the IPTC,” said Stuart Myles, Chairman of the Board of IPTC, and Director of Information Management at Associated Press. “We look forward to working together with Adobe on driving continued improvements in the workflows of photo and video creators around the world.”

“Adobe has a long history of working informally with the IPTC, and we look forward to further success as we participate directly and contribute as a Voting Member,” said Dr. Scott Foshee, Principal Scientist, Adobe. “Our close involvement will not only enable greater coordination between Adobe and the IPTC, but will also allow Adobe to facilitate better coordination across the photography standardization community.”

Photo metadata is key to protecting images’ copyright and licensing information, and for managing digital assets. IPTC’s Photo Metadata Standard, created with contributions by Adobe, is the most widely used because of universal acceptance among photographers, distributors, news organisations, archivists, and developers. Adobe’s metadata management software, which supports the IPTC standard, is used by Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, Acrobat, and Premiere.

“Adobe’s implementation has made IPTC photo metadata very popular,” added Michael Steidl, IPTC Managing Director. “For 12 years we have been collaborating on fostering professional use of IPTC photo metadata by photo businesses – building on our success by conducting research and incorporating feedback from users. This membership will open yet more opportunities for better tagging of photos and videos.”

Adobe first adopted IPTC IIM metadata in Photoshop around 1994 and later created the metadata format XMP. In 2004 IPTC and Adobe joined forces to support a consistent use of metadata: The first IPTC Photo Metadata Standard was created jointly. A main goal of the standard was to provide support for photographers and photo editors to use the fields in correct and consistent ways.

Adobe will be a Voting Member of IPTC, signifying Adobe as a key player and industry leader. IPTC currently has about 60 members. Its voting members take part in all decisions regarding IPTC standards. Delegates can participate in working parties and groups, may request changes, and make contributions to standards’ development.

The International Press Telecommunications Council’s (IPTC) Photo Metadata Conference 2016, on May 26 in Zagreb (Croatia), will focus on how to “Keep Metadata Alive and Intact” throughout the life cycle of images.

Held annually since 2007, this day-long annual event will address how information can be properly retained when images are moved from one person or system to the next, or through archiving processes. Speakers administrating the sessions – among the industry’s most respected experts in image and data management, digital preservation, information architecture, and photography – will show how metadata is produced, used and preserved in new and innovative ways. 

The morning session will cover two topics with multiple presentations: “Protecting Metadata While Using Social Media,” which will discuss results of the IPTC Social Media Photo Metadata Test 2016, including the finding that most photo metadata is removed when uploading or downloading images to many popular social media platforms. Some major media companies will discuss how they protect their metadata through this process. “Strongly Attached Metadata: What You Need to Know,” featuring system vendors and speakers from photo businesses as well as a university, will cover how to apply and organize metadata in an efficient way, to keep it alive in distribution chains.

“Much time and money is spent to protect metadata in in-house systems,” said Michael Steidl, managing director of IPTC and lead of its photo metadata workstream. “Therefore it is a business requirement to protect the descriptive data and rights information from getting lost. This conference will raise awareness and share knowledge about how to keep metadata alive.”

During the afternoon sessions, Steidl will present a close to final draft of the much anticipated “IPTC Video Metadata Hub,” a new technical recommendation which has been in development by IPTC since 2014 and is usable across many existing video standards. Sarah Saunders, expert in procurement and implementation of digital asset management systems, will also present the “Cultural Heritage Photo Metadata Panel” for Adobe software, which supports a rich set of metadata for cultural heritage objects shown in images. The panel can be downloaded for free and installed on a computer.

The Photo Metadata Conference 2016 will be held again in conjunction with the annual CEPIC Congress, in Zagreb (Croatia). Photographers, small and large photo agencies and libraries, and trade associations from the photo business are all encouraged to attend. Registration is required, either as participant of the CEPIC Congress, or through the Conference’s registration form.
See detailed agenda and speakers.

Metadata is of high value for many parties in the photo business: photographers, libraries, agencies, archives. But many consider this only in a very limited context, not across many transitions in a supply chain or for a longer period.

The IPTC Photo Metadata Conference on 26 May 2016 in Zagreb (Croatia, Europe) will address how to avoid losing information when images are moved from one person or system to the next one or if they are kept in an archive for a long term.

All interested parties are welcome to participate: free-lance photographers, small and large picture agencies and libraries, and trade associations from the photo business.

IPTC Releases Results of 2016 Social Media Sites Photo Metadata Test

Important image metadata is not retained in images after upload to some of the most popular social media sites, according to a study by the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC).  The missing data includes key copyright and identification information as well as descriptive data about the image.

The IPTC, a consortium of over 50 news agencies and media companies, sets international technical standards for news exchange, including metadata embedded in image files. The recent Social Media Sites Photo Metadata Test repeats a survey in 2013; while improvements are noted, some sites scored lower this time around.

The Social Media Sites Photo Metadata Test evaluated 15 top social media sites, and checked if embedded metadata was retained and displayed on upload to the sites or downloads of various version of the image. The results are displayed at www.embeddedmetadata.org/testresults.

Only one social media site, Behance, received favorable results for retaining and displaying embedded data. A few systems retained embedded metadata but failed to use it when displaying metadata on the web site. Ten sites removed at least some metadata when images were downloaded to a desktop environment.

“There are many important reasons to embed and preserve metadata – to protect copyrights, ensure proper licensing, track image use, smooth workflow, and make them searchable on- or offline,” said Michael Steidl, Managing Director of IPTC. “If users provide captions, dates, a copyright notice and the creator within their images, that data shouldn’t be removed when sharing them on social media websites without their knowledge.”

There may be several reasons social media services remove metadata – and some may not be intentional. Test results showed that in some cases, when images were downloaded to a desktop environment, the metadata was preserved if the size of the image remained unchanged. But if the image was rescaled, the metadata was stripped. “The quality assurance of these sites might not be aware that their software strips metadata inadvertently,” said Steidl.

“Because many of the social media sites are essentially free, users become the product, and not necessarily the customers,” said David Riecks, a photographer and metadata consultant who owns ControlledVocabulary.com and worked on the test. “Users are often not aware of these practices. There should be a sweet spot between these social sites preserving all metadata and removing it all. I’d like to see more engineers working together to find solutions.”

The Embedded Metadata Manifesto was launched by IPTC in 2011 to draw attention to the importance of retaining important data embedded in image files. The website, www.embeddedmetadata.org also includes Embedded Metadata Manifesto’s five guidelines for how metadata should be handled and preserved in digital media.

About IPTC: The IPTC, based in London, brings together the world’s leading news agencies, publishers and industry vendors. It develops and promotes efficient technical standards to improve the management and exchange of information between content providers, intermediaries and consumers. The standards enable easy, cost-effective and rapid innovation and include the Photo Metadata standard, the news exchange formats NewsML-G2, SportsML-G2 and NITF, rNews for marking up online news, the rights expression language RightsML, and NewsCodes taxonomies for categorizing news. Visit www.iptc.org  and follow on Twitter: @IPTC

Contact: Michael Steidl, Managing Director, mdirector@iptc.org, +44 (20) 3178 4922
David Riecks, photographer and metadata consultant, david@riecks.com, +1 (217) 689-1376

A new version 2.22 of NewsML-G2 is now available as a Developer Release, and can be download from the Release Section of the IPTC Developer Site. This version enhances the existing global standard for multimedia news and events exchange by adding time delimiters for the planning of news coverage and clarifying the rating of news.

Please visit the IPTC Standards Page for a full list of the available IPTC standards.

IPTC invited experts to the News at a Crossroads symposium on 28 October 2015 to share predictions and outlooks about the most influential factors on the gathering, delivery and marketing of news today today and it brought together about 100 of leaders in the news industry.

Now a full documentation, including video, of this great event is available – come and see.

This will be the title of IPTC’s presentation at the JPEG Privacy & Security Workshop held in Brussels (Belgium) on Tuesday, 13 October 2015.

The major goal for applying metadata to a photo is: associate permanently with it descriptions of its visual content and data for managing it properly. This is done for more than two decades by embedding the metadata into JPEG files. Now in an internet driven business world a JPEG file may take many hops in a supply chain and is exposed to actions by humans and/or software stripping off metadata values.

IPTC as the body behind the most widely used business metadata schema for photos is permanently asked by people from the photo business how their metadata could be protected against deletion. This presentation will show the requirements in detail and also considerations about different levels of protection to meet the needs of the originators of photos and the needs of parties downstream.

This topic will be presented by Michael Steidl, IPTC’s Managing Director and lead of the Photo Metadata work.

Extensis, a leading developer of software and services for creative professionals and workgroups, joins IPTC to extend the company’s commitment to advancing standards designed to making working with metadata easier.

“Extensis as system vendor has taken the essential role of enabling companies managing photos to make efficient use of IPTC’s widely used photo metadata standard”, said Michael Steidl, IPTC managing director and lead of the photo metadata work. “IPTC welcomes Extensis as new member of our organization; we will work jointly on improving professional photo workflows”, he added.

Read the Extensis press release.

See the list of current IPTC members and find more about joining our organisation.