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Details of IPTC Photo Metadata Support by Software

The table below lists of all fields specified by the current version of the IPTC Photo Metadata Standard. The names of the addressed fields are in bold, parenting field names not. For each field in a row three essential test results are shown for one to three software products:

  • Is this field supported in the XMP format?
  • Is this field supported in the IIM format? If the IIM format is specified for this field.
  • The values of the XMP and the IIM format are compared: are they in sync?

The first rows have for the leftmost columns an amber background. These are IPTC fields which are highly liked by photo metadata editors – as we at IPTC learned. All rows below with white background show the other IPTC fields in alphabetical order.
You can find a detailed explanation in the legend at the bottom of the table.

 

<- Back to the list of software supporting IPTC Photo Metadata

Explanation of the data shown in the table

All the data shown in this table are generated from a test image created for this purpose. An image file without any metadata is loaded into the tested software and all IPTC metadata fields shown in the user interface of the software are populated with a value. Then the metadata is embedded into the file by either saving it or running an export action. This image file with embedded metadata was finally tested, the results are shown in this table.
(If you want to learn more about this test procedure look at the page IPTC Interoperability Tests and there at the description of Test #3. You can create a test image of a specific product as the one used for this table on your own.)

The first rows have for the leftmost columns an amber background. These are IPTC fields which are highly liked by photo metadata editors – as we at IPTC learned. All rows below with white background show the other IPTC fields in alphabetical order.

Each IPTC Photo Metadata field may have a plain single value, or multiple plain values or be organized as structure. In this case a field at the top level has a set of sub-fields. This set of sub-fields contribute to expressing what the parenting field tells. Example: the Image Creator field has a the sub-fields Name and Id. They tell the facts about the Image Creator.
Such structures are reflected by these columns of the table:
– IPTC Name L1: name of a top level field
– IPTC Name L2: name of a sub-field of a top level field
– IPTC Name L3: name of a sub-field of a sub-field of a top level field

For each software product this is shown:

  • A Sw1 or Sw2 or Sw3 in the header: right above the table you find the product names a Sw?-placeholder stands for.
  • Sw? XMP: The support of the XMP format was investigated. This is shown as result:
    – f (with green background) = this field was found and is therefore supported
    – M (with red background) = this field is Missing and is therefore not supported
  • SW? IIM: The support of the IIM format was investigated. This is shown as result:
    – f (with green background) = this field was found and is therefore supported
    – M (with red background)= this field is Missing and is therefore not supported
    – nsp (with grey background) = this field is not included in the specifications of the IPTC standard
  • Sw? Sync: if XMP and IIM values should exist it was investigated if they are in sync, if they are the same. This is shown as result:
    – sy (with green background) = the values are in sync
    – nsy (with red background) = the values are not in sync, they are different in XMP and IIM