There are large problems with clients that modify metadata without knowing what they are doing. Many clients believe that they can’t view embedded metadata without opening the image in Photoshop. Another sad thing is that a lot of metadata are lost in many commonly used workflow systems.

David proposed a checklist to solve common problems

• Clients change filename. This makes it difficult for the supplier to find the image again. Always setting a unique image title is one solution would be a great help. A basic thing would be to copy the filename to this field, but this simple operation is difficult to do with ie Adobe Bridge. Many clients download composition images, and change the filename. Then they can’t find the source and image again.
• Save for web in Photoshop discards all metadata.
• Insert metadata as early as possible – preferable at the camera.
• Validate that your metadata are still there if you retrieve one of your images form the image agency. Many distributors routinely discard metadata.
• The standard are missing logical fields to use by image distributors, so they override some of the fields designated for use by the creator (ie copyright field).
• Many distributors, image editors and photographers do not follow standards. They write any type of info in the caption field.
• Custom information are a problem since it doesn’t fit in a regular image database.

85% of all SAA members shoot RAW. But it’s serious problems handling metadata during the raw processing. The most common software for image tagging is Adobe Photoshop / Bridge. The majority of all photographers leaves keywording to the image agency.

Training is the key to better photo metadata!

You can read more about David Riecks here.

Notes from the first Photo Metadata Conference. This conference was held in Florence, Italy june 7, 2007. It was organized by Cepic, IPTC and IFRA. These are my private notes published to give you some idea of what was discussed. I will later write some articles from the conference and publish those on BLF.se and DigitalFotografen.se, but probably only in Swedish. If there are any demand I might make a short translated version in English. You can find presentations and more information at phmdc.org and cepic.org .

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