Nu börjar man få mässfötter, borde tagit mjukare skor. För den som aldrig varit på Photokina – mässan är gigantisk och det är lång att gå. Mycket av det som jag är intresserad av visas i de södra hallarna, medan de flesta presskonferenserna och presscentret ligger i den norra delen. Fast motionen är nog bra för att smälta korvar, snitzlar och öl.

Phase One
När jag kom till montern stod Martin Widén och hade genomgång med fotografer ifrån IKEA. Det fanns en hel del kul att se. Framförallt har de gjort en rejäl översyn av Capture One. Den nya versionen har blivit mycket snabbare (precis som Adobe har de börjat dra nytta av grafikkortets hårdvaruacceleration). En del gamla funktioner som försvann i uppdateringen är nu tillbaka och det har även komit en hel del nya bra. Det är uppenbart att alla som gör program för råkonvertering tittar på varandra, fler av de nya funktionera är sådant som finns i t.ex. Adobe Camera RAW. Men jag tycker bara att det är positivt, det gör det enklare att hoppa i mellan program. Några av de nya funktionerna är:

• kontroll för skugga och högdager (digital upplättningsblixt)
• clarity (lokal kontrast)
• Selektiv färgkorrigering (den gamla metod som redigerar ICC-profil finns kvar)
• Nytt moaréverktyg
• Linskorrektion baserad på obbjektivprofiler
• Det är även på gång möjlighet att kunna fotografera direkt till programmet ifrån både Canon och Nikon kameror

Phase One kommer även med ett 60 megapixel bakstycke kallat P65+. Det klarar en bild per sekund. Sensorn tillverkas av Dalsa men är för första gången specialdesignad för PhaseOne. Phase One har inlett samarbete med Leica vilket gör att de nya Leicaobjektiven som kommer (S-serien) kommer att kunna användas på Phase Ones kamerakropp.

Metadata working group
Det finns ett antal delvis överlappande standarder för fotografisk metadata. Problemet för mjukvarututvecklare är hur man ska använda dessa olika ihop. Josh Weisberg har tagit initiativet till en arbetsgrupp där ett antal företag är med vars syfte är att ta fram guidelines för hur man ska använda de här standarderna ihop. Målet är att se till så metadata bevaras och inte förstörs när bilden flyttas mellan olika system. Idag hade de en presskonferens där de offentliggjorde version 1.0 av detta dokument. Det känns som ett mycket lovvärt initiativ och jag kommer att intervjua Josh om det i morgon.

Du hittar mer information på www.metadataworkinggroup.org

Hasselblad sänker priset
Hasselblad retar upp en del av konkurrenterna med sitt sänkta pris på H3D-31. Fast frågan är om de inte retar de som nyss köpt en kamera för ett betydligt pris mer. Men €11 995 kommer säkert att attrahera nya kunder till Hasselblad. Egentligen samma taktik som Canon använt med sina billigaste kameror – det gäller att få kunden att ta första steget in i systemet.

Dags att damma av gamla Sinar-kameror
Foba har tagit fram en adapterplatta som låter Nikon- och Canon-ägare använda sin kameror som digitalt backstycke på Sinar P och P2 kameror. Något som bör öka intresset för begagnade Sinarkameror.

Nya blixtar
Hensel har släppt en ny serie med batteridrivna studioblixtar. Verkar klart trevliga. Rakt över gången fanns Broncolor, de släpper en ny värstingblixt för den kräsne studiofotografen som vill ha full kontroll.

Add new tag, Capture One, Josh Weisberg, Lecia, Microsoft, Phase One, photokina, photokina 2008, sinar Hide

The second international conference on photo metadata took place on Malta today during the annual Cepic congress. The first one was in Florence a year ago. This is a brief summary of this day. I will follow up with longer articles on each part later.

What really impresses me is the progress of work since last year’s conference. Several of the issues that were raised last year are now under serious progression. Normally standardization work is painfully slow, and when you come to implementation it is even worse. But here you see even competing parties cooperating to make progress.

Last conference was centered around the by that time just published white paper on photo metadata. This paper pointed out several areas where the IPTC standard needed to be extended or changed. People wanted special fields for model releases, better fields for localization, flexible fields for controlled vocabulary data (emotions, dominant color, art classification) and several more fields. IPTC has just published draft 4 of a proposed addendum, as well as some modifications to the current standard. This addresses most of those requests and IPTC will vote on this later this month.

David Riecks presented at survey conducted by SAA on embedded metadata in previews and thumbnails on the websites of major image agencies. The result is depressing. Most images carry none, or very limited, metadata. Of those images that contained metadata, very few uses the newer XMP encoding, the old IIM encoding is totally dominant. This is really sad to learn – especially if other parts of the industry put a lot of effort into improving standards. The common reason why previews lack data is that the image scaling and watermarking software’s used in content management systems strips all metadata.

One huge issue with images not carrying even basic metadata such as photographer and copyright is the upcoming orphan works legislation. It’s one thing that people outside the image industry doesn’t embed this. But when the major image agencies don’t even comply, it’s a disaster. Photographers might find that their images have been “free to use” due to bad handling at the image agency they trusted to sell their work.

The last speaker was Hiroshi Maeno from Canon. Last year Nikon, Canon and Hasselblad was asked if they could implement a globally unique image identifier (GUID) that is embedded in the image file by the camera. There were also request for embedding other metadata. CIPA has now formed “Image File Format Study Ad.Hoc Working Group” that involves several camera manufactures cooperating to improve the Exif standard. Earlier 2008 they sent a request to IPTC on what should be improved regarding metadata. Mr Maeno reported that both Canon and Nikon are already working on the GUID and showed us an example on such a code could be constructed. The ad hoc working group has just sent a report to the CIPA board regarding suggested improvements to the EXIF standard.

Here you’ll find articles from last years international photo metadata conference.

Canon, malta, metadata, photo metadata conference Hide

Josh did a great job explaining how they handle Photo Metadata in Microsofts new operating system – Windows Vista. He stated by explaining why metadata should be stored inside the media file “The Truth Is In The File”. – “This enables metadata portability – wherever the file goes, the metadata goes”. But today metadata is everywhere, which makes it difficult to use across applications. Before every application developer had to write his own metadata handler or rely on third party libraries. Microsoft has created what they call WIC (Windows Imaging Components). WIC is an extensible, system-wide platform for image handling.

Applications can utilize WIC to:
• Read & write image formats
• Perform RAW conversion
• Read & write metadata
• Transcode between image formats

This means that it gets easy for developers to incorporate support for several metadata standards in their application. To address the problem with overlapping standards they have created a policy system. WIC rely on external Codecs for image file handling. For camera RAW files it utilizes Codecs from camera vendors. It has EXIF, IPTC and XMP suuport out of the box. WIC ships with Vista; but are also available for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server “Longhorn”

Microsoft recently bought iView which is a popular application for image keywording and mark-up. The have now incorporated it in their product portfolio under the name Microsoft Expression Media.

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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Peter talked about how Hasselblad (the camera software once begun as an Imacon scanner software) handles metadata in their camera software. They have supported the IIM version of IPTC metadata since the very first version. They also have an history log where you can see how the images has been processed, data from the can be embedded into the exported file.

Hasselblad uses a proprietary format for their raw capture. They did use the open DNG format for a while but has returned to their own format. The DNG format lacks support for some advanced features used for i.e. lens correction. They were asked if the documentation of the file format is publicly available – it is not. But they are cooperating with Apple and Adobe to let their software read the files. He did not omit the possibility to release it as open source in the future, but added that the lens correction are relaying on proprietary reference tables.

Note from the editor: This question regarding open and well-documented file format is very important in this discussion of metadata. Without an open format image repositories can’t read and edit all metadata. This question is of course just as relevant to put to other camera vendors. Most digital cameras use proprietary and secret file formats.

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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Clemens demonstrated Fotowares latest software version (5.3). The now have full support for XMP both as embedded and as sidecar files. You can create your own panels to enter an edit metadata. But you can also import panels from Adobe Photoshop. The software are multilingual but has no support for automatic translation. Though it can handle several languages in parallel for the same picture.

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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Canon has a image verification kit that works all their more advanced camera starting from the 20D model and upwards. Then new EOS 1D Marks III allows separate validation of metadata and image content. To use this feature you must activate this feature in the camera prior to shooting (there was a discussion regarding it’s impact on shooting speed). To validate you need to keep an un-modified original image file. Then it’s possible to validate that this file has not been edited or tampered with.

Canon has a wireless transmitter that makes it possible for the photographers to send image files direct to the image desk. The most common use is that the photographer only send low resolution images (JPEG S) during the event. After the event the Photographer gets a list of which images he/she should prepare as high-res images. The Canon EOS Utility can handle parallel remote reception of images from several cameras.

It was really great to see Canon, Nikon and Hasselblad attending this conference. This shows that they are serious on this matter. Nikon did not speak at the conference – the responded to late to the invitation. Nikon has features similar to those described above.

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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Photographers love metadata – but they hate to enter it. Apple Aperture together with Applescript makes it possible to create scripted folders that append metadata to images.

In Apertue you can create custom metadata views the selected fields. Under Aperture there is a database that stores all metadata, form this you can manipulate metadata as tables. All metadata are embedded at file export. You can create plug-ins that lets you enter custom metadata and then sends the images to a selected service (Photobooks on demand, image gallery, client).

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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Workflows are becoming more digital. Digital cameras capture and upload straight into the production process. We use the same file for several outputs; print, web, CD, handheld, wireless, eBook, RSS, video. In this flow metadata is a core part. ”If you can’t describe it, you can’t control it”.

Gunar talks a lot about how XMP (extensive Metadata Platform) works, how it can contain metadata from a mix of standards, how it can be extended. By padding the image file with empty space after the XMP-packet you make it possible for other applications to edit XMP-data without fully understanding the file format. The XMP format is licensed under the BSD open source like license. Several standards make use of or build upon XMP (IPTC, DNG, DISC, PLUS, DIM2, AdsML, PDF/A).

It is fairly easy to build and install custom metadata panels for Adobe Photoshop and Bridge. Bridge can also be extended with Flash panels. Those can have a nice GUI and can via scripting use FTP or HTTP services to send images.
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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Why do we need metadata?

• Copyright protection (orphan works)
• Identify the picture/author/source
• No need to re-key information
• Effective workflow

This with orphan works is a very important part. Without labeling of who is the photographer and what copyright is valid for the image publisher might in the future use the images without payment. They can claim that the copyright older is unknown.

Common problems are that all information resides in the caption field. One reason for this are that many editorial and content management systems only reads the caption field. The title field is misunderstood and contains all sorts of information.

The many different fields create confusion. The pic4press group identified the most important fields that should always be filled. Then they created their own Photoshop template. This template only makes use of existing fields. The main goal was to get people started to at least enter the most important information.

Sarah emphasized the following “Caption, credit and picture number on ALL images”
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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If keyword are chaos – then intellectual property (copyright) marking is mayhem.

The mission of PLUS – Simplify & Facilitate Image Licensing.
Specific Focus:

1. Global Metadata Standards for the Communication of Image Rights.
2. Supporting Systems

PLUS Must Provide Broad Benefit

• Any and all licensing models.
• Commissioned and stock images.
• Photography, illustration, artworks.
• Any country/law/language.
• Before, during & after transaction.
• No pricing.
• Benefit everyone, everywhere.

This with the “no pricing” point is important since many countries prohibit pricing alliances.

Plus has built a glossary of 1500 license and intellectual property related terms. Words end definitions from a multitude of image agencies from the whole world were collected. Then they look on how the overlapped and made a joint work to build a common glossary. Both Licensors & Licensees have approved them. The glossary was written in American English, it is now being translated into other languages. This reflects the common practice of PLUS; create a Foundation in 1 Language, and then let local working groups translate.

PLUS has developed a media matrix and a license data format. The have standardized menus to be used by e-commerce solutions. This makes the buyer comfortable since he sees the same structure and definitions independent of image supplier. When an image is licensed the seller embeds a license code string that identifies the allowed use for that specific image. This string is embedded in the image. PLUS has built a license generator to be used by the Licensor and decoder to be used by the Licensee. Both are open source and free of charge.

To simplify the adoption of PLUS they have build a set of standard licenses for rights managed material. This are called PLUS packs. SAA (Stock Artists Alliance) has built a price calculator that for this that you can populate with your own pricelist.

PLUS are also building up registrars were you will be able to register images and to who and how the have been licensed. This will be independent of buyers and sellers.

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 .

No tags Hide