Once in a while I find something on the web that makes me say: It’s about time! That’s what I found a couple of weeks ago. Image metadata and image metadata standards are very important for coming up with any meaningful long term strategy for organizing your pictures. However, with so many standards and acronyms it is very hard to figure out what to do. Do you use EXIF, IPTC or XMP for your strategy? How about all three? I believe I found a really good resource that explains the differences and commonalities between all three standards.
6 video modules - over 30 videos containing step-by-step instructions for Windows or Mac programs like Lightroom, ACDSee, Picasa and Photos.
All my e-Books for free - all my products are included.
Completely self-paced. Learn at your own pace and take as long as you want until you learn how to organize your photos. More info
The metadata working group
It’s about time the industry would come together to figure out all these image metadata standards. I was surprised to find out that this group has formed in 2006 and that they already have come up with some standard way of understanding all these image metadarta standards. Here is what they say about themselves.
The Metadata Working Group (MWG) was formed in 2006 as a consortium of leading companies in the digital media industry, focused on the following goals:
The intent of the MWG is to publish technical specifications that describe how to effectively store metadata into digital media files. These royalty-free specifications will be made available to manufacturers and service providers so that they may create products that store metadata in a consistent way, and that allow consumers to maintain control over their valuable information. Where possible, these specifications will rely on existing standards, and will aim to create a unified and cohesive approach to applying these standards.
This all sounds great and they definitely have the right companies: Adobe, Canon, Microsoft, Nokia and Sony.
A picture is worth a thousand words
There is much confusion about image metadata. I have studied the subject over the years and while I think I was able to figure some things out, I am still confused by how much overlap there is between the three standards: EXIF, IPTC and XMP. However, the overlap is not across all three. This picture below puts everything together:
What’s the bottom line
The bottom line I believe is pretty close to my previous article about understanding and using image metadata.
- EXIF is used for capturing camera generate data including image orientation and GPS location. EXIF contains image metadata that is intendend for computers and cameras (machines) to read.
- IPTC is used for capturing image keywords and image geolocation (Read geotagging and geocoding). IPTC contains image metadata intended for humans to read and understand.
- XMP is used to capture image rating as well as image keywords and geolocation. The cool thing about XMP is that it is a standard that can be extended. This type of metadata can be insterted not only in images but in pretty much any type of file.
Resources:
Essentials for organizing your digital photos
Here are the essential products and services I have come to rely on for many years to keep my media collection organized and safe. Even though these are affiliate links, I wholeheartedly recommend them. 
Excellent Lightroom and Picasa alternative. If you need a cheaper and simpler photo manager then ACDSee Photo Studio for Mac (save 50% until Nov 8th) or ACDSee Photo Studio Professional for Windows (new version) is my preferred solution for organizing all my media. It has a very fast browser, great image editing and it's simple to use.
If you do a lot of image editing like I do, I recommend using Adobe Lightroom Classic CC via the annual Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Lightroom has best photo editing capabilities even though it comes with a steeper learning curve. If you do image editing, Adobe Lightroom is my favorite.
I recommend Backblaze Personal Cloud Backup for affordable & reliable unlimited cloud backup. I have been using Backblaze for backing up all pictures & videos for more than 5 years now. All my invaluable digital memories are safe and secure. This is the best solution especially if you have a large quantity of media files.
Use a reliable & affordable external hard drive for backing up everything on your computer. It is absolutely essential for keeping all your memories backed up and safe.
Start organizing now using detailed, step-by-step instructions and videos:
Personal Coaching (closed) Independent Course Private Lessons
Reference book Basics book Picasa book
YOURS FREE! 10 crucial steps most people miss when organizing their digital photos
Most people want to just organize their digital pictures and ignore these crucial steps right at the beginning...when they are shooting and transferring their digital pictures. Then they wonder why they can't organize their digital photos! Avoid most people's mistakes and start on the right track!
As you’ve discovered, most popular print places and photo sharing sites will convert your uploaded photos to jpg if you haven’t already done so before uploading. No, you’re not really gaining anything in print quality by scanning to .tiff IF you get prints done by an on-line company. You could likely get the benefit of your .tiff files if you put them on CD/DVD or USB stick and go to a place like Costco or other bricks-and-mortar store that offers digital printing.While your .tiff files will take up more space for archiving, you retain more detail and quality for your archives with .tiffs. EVERY time you make a change to a .jpg and save it, you discard more detail and quality. You’d be better to scan routinely to .tiff, do any desired editing to the .tiff, then save an edited copy to .jpg for on-line printing or photo sharing. One reason for the on-line companies converting everything to .jpg is simply that .jpg files are much smaller than .tiff files so they upload and download much more quickly and require less server space on their computers.If your scanning software (EpsonScan and VueScan both do) and image-editing software (Photoshop Elements, Photoshop CSx, and some other programs do) offer the option to scan at 48-bit color instead of 24-bit color, using this option will give better color quality in your scans. While your monitor and any printer won’t be able to reproduce such a large range of colors, they do give better results when you do any editing or color-correction to your scanned images. To benefit from this color range, you must scan as .tiff since the .jpg format is limited to 24-bit color. When you’re done editing, save a COPY of your edited image as .jpg for viewing, sharing, and printing but keep your original .tiff with all the colors in case you later decide to re-edit for any reason. Feel free to contact me via Curtis’s blog if you have any questions about this. Art Taylor
Thank you David for pointing me to photometadata.org. It does contain good information about image metadata.
Another good resource about Photo Metadata standards and how to use them can be found at http://www.photometadata.org/ and includes several tutorials on how to add and read metadata such as IPTC and XMP using applications such as Adobe Photoshop, Bridge, Lightroom, Expression Media, and Photo Mechanic.
David