The International Press Telecommunications Council is holding its fourth international
Photo Metadata Conference on June 9 in Dublin, in conjunction with the CEPIC Congress 2010. IPTC plans to announce two upcoming metadata product releases at the event.
In July, new metadata panels are forthcoming for Adobe Bridge in Creative Suite 3 and CS4. These will allow using IPTC Extension and Picture Licensing Universal System data in Adobe software. The panels will be available for free download through IPTC and will resolve a problem for users of older Adobe software.
CS5, the current version of industry-leading photo software, comes with IPTC Extension panels but they are not backwards-compatible with previous versions of Photoshop. A CS5 version of the new panel that integrates both IPTC and PLUS standards remains under consideration.
The new CS3 and CS4-compatible panels will enable Photoshop users to more effectively manage metadata with features such as drop-down lists of country codes and removal of keyword duplicates.
Sarah Saunders of the U.K. consultancy Electric Lane, who represents CEPIC on the PhotoMetadata Working Group and will be speaking at the June 9 conference, said: “We set out to solve a backwards compatibility problem, and in the process we have made the use of the metadata panels more friendly to users… This is the first time the IPTC Extension and PLUS fields are visible in previous versions of CS, so it is a big step forward.”
IPTC is also releasing the first draft of its controlled vocabulary for review. The vocabulary, developed by the PhotoMetadata Working Group, aims to remove keywording ambiguities. “We are consulting with a group of vocabulary experts, and will be opening the discussion to a wider audience at the conference,” Saunders said.