The Metadata Working Group, a young organization that unites Adobe Systems, Apple, Canon, Microsoft, Nokia and Sony, released its first specification, which provides guidelines that would increase interoperability and preservation of image metadata. The group made the announcement on Thursday at Photokina in Cologne, Germany.
The group was established in 2007 by Adobe, Apple, Canon, Microsoft and Nokia; Sony joined the five founders this year. “Lack of metadata interoperability has led to significant frustration for both consumer and pro photographers, and our companies have spent considerable resources trying to deal with the problem,” said Josh Weisberg, the group’s chairman and director of Microsoft’s Rich Media Group. He added that the end result of the work would be technologies that are easier for photographers to use.
The digital photography industry already has several metadata standards. However, the Metadata Working Groups says these often overlap in purpose and lack interoperability guidance. To put it plainly, different devices, applications and services do not work together as well as they should or at all, because of lacking consistency of metadata.
The initial “Guidelines For Handling Image Metadata” address only still images, focusing on common consumer uses. According to Weisberg, addressing this area will have the biggest effect on the average photographer.
The intent of these guidelines document is to use existing metadata standards to address the key organizational questions that most consumers have: Who is involved with this image (who took it, who owns it, who is in it)? What is interesting about this image? Where is this image from? When was this image created or modified?
The document provides specific guidance, such as this directive regarding orientation: “An image Creator MUST include an orientation tag in the Primary Image if the image raster data is intended to be displayed in any orientation other than the Normal (value 1) case where the 0th row represents the visual top of the image, and the 0th column represents the visual left-hand side. An image Creator MAY include an optional Thumbnail Image in the file. In this case, the Creator SHOULD write the Thumbnail Image in the same orientation as the Primary Image. If the Thumbnail Image is not written with the same orientation, then the creator MUST include an appropriate orientation tag value in the thumbnail IFD.”
The purpose of the specifications is to outline best practices on how to create, read and modify metadata within digital images. The Metadata Working Group also hopes to motivate the owners of existing metadata standards and formats to think about preservation, interoperability, and compatibility in general terms.