Conférence Internationale sur les Métadonnées pour la Photographie

Voici un compte-rendu de la 1ère Conférence Internationale sur les Métadonnées pour la Photographie qui s’est tenue en Italie à Florence le 7 juin 2007 (http://www.phmdc.org/). Cette conférence, organisée par l’IPTC et l’IFRA comme "invitée" pendant la conférence du Cepic 2007 (Coordination of European Picture Agencies Press Stock Heritage).

Ce compte-rendu a été établi par David Riecks, photographe (http://www.riecks.com/), créateur du site ControlledVocabulary.com, un lieu-ressource sur les vocabulaires contrôlés – listes, thésaurus et mots clés hiérarchisés pour la description de photos dans des bases de données. David est également l'animateur attentif et même pourrait-on dire, le coach du forum spécialisé du même nom (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/controlledvocabulary/).  Un site et un forum incontournables.

New au 6 juillet 2007 > Le compte-rendu en trois parties est en ligne sur le site de david http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/imagedatabases/phmdc_2007a.html

Merci à David de m’avoir autorisée à diffuser son compte-rendu.

La synthèse du compte-rendu !
Les photographes aiment qu’il y ait des métadonnées avec leurs photos, mais ils ont tendance à ne pas les intégrer spontanément….
Ils devraient pourtant insérer des métadonnées le plus tôt possible dans le processus, si possible pendant l’étape de capture de l’image, et il semble nécessaire de les former (D.Riecks)
Histoire (M. Steidl) et utilisation de différents jeux de métadonnées (Exif, IMM, IPTC Core, XMP...) depuis 1994 où le 1er jeu de métadonnées a été proposé (S.Span; J.Leidicke; R.Bacon). Présentation du schéma XML (G.Penikis) - Interopérabilité entre schémas : IPTC et XMP (P Krogh) et problèmes de récupération des données (P.Krog). Les métadonnées pour la gestion des droits des photos (J. Sedlik)
L'appareillage proposé pour l'alimentation des métadonnées (H.Schorr, C.Molinari, P.Stig, J.Weisberg).

La question de la poursuite d'un tel évènement a été posée pendant les échanges, sans qu'une décision soit prise. A surveiller.

Le compte-rendu de David Riecks .....

====================== David Riecks =============================
Report 1/3 : First International Photo Metadata Conference, 1 of 3
Posted by: "David Riecks" david@riecks.com davidriecks
Date: Sun Jun 24, 2007 9:02 pm

The following report are my notes from the First International Photo Metadata Conference, held on Thursday, June 7, 2007, in Florence, Italy. This is split into three sections. The first report of three will deal with Photo metadata users: free-lance photographers, small and large picture agencies and libraries, and trade associations from the photo business.

===
= The Picture Tide is Rising
Andreas Trampe (Stern)
Andreas Trampe of Germany’s Stern magazine opened the First International Metadata Conference to a capacity crowd (over 125 people), by illustrating the challenges of managing a flood of images at a busy picture desk.

On a normal weekend, they may receive in excess of 25,000 images, and on a normal weekday they may see upwards of 12,000 pictures continuously from 12 press agencies. However, they only use about 250 photos per issue, or about 0.3 percent of all of the images they have received. In addition, they have online access to around 300 image databases where they can search approximately 60 million additional images at any hour of the day. Trampe stressed that, “We have an excess of images. The search process has become much too time consuming.”

The day before the conference was a bit above the norm due to the G8 summit. Trampe did a search using the term “G8” in their database which resulted in 8691 images. Limiting the search to only the last three days yielded 4355 hits. Narrowing the search further to those with the keyword “demonstration” still leaves you with over 796 images to sift through.

"Many photographers misuse the IPTC fields, unleashing an orgy of keywords on us," said Trampe. He gave demonstrations of the problems that arise when photographers and image editors enter erroneous information simply to increase the chance of someone finding their images in a search.

This keyword and caption spamming frustrates image buyers trying to find an image on a specific topic. Some suppliers will even "jigger" the IPTC date created field, so that images will show up in more recent searches. Part of this is a training problem, as most are self-taught, or learn of such techniques from their colleagues. Part of this issue is a lack of standards and guidelines.

He then demonstrated on the Grazi Neri website how to use effective search filters by doing a search of Florence, and then limited the search to only those in the category of "Travel/stock" and to show mostly images of the city. This reduced the field from 3000 to 600 images that would be useful for most magazine editors.

Trampe concluded that it may be more worthwhile to expend efforts on getting better quality image metadata content than in buying better database software.

= Meta-Education needed
David Riecks
I used my 15 minutes to discuss a number of issues that confront stock photographers that are dealing with metadata. In some cases distributors may modify metadata without knowing what they are doing. With some distributors metadata may be lost simply because their workflows haven’t been tested or reviewed.

Clients often change filenames when they download comps of images. This makes it difficult for the client to identify the supplier, or the supplier to find the correct image. Always embedding the unique filename into the Document Title field is one solution that would be a great help for all parties in the imaging chain.

There is also a perception among many clients who feel that they can’t view embedded metadata without opening the image in Photoshop. There are alternatives, but education is needed.

I reported that the “Save for Web” feature in Photoshop still discards all metadata. The defaults for this option should be flip-flopped so that metadata is always preserved by default.

Photographers need ways to Insert metadata as early as possible in the process – preferable at the capture stage. They also need to validate their own workflows so they know that their metadata is still in the file before sending on to the distributor or client. Many distributors routinely discard metadata, so they also need to check to see if the distributor is changing or retaining metadata, both in the images sent to clients as well as the preview images that are displayed on websites.

Training and education for both photographers and others in the imaging chain is the key to better photo metadata. For additional details, download my presentation from the conference website.

= Identifying “Pain Points”
Peter Krogh
Peter tried to identify a number of “pain points” based on his experience and others he has worked with (Peter is the author of “The DAM book”).

He discussed the problems that occur when moving images from applications that only support older IPTC schemas, and those that use the newer XMP variety. He made a number of suggestions, some which will probably resonate with the readers of these notes.

Adopt the Photoshop namespace “Copyright Status” tag as an IPTC Standard. Currently it is not, and in many applications there is no support, requiring photographers to re-enter this information.

We need to figure out a way to manage images from a collections management standpoint. For example, the Document Title field could be expanded to allow the easy recording of all sources of a file by making it a “bag-type” field, similar in sense to the current Keywords field. This would be useful for photographers doing montages, HDR (layering multiple exposures to expand the dynamic range), or stitching images into larger panoramic images.

Krogh felt that there needs to be a way to express “Parent-Child” relationships with keywords (note: I would call this the “hierarchical” relationship of the images). He showed how this could be accomplished in Lightroom with the addition of some XMP coding:

<lr:hierarchicalSubject>
<rdf:Bag>
<rdf:li>Sample Keyword|Son of Sample</rdf:li>
</rdf:Bag>
</lr:hierarchicalSubject>

Pipe symbols would be used to separate the hierarchically arranged information, with sets of hierarchical terms, each as separate line items. Krogh mentions that he is not sure how to denote the synonyms in such a schema, but he assumes “it would not be too hard to design.”

Photographers (and others) need a way to express rankings and ratings of photographs within a set. To insure that this information is available across many applications, one of the few methods used currently is to use the keywords field to enter notes on rankings/ratings. There really needs to be a better place to store this information for process and handling info. Krogh suggested that the use of a Pipe separated set of terms within a “Collections” field could be used to accomplish this and tag the image in a durable way. This way, you could have ratings as indicated by the photographer, as well as by an editor, distributor, etc.

Expanding this concept further, Krogh suggested that being able to store “Alternate Metadata sets” within a future IPTC schema would be useful. This might include information from other users, allow the storage of alternate color/tonal renderings for an image, deal with color management issues, and even allow for what he termed “crowdsourcing.” (note: from his description, I believe he was really talking about Folksonomies, as this is how we would describe allowing a wide number of users to tag images with keywords, etc.).

There would be implementation issues, but by saving metadata changes as “layers” there could be both front and back sets, that could be grouped and tagged. Similar to the keyword sets above, this could be stored within an XMP schema.

</rdf:Description>
<rdf:Description rdf:about=""
xmlns:crss="http://ns.adobe.com/camera-raw-saved-settings/1.0/"
xmlns:crs="http://ns.adobe.com/camera-raw-settings/1.0/">
<crss:SavedSettings>
<rdf:Bag>
<rdf:li rdf:parseType="Resource">
<crss:Name>Peter's Favorite</crss:Name>
<crss:Type>Snapshot</crss:Type>
<crss:Parameters rdf:parseType="Resource">
<crs:WhiteBalance>As Shot</crs:WhiteBalance>
<crs:Exposure>0.00</crs:Exposure>
<crs:AutoShadows>True</crs:AutoShadows>
</crss:Parameters>
</rdf:li>
</rdf:Bag>
</crss:SavedSettings>
</rdf:Description>

And finally there may be the need to protect some of the metadata sets from tampering. This could be handled with some forms of encryption, but there would be a need to establish standards.

Automated News Image Processing
Simon Span (The Mirror)
Span discussed the advantages of using EXIF info within a newspaper workflow, as the Trinity Mirror staff handle image processing for 240 newspapers (500+ media brands in total).

Today, only 10-15 percent of the images they receive at Trinity Mirror have EXIF info. Span stressed that they need to talk to the photographers and agencies that submit images to make sure that they retain EXIF info, as well as encouraging photographers to enter as much information as possible shortly after the shoot using standard IPTC metadata. At present, there is no single software that is useful for dealing with this situation.

They use a typical Picture Desk workflow and deal with approximately 10,000 to 15,000 images per day. They use IPTC and EXIF, but in a proprietary way. They end up having to alter the IPTC metadata as submitted, in order to have consistency in their internal systems.

Today each image must go through several adjustments and conversions, with each conversion causing a loss of quality. Newspaper workflows require automatic conversion. Currently they are converting all images to Colormatch RGB, but are considering a move to Adobe RGB. Span mentioned that his goal is that they “should make as much use of existing data as possible” and with that in mind, they are looking at what it will take to only require a single color space conversion in the workflow.

= Expanding the IPTC Standard for Stock
Jan Leidicke (BVPA / Keystone)
Leidicke reported that most stock agencies still only use the older IIM standard for IPTC metadata. Very few have systems that are set up to properly handle XMP based metadata such as IPTC Core.

For historical images the exact date of creation is typically not known. However, the current Date Created field requires you to specify year, month and day. If the editor enters a bogus month and day just so they can enter a year, this can create problems later in knowing if the day and month are really accurate or just a guess. The way that this field is defined needs to change to accommodate less precise dates.

Leidicke also mentioned how the use of the “named people” fields (one of the fields recommended by the Photo Metadata Working Group) could make it easier to find images with that actual person in the image.

The present IPTC standard lacks fields for properly expressing model release information, rights and permissions granted, and more. Metadata entered using controlled vocabularies can be easier to translate. It’s also important to enforce standards and always enter information into the proper field. Image buyers expect to find certain kinds of information within specified fields, regardless of image source.

= Does “Meta Matter?”
Roger Bacon (Reuters)
While Reuters is a name in long standing with the news community (about 150 years), they only began adding photography coverage since the mid 1980’s. Bacon questioned “Does Meta Matter?” and began his talk by mentioning that Reuters’ currently has about 600 photographers and image editors involved in the photo area, and they are receiving about 1,500 images per day. The photographers are required to enter the following fields: headline, caption, category code, urgency, supplemental category code, byline, credit, object name, date created, city, state (USA only), country, and original transmission reference.

The photographer is asked NOT to add keywords; this is something that they do at the management level. As you can see by the field names indicated above, Reuters is primarily using the older IPTC Information Interchange Module (IIM) standard.

Bacon emphasized the importance to add metadata early and make sure that your internal systems don’t throw it away. He mentioned that it would be great if the time and date could be automatically updated (like a cell phone does) regardless of where the photographer was in the world. It would also be helpful if photographers could upload other information to the camera. For example, if you could easily enter routing information before image capture, the images could be automatically distributed via selected channels.

Bacon did admit that, at present, Reuters strips EXIF metadata. This is due to one major client reporting that their workflow was “broken” when sent images containing this information.

Reuters adds rights information to the caption and to the special instructions field. But rights management is one important area that needs to be simplified. Bacon referred to what they enter as “Polyhierarchical” data, using something he referred to as Paneikon, or RRPE. He admitted that the information which is entered for news photos doesn’t work well for stock use.

In addition, they have several outstanding issues, such as clients who are asking for RAW files (their photographers only supply jpegs). In addition, MSN has been asking them to provide square thumbnails so they could automatically format them for their online news packages.

In closing Bacon asked the question, “what are we discarding today, that will be invaluable tomorrow?”

Report 2/3 : First International Photo Metadata Conference, 2 of 3
    Posted by: "David Riecks" david@riecks.com davidriecks
    Date: Tue Jun 26, 2007 7:39 pm ((PDT))

= History and Future of the Photo Metadata
Michael Steidl (IPTC)
Michael Steidl, the managing director of the IPTC  traced the history of the IPTC schemas and noted  that the original Information Interchange Module  (IIM) standard was designed to be used with  audio, video, and other news elements not just photographs. This IIM schema was first used by  Photoshop 4 starting in 1994. The latest  incarnation is IPTC Core and was released in the spring of 2005. Today these two standards are  both used by many applications which means that  proper synchronization of data between these two versions is very important.

Steidl stressed that interoperability between  applications requires that users are presented  with consistent user interfaces. For example,  some interfaces refer to the Creator field, while  others use Author, and some even use Photographer.

He also emphasized that it’s important for user  interfaces to be agnostic to cultural norms. For  instance, it should not matter whether the user  is used to writing the date as June 7, 2007, or  6-7-07, the system should accommodate these and  use the localization info to display it in the most prevalent format.

= Wouldn’t if be nice if…
Harald Löffler (IFRA)
Löffler reported that IFRA is the world's leading  association for newspaper and media publishing,  and that they currently have 3000 members in 70 countries.

Löffler asked the crowd, “Wouldn‘t it be nice:
…to have an automatic image workflow from the photographer to the publisher?
… to know all the time, when and where and by whom a photo was created?
… to get your revenue share?
… not to rekey again, what others have already done earlier?
… to create high quality colour images for different types of publications?
… without manual intervention

His overriding theme, echoing the principles put  forth in SAA’s own “Metadata Manifesto” is that  we should not throw away metadata – we need to  preserve it. IFRA has done extensive work  regarding automatic image processing issues. They  found that the preservation of EXIF data (such as  ICC profile related data) is needed for proper and efficient image processing.

He left the audience with some conclusions and  open issues, such as the need for well defined  mappings between EXIF, IPTC IIM, IPTC Core, PLUS  and other schemas. The need for “Write-Once”  metadata values, the means to handle versioning  of metadata values, and improved support for  controlled vocabularies on the user interface  level. In addition, imaging devices are not  confined to cameras anymore, and mobile phones don’t have EXIF info.

= Global Metadata Rights Standards
Jeff Sedlik (PLUS)
Sedlik stated that “If keywords are chaos – then  intellectual property (copyright) marking is  mayhem.” He then explained how the mission of  PLUS – To Simplify & Facilitate Image Licensing –  can make a difference by providing “Global  Metadata Standards for the Communication of Image Rights.” The freely available PLUS glossary contains over  1500 license and intellectual property related  terms. Words and definitions from a larger number  of image agencies the whole over were collected,  synthesized, and reviewed by panels of volunteers  to build a common glossary in American English, which was approved by both Licensors & Licensees.  The glossary reflects the common practice of  PLUS, which is to first create a master using one  language, and then let local working groups translate to other languages.

The PLUS media matrix and license data format  contain standardized menus which can be used  within e-commerce solutions. This allows the buyer to use the same codes and/or definitions  regardless of image supplier. PLUS codes can be  embedded in the image, and held in a central registry.

To simplify the adoption of PLUS they have build  a set of standard licenses for rights managed  material, called PLUS Packs. The Stock Artists  Alliance (SAA) has released a free open-source  price calculator which uses the PLUS Packs and is  designed so that photographers and image  distributors can populate with their own pricing information.

= “Use the label, make it stick”
Sarah Saunders (BAPLA)
Saunders has worked with John Moore (manager at  Conde Nast and Pic4Press) on digital workflow  issues. She discussed how the British Association  of Picture Libraries and Agencies (BAPLA) has  worked to develop a single custom panel within Photoshop for metadata entry.

She asked the crowd, “Why do we need metadata?” and then answered it for them.

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

These issues, in tandem with orphan works,  explain why there is an increased importance on  metadata. Without being to identify the photographer or know who holds the copyright,  future image users might be able to use images in  the future without making any payment.

The fact that there are so many different fields  creates confusion for those entering metadata.  The Pic4Press group identified the most important  fields that should always be entered. Then they  along with BAPLA created their own custom  Photoshop template. This template only makes use  of existing fields, unfortunately is only works  with Photoshop CS at present. The main goal was  to get people started to at least enter the most  important information, as many agencies still have the tendency to simply put all metadata into  the caption/description field.

Sarah emphasized that the Caption, Credit and  Picture Number (Document Title) should be entered into ALL images.

===
Report 3/3 : First International Photo Metadata Conference, 3 of 3
    Posted by: "David Riecks" david@riecks.com davidriecks
    Date: Thu Jun 28, 2007 12:18 pm ((PDT))

= ”If you can’t describe it, you can’t control it”
Gunar Penikis (Adobe)
Penikis emphasized that media objects need to  become more intelligent noting that metadata has  become, “a data exchange technology.” Workflows  are becoming completely digital. Digital cameras  capture and upload straight into the production process. The same image file may be used for  several outputs; print, web, CD, handheld,  wireless, eBook, RSS, video. In this workflow metadata plays a central role. As Penikis  declared, ”If you can’t describe it, you can’t control it”.

Penikis showed how XMP works, how it can hold  multiple forms of metadata (EXIF, IIM, IPTC Core)  within a single container, and how it is possible  for it to be extended – by allowing other  applications to edit XMP without fully  understanding the file format. XMP can support formats beyond still images such as AVI, WAV,  MOV, MP3, and MPEG. In addition, the new version  of Bridge in CS3 also allows for non-destructive edits to Jpegs and TIFFs.

Penikis showed how easy it is to build and  install custom metadata panels for Adobe  Photoshop and Bridge. Bridge can now also be extended with Flash panels, which can have a nice  user interface and via scripting be extended to  send images through FTP or web services.

Additional details can be found at the following URL’s: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/bridge
XMP Software Development Kit (SDK) new release of version 4.1.1 http://www.adobe.com/devnet/xmp/

= Photographers' Love/Hate Relationship with Metadata
Joe Schorr (Apple)
Photographers love having metadata in their images, stated Joe Schorr of Apple, but many  photographers fail to include essential metadata  with their images because the process is too  complex and cumbersome with most of today's photo  tools. He also remarked that as Apple’s Senior  Product Manager he was pleased to see lots of Mac’s in use in the room.

Schorr then proceeded to show several ways that  Apple Aperture can be used to input metadata for  images. He showed how you can add metadata to a  batch of images on ingest using metadata presets.  He demonstrated the Keywords “Heads up Display”  (HUD), which is now lockable (as of 7 months ago)  to maintain a strict controlled vocabulary. He  showed how you can drag keywords to the images,  or use button sets to append frequently used  keywords. He also talked about how AppleScript  can be used to automate various metadata functions.

With Aperture you can create custom metadata  views of selected fields, or use existing ones  such as the BAPLA Pic4Press, or Getty template.  Underneath there is a real list view that is  built on a heavy duty database (none of the  metadata is stored in the images until you export  them).  All metadata fields that they support  (the older IIM standard) are embedded at file  export. If you export the metadata for a RAW file  this is saved/stored as an .XMP sidecar. Aperture  also supports plug-ins that lets you enter custom  metadata (such as one for Getty Images). The  metadata in the images is also tied into their  operating systems level search called “Spotlight.”

= Advancing EXIF utility
Hiroshi Maeno (Canon)
It was great to see a number of the major professional digital camera manufacturers  represented at this conference. Hiroshi Maeno,  from Canon, Japan gave a good overview of the  history of EXIF metadata standard.

He then explained some of the interesting  applications they have devised for their cameras  that use metadata. For example, they have an  image verification kit that works with their more  advanced cameras (20D and forward) so that you  can tell if the image has been retouched. The new  EOS 1D Mark III allows for validation of the metadata (such as GPS) as well as image content  (note: this feature must be activated in camera  prior to shooting and its use may impact your  shooting speed). In order to run the validation  you need to have an un-modified original image file in order to compare.

Canon also has a wireless transmitter that allows  photographers to send images directly to a  picture desk at an event. The Canon EOS WFT-E2  can handle wireless input from several cameras simultaneously.

When asked if there is a means for photographers  to add metadata in-camera at the time of capture  they said they were considering this but had no  timeline at present. There were representatives  from Nikon at the conference as well (but none  that were speaking), and they gave virtually the same answer.

= Extensibility Throughout the Enterprise
Celemens Molinari (Fotoware)
Molinari gave a demo of the next generation of  FotoStation software (v5.3 beta) which has full  support for XMP, by using the Fotoware MDC  (Metadata Configuration) throughout their entire  suite of products. This allows the photographer  to either embed metadata or have it stored as  sidecar files (and is fully backwards compatible with the IPTC IIM schema).

It is also fully extensible, allowing for  multiple standards/multiple namespaces. This  makes it the first software developer other than  Adobe to allow for this facility. This means that  not only can you import custom panels from Adobe  Photoshop, but you can create your own custom  panels for entering or editing metadata. This  information can then be tagged not only to still  image files, but RAW files, video, audio and other types of digital assets.

Molinari also showed that the v5.3 FotoStation  can also provide support for the IPTC Subject  Codes, which will be very good news for newspapers wishing to use these codes. This beta  also allows for the storage of multiple languages  (Captions and Keywords in both English and in  German) but does not have any support for  automatic translation.  Their new software offers  Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) support  allowing you to interface it to other databases.

= Optimizing for Digital
Peter Stig (Hasselblad)
Stig spoke of how Hasselblad has worked to  optimize their entire system for digital,  including changes in lens design as well as  software. He explained how Hasselblad handles metadata in their Flexcolor camera software  (Hasselblad merged with Imacon, the  scanner/scanning back company in 2003) which is  looking similar to the Lightroom or Aperture  interfaces. Their software has supported the IIM  version of IPTC metadata since the first version, and in addition, they store a history log where  you can see how the image has been processed  (data from this log can be embedded into the exported file).

Hasselblad has returned to a proprietary format  for their raw capture. They did offer support for  the DNG format for a while but discontinued that  option. They have returned to their own format as the DNG format lacked support for some advanced  features used to correct for lens distortion.

When asked if the documentation of the file  format is publicly available, we learned that it  is not. However, they are working with Apple and  Adobe to allow their software to read the  Hasselblad files. Stig mentioned that while it  may be possible to release this as an open-source  format in the future, the lens correction data  itself relies on proprietary information.

= “The Truth Is In The File”
Josh Weisberg (Microsoft)
Josh Weisberg of Microsoft explained how Windows  Vista delivers significant improvements in how  photo metadata is handled in this latest  Microsoft operating system. Their motto is that  “The Truth is in the File” because when metadata properties change, the new values are always  written back to the file. This provides for  information portability – wherever the file goes, the metadata goes.

Today metadata is used by many applications, but  in different ways; and previously every  application developer had to write his own metadata handler or rely on third party  libraries. As an alternative, Microsoft has  created what they call WIC (Windows Imaging Components). WIC is an extensible, system-wide  platform for image handling that will reduce the  need for sidecar files. It ships with Vista and  is available for Windows XP and other server products.

The WIC policy handler has two functions, to deal  with color Codec’s, and to handle Metadata.  Weisberg explained that applications can use WIC  to: read & write image formats, perform RAW conversions, and to read & write metadata.

This makes it possible for developers to provide  support for multiple metadata standards in their  application. Out of the box, the WIC policy  handler can support EXIF, IPTC and XMP. Weisberg  explained that they want to “bring RAW files to  the masses”, and decided that camera  manufacturers will develop their own codec’s for  cameras. This should mean that there will be no  delay for the OS or applications to catch up when new devices are released.

Microsoft bought the image asset manager, iView  Multimedia in July of 2006 and have completed the  incorporation and released it under the name  Microsoft Expression Media. Weisberg also  mentioned that Expression Media has been  integrated with the Vista OS so that hierarchical  keyword/metatags are even compatible with  Lightroom, though didn’t go into details on how this was handled.

= Wrap-up Panel Discussion
There were opportunities for those attending to ask a few questions of each of the presenters,  but the most interesting ones came in the wrap-up  at the end. While no representative from Nikon  spoke at the conference – they responded too late  to the invitation – they did send several  representatives to observe. Canon as well as  Nikon asked what fields photographers need for  entering metadata at the time of capture. This  was a bit unexpected, and some panelists  mentioned that it was a tough question to answer  without knowing how this metadata would be  entered into the camera. The chair of the Photo  Metadata Working Group said that they would  explore this question and be in contact with them in the near future.

There was some discussion on whether a conference  of this type would be a regular event, but there  was no conclusion at this time.

= Final Notes
Download The IPTC Photo Metadata White Paper and  transcripts of many of the presentations given at  the Conference from http://phmdc.org/

You’re also invited to discuss further  developments of the requirements and open issues  which have been raised at the Conference on an IPTC moderated forum: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/iptc-photometadata

This report presented June 23, 2007 by David Riecks with assistance from Betsy Reid.
--
David Riecks (that's "i" before "e", but the "e" is silent)
david@riecks.com  http://www.riecks.com/
Midwest/Chicago ASMP
====================== David Riecks =============================