IPTC/XMP data

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IPTC data is a method of storing textual information in images. It was developed for press photographers who need to attach information to images when they are submitting them electronically but it is useful for all photographers. It provides a standard way of storing information such as captions, keywords, location and captions. Because the information is stored in the image in a standard way this information can be accessed by other IPTC aware applications.

 

Downloader Pro can add IPTC data to the following types of images: JPEG, TIFF, DNG and raw files from most cameras.

 

Downloader Pro supports the current Adobe XMP format which was intorduced in Photoshop 7. The IPTC/XMP data is either stored in the image file (e.g. for JPEGs and TIFFs) or uses an XMP sidecar file (e.g. for raw files).

 

Downloader Pro can also optionally store a subset of the IPTC data in the older IPTC IIM format (see General Preferences)

 

Information about the IPTC standard for data stored in images files can be obtained from the IPTC's web site: http://www.iptc.org

 

Editing IPTC Data

 

You can edit the IPTC data by selecting "IPTC/XMP data..." from the edit menu or by typing Ctrl+C. Alternatively you can get Downloader Pro to display the IPTC/XMP data dialog every time it is run (see General Preferences). Several sets of IPTC data can be prepared in advance and saved to disk by entering the data and pressing the "Save to file..." button. The data can then be loaded by pressing the "Load from file..." button.

 

The various IPTC data fields can contain fixed text or use the tokens below to automatically insert data extracted from the image.

 

Token

Description

{1}

4 digit year "now" (when Downloader was run)

{2}

2 digit month "now" (when Downloader was run)

{3}

2digit day "now" (when Downloader was run)

{a}

Abbreviated weekday name e.g. Fri

{A}

Full weekday name e.g. Friday

{b}

Abbreviated month name e.g. Jan

{B}

Full month name e.g. January

{c}

Camera serial number (Canon digital SLRs and recent Nikon digital SLRs only)

{C}

Canon EOS 1D/1DS style serial number

{d}

Date in the form YYMMDD

{D}

Day of the month (01 to 31)

{F}

Name of downloaded file without file extension

{H}

Hour in 24-hour format (00-23)

{i}

ISO

{I}

Hour in 12-hour format (01-12)

{j}

Day number (001 to 366)

{J}

Job code

{l}

Long date/time representation for locale e.g. Saturday, April 13, 2002 09:27:32

{L}

Long date representation for locale e.g. e.g. Saturday, April 13, 2002

{m}

2 digit month number (01 to 12)

{M}

minutes

{o}

Source filename without extension e.g. IMG_0001

{O}

Owner's name (Canon cameras only)

{p}

AM/PM indicator in upper case

{plc}

am/pm indicator in lower case

{q}

Source folder number e.g. 123

{Q}

Source folder name e.g. 123CANON

{r}

Source image number e.g. 4567

{r1}

Last digit of source image number e.g. 7

{r2}

Last two digits of source image number e.g. 67

 

Note: All dates and times are taken from the date and time the picture was taken unless otherwise stated

 

The IPTC Data dialog is divided up into five different sections: Caption, Keywords, Categories, Contact, Origin and Image. If legacy IPTC IIM is selected in preferences a tab labeled "Legacy IPTC IIM" will also be displayed. Click on the tabs along the top of the dialog to select the required section.

 

iptc_caption

 

All the data fields under the Caption tab are free text entries for Copyright Status and Urgency are free text entries. The urgency is a number from 0, meaning "None", through 1 (meaning "High") to 8 (meaning "Low"). The default value is "0: None".

 

iptc_keywords

 

Click on the Keywords tab to display the keywords. The keywords are displayed in the order they were entered (as opposed to alphabetical order) and each keyword must be unique. To add a new keyword enter the keyword in the text edit area at the top and either press the Enter key or the Add button. Several keywords can be added in one go by entering a list separated by commas or semi-colons.

To delete a keyword first select it from the list then press the Delete button.

 

Press the "Catalog..." button to display a list of pre-defined keywords in the dialog below:

 

iptc_keyword_catalog

 

The keyword catalog is read from a simple tab delimited file called keywords.txt in the Downloader Pro installation folder (if keywords.txt can't be found Downloader Pro will try to load sample_keywords.txt instead). The sample_keywords.txt file included with Downloader Pro is a small extract from the controlled vocabulary created by David Riecks. Please visit http://www.controlledvocabulary.com for details of the considerable benefits of using a controlled vocabulary for keywords and to purchase the full keyword controlled vocabulary file.

 

Keywords can be selected by browsing the keyword tree or by entering a search string and pressing the Find button. Then press the OK button or double click on the item in the tree to copy the selected keywords to the IPTC/XMP keyword dialog.

 

Synonyms are shown in braces/curly brackets after the keyword and are included when searching. Synonyms are only copied to the "Selected Keywords" with the main keyword when "Include synonyms with selected keywords" is selected.
In the screenshot above the user has searched for "swine" which is a synonym for "pigs" along with the synonyms "hogs", "pig", "piggies" and "piggy".

 

Items enclosed in square brackets are headings to help organize the keywords and are not copied to the "Selected Keywords" when you click on them.

 

 

iptc_categories

 

Click on the Categories tab to display categories. The main category is a free text entry. The supplemental categories are displayed in the order they were entered (as opposed to alphabetical order) and each one must be unique. To add a new supplemental category enter it in the text edit area at the top and either press the Enter key or the Add button. To delete a supplemental category first select it from the list then press the Delete button.

 

iptc_contact

 

All the data fields under the Contact tab are free text entries.

 

iptc_origin

 

All the data fields under the Origin tab are free text entries except for the "Date Created" and "Time Created" fields. The date must contain a date in the form YYYYMMDD where YYYY is the year including century (e.g. 2007), MM is the month (e.g. 03 for March) and DD is the day (e.g. 26). An optional : or / character may also be used to separate the year, month and date. Press the ">" button after "Date Created" to display a menu to set the date/time to the EXIF shooting date, the file creation date, the current time, yesterday, two days ago or select any date using the date/time dialog (shown below).

 

iptc_datetime

 

Click on the ">" button after "Release Date" to set the release time to now, tomorrow, two days time, one weeks time, two weeks time or select any date using the date/time dialog.

 

 

iptc_image

 

The rights usage field is a free text entry field and is normally used to enter further information about the image and how it may be used. The intellectual genre field specifies the genre of the image using the list of genres defined by the IPTC. The IPTC scene and subject code fields should contain a list of numeric IPTC scene and subject code values classifying the image. These values use a controlled vocabulary defined by the IPTC to standardize their usage. Click on the "Catalog..." button to display the dialog below to select the codes:
 

iptc_subject_code

 

The IPTC subject code editor is shown above. On the left is a list of subject codes which can be expanded by clicking on the + and - buttons. When you click on an item in the list its formal name or code is displayed on the right together with a description of the item. The current values for the image are displayed on the right and this list can be added to by pressing the "Add" button or by selecting an item from the list on the left and pressing return. Items can be deleted by selecting the item from the list on the right and pressing the "Remove" button or the delete key.

You can search for whole or partial words in the name or explanation by entering a search string in the bottom left and clicking on the "Find" button.

The scene editor is very similar in appearance but only has a single level list of names on the left hand side.

 

The values displayed in this dialog (and in the intellectual genre list in the IPTC editor Image section above) are read from XML news code topicset files supplied by the IPTC. These are stored in the topicset folder where Downloader Pro is installed (usually C:\Program Files\BreezeSys\Downloader Pro \topicset). The files are named as follows: topicset.iptc-genre.xml, topicset.iptc-scene.xml and topicset.iptc-subjectcode.xml. At the time of writing the IPTC have translated topicset.iptc-genre.xml into Spanish (topicset.iptc-genre_es.xml) and topicset.iptc-subjectcode.xml into German (topicset.iptc-subjectcode_de.xml), Spanish (topicset.iptc-subjectcode_es.xml) and French (topicset.iptc-subjectcode_fr.xml). The translated files can be used in Downloader Pro's IPTC subject code editor by downloading the relevant file from http://newscodes.org and renaming it e.g. to use the French translation of the subject codes download topicset.iptc-subjectcode_fr.xml from http://newscodes.org, rename it to topicset.iptc-subjectcode.xml and copy it into Downloader Pro's topicset folder.

 

The copyright of the XML topicset files belongs to the IPTC and are included with Downloader Pro with the IPTC's permission.

 

iptc_legacy_iim

 

The "Legacy IPTC IIM" tab contains IPTC IIM fields which do not have direct IPTC XMP equivalents and is provided for backwards compatibility with older apps.