1. What is Metadata?
Metadata is information about data. In the case of PixVue, the information takes the form of XMP, IPTC or both and the data concerned is image data. A more detailed answer to this question is given by TASI.
2. What is XMP?
Published by Adobe and based on XML, XMP is the eXtensible Metadata Platform.
3. What is IPTC?
The International Press Telecommunications Council is a consortium that published a specification known as Information Interchange Model or IIM. Adobe Photoshop partially adopted this stardard for embedding metadata in images. This metadata is commonly known as "IPTC" and is a widely used format for captioning images. It is however a frozen standard and has been superceded by XMP.
4. What is EXIF?
EXIF is a specification supported by most if not all major digital camera manufacturers. Among other things, it specifies the format for embedding typically camera-specific metadata (e.g. shutter speed, aperture, ISO etc.) in image files. It is this metadata that PixVue presents in the 'Image' property page.
5. What's the difference between IPTC & XMP?
IPTC is a legacy standard that is supported by many applications. XMP is a newer standard that addresses some of the shortcomings of IPTC:
XMP is based on standards such as XML and RDF.
XMP is interchangeable in a way that IPTC never can be.
XMP is very extensible. New property values are simple to add and in such a way as to remain completely compatible with all XMP editors.
6. Why XMP?
Embedding XMP/ IPTC has two main advantages over commonly available alternatives for describing images:
With XMP/ IPTC, the text that describes an image is embedded in the image itself. This ensures that the image and it's textual description are much less likely to be separated.
XMP/ IPTC are relatively "open" standards that are already in widespread use in multiple image cataloging applications and on multiple platforms. This reduces one's dependency on any one vendor's cataloging application or operating system.
XMP/ IPTC arguably offer the best solution for annotating images today.
7. What are the potential issues with XMP?
The one obvious issue with using XMP/ IPTC to annotate your images is that not all image editors are XMP/ IPTC- aware. This means that when you use such an editor to rotate a photo for example and save it, the editor is likely to remove the XMP/ IPTC metadata from the image. Adobe's PhotoShop is of course XMP/ IPTC-aware.
Contributed by aas. Last updated February 8, 2006 by mg.