Working towards a seamless photo workflow

The IPTC and IFRA held their First International Photo Metadata conference, titled "Working towards a seamless photo workflow" on June 7, 2007 in Florence, Italy.

The issues discussed in the IPTC Photo Metadata working group White Paper (mentioned below) figured prominently at this event, which attracted over 120 attendees, and was held prior to last week's CEPIC Congress.

The conference keynote was given by Andreas Trampe, head of the photodesk of Stern. Other speakers included photographers such as David Riecks and Peter Krogh, photo and news agencies such as Reuters; representives of standards bodies such as PLUS, IPTC, and IFRA; as well as spokespersons from the photo metadata implementers side, such as Adobe, Apple, Canon, FotoWare, Hasselblad, and Microsoft.

The presentations given by most of the speakers are available online from the Photo Metadata Conference website.

IPTC Photo Metadata Working Group White Paper Released

The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) released the Photo Metadata White Paper in conjunction with the Global Photo Metadata Conference held in Florence, Italy on June 7, 2007. The paper focuses on improvements needed to broaden the scope of IPTC style photo metadata so that it is more useful to those in the stock photography and image archive sectors of the professional photography market.

Chapter 3 of the white paper should be of particular interest to the stock image industry, as it outlines a large number of new fields that the working group designated as being needed to make future IPTC photo metadata relevant to the stock industry. The white paper concludes by presenting a set of open issues that need to be addressed.

"Anyone who works with photos professionally needs to read this white paper," says Walter Baranger of The New York Times. The 27-page white paper is available online, free of charge. The IPTC also invites discussion and comment by email to office@iptc.org.