Photokina 2008: The Metadata Working Group, an alliance between Adobe, Apple, Canon, Microsoft, Nokia and Sony has published its first guidelines on the use of image metadata. The guidelines suggest methods to increase interoperability and storage of shooting settings and other associated data in digital images. It aims at standardizing the availability of metadata across all applications and devices, making it easier for users to create, organize and share their pictures.

I’m really glad to see this initiative taking off. More at DP Review

Or download the specification (PDF: 1.7M) from the Metadata Working Group website.

Adding proper support for Exif, IPTC & XMP data to the gallery application that powers my Eyeballism site proved a lot more tricky than could be considered healthy by any stretch of the imagination. We quickly found ourselves trying to decipher the image meta tag soup mess we’re in.

Some of the issues we encountered:

• data may or may not be present in Exif headers
• data may be present at different locations
• data may be present in different formats
• data may be present in different formats at different locations with different values

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