The other benefit I see to IPTC is compatibility with existing software and photos.

Anyways, this is good food for thought.

1. IPTC has a number of significant limitations.

a. It assumes that int=char=printable, which make is less than useful in non-US ASCII-only environments.

b. It is limited in the number of fields it supports, and each field is length limited.

c. It is, well, crufty: to the point that the organization which standardized it has abandoned it.

Why XMP? and What is XMP?

Adobe launched the eXtensible Metadata Platform (ugly name, IMHO) in 2001. It is now embeded in all CS-vesrsion products (Photoshop, Acrobat, Illustrator, etc.) It holds all the metadata that IPTC can hold, but it can also hold _any_ arbitrary metadata that an app wants to encode in a photo. Like IPTC, the metadata may be directly encoded in the photo file so that it won’t be lost. (It can also reside in a .XMP “sidecar” file if desired.) Unlike IPTC, the information is UTF-8 XML encoded RDF. (WTF? *grin*) This means that metadata may be encoded in non-English and even non-roman character sets. It also provides for the same metadata to be encoded in alternate languages so an appropriately aware app can display the metadata in the user’s preferred language.

Adobe has an open source C++ SDK for XMP, which won’t do much good for photos, but there are RDF tools for PHP which should provide a decent foundation for photos’ code.

As with many TLAs, XMP is overloaded. Google will help, but here is Adobe’s start page:
http://www.adobe.com[...]mp/main.html

The document you really want is the specification which shows how the XMP can be embeded in many extant image formats without making those images incompatible with pre-existing XMP-unaware applications.

FWIW, I’m (slowly) working on a set of XMP routines in python. I initially intended to go the IPTC route for much the same reasons as Alex has pointed out. Digging into it, however, XMP seems a much better choice.

I do import IPTC data and allow searching on it, but though my fields not the specific IPTC fields. The problem with supporting other file formats is that there isn’t the same built-in support in PHP for all of these formats.

That said, there are two things I need which I find are lacking in Photos which prevent my adoption of it for my photos.

1. IPTC support. Something you are working on.
2. File formats: Raw (NEF), Tiff, Jpg2000 at a minimum.
3. Searching by IPTC keywords (goes with IPTC support)
4. PostGreSQL support.

If I could only program, I would be inspired by you to try my hand. Alas, I am reliant on the gifts of others.

On a note, check the PaintShopPro Album v5 beta. The Calendar View is especially useful, as is their search, although their Raw support is non-existent and their batch rename is worthless at best.

You have great software which is only improving. Good luck.

I am just now starting to search for a solution (actually I have been searching for the last couple years) but I am more motivated now with the release of Cumulus 6.0 for OSX…It is a big disappointment! Slow!!! And a Kludgy, non-intuitive interface. Liscnesing for Web Publisher is crazy for a single man freelance operation! I am happy to pay for a quality product that is aimed at my needs, but it is designed more for larger publshers or firms than a 1 man operation who is Mac centric. I love iViewPro, but it’s not exactly what I am looking for in a searchable database.

With that said, I have just downloaded photos and I will start working with it to see if it is my answer.

Now to get to IPTC, I come from the photojournalism world and I am coming up fast on a T-byte of images (both RAW tiffs and .jpgs) with IPTC embedded in them already (I have been very anal about that over the years….I built a database back in the 80′s to catalog my 140,000 slides in Filemaker but it is not for storing images…just the information about the photos, etc, So now I need a solution for my digital images).

All this jaw boning comes around to the idea that I think there is a market out there for the small to medium size clients that aren’t addressed by the Canto’s of the world. The ability to select a folder full of images (or my complete collection of a T-byte of images) and have them in the form a searchable datase and spit out as web pages is my dream at the moment.

Since I haven’t had a chance to work with photos, I guess all I’m doing is adding my voice to Adam Tow and the IPTC format (even with it’s short comings) as a standard means of importing data in standardized fields.

Keep up the good work.

Todd Buchanan

Please please please

Adam.

However, just like with EXIF data, having your metadata about your photos in each file as well as in the database means you are not tied to any one system. Portability is good.