Image Metadata Standards

Exif is written by the camera and describes capture — exposure, lens, time, sometimes location. IPTC describes meaning and rights: caption, keywords, creator, usage terms. XMP is a container format that can carry both and is what most current software reads and writes. A single file frequently holds all three.

Because the editor wrote a new file and copied only the metadata it understands. Tools differ in which blocks they preserve, and some resize or export paths drop everything except Exif. The reliable check is to inspect the exported file rather than trusting the setting, which our material covers.

Creator, caption, keywords and usage terms answer most later questions, and cost the least to fill in at ingest. Everything else is worth adding only if somebody will search on it. Optional fields that nobody maintains make a library look documented while leaving it just as hard to search.

Usually not. Most consumer platforms strip metadata on upload, partly for privacy and partly for file size. That is a reason to keep the master file, with its rights information intact, inside the DAM rather than treating a published copy as the record.

Yes, and it is the only realistic way to describe a legacy library. Bulk tools apply fields across selections, and the risk is applying a wrong value at scale as easily as a right one. Working on a copy and verifying a sample before committing is the standard precaution.

In a structured field, not in a caption. Rights that live in free text cannot be reported on, which is exactly what you need when a licence is expiring across hundreds of assets. Standards define fields for usage terms precisely so this can be queried.

It is a fixed list of approved terms that people select instead of typing. It matters because free text drifts — singular and plural, spelling variants, synonyms — and every variant splits a search result. Controlled terms are the single cheapest improvement to findability in most libraries.

Both, deliberately. The database drives search and permissions; metadata written into the file survives leaving the system, which matters when an asset is delivered to someone outside it. Writing on export is the usual compromise.

The same standards do not fully apply, and time-based metadata adds a dimension images do not have. Descriptive fields transfer conceptually, but where they are stored differs by container, which is why exports between video tools lose fields more often than image exports do.

A named owner, with a request route for everyone else. Open editing produces near-duplicates within weeks; a closed list that nobody can extend produces free-text workarounds. A review step between the two is what keeps a vocabulary usable.