EDUCATION
by photographers and the media industry. It
media-test-results.php”
launched the Embedded Metadata Manifesto
in 2011 to draw attention to the importance of
supporter of the Embedded Metadata
retaining important data embedded in image
Manifesto and it’s an issue all professional
files.
photographers should be aware of.”
The website, www.embeddedmetadata.org
also includes Embedded Metadata Manifesto’s
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
five guidelines for how metadata should be
So, what are the options? Do you stop posting
handled and preserved in digital media.
photos on social media?
“There are many important reasons to
That is probably not going to be helpful if
embed and preserve metadata – to protect
you wish to market yourself successfully.
copyrights, ensure proper licensing, track
image use, smooth workflow, and make them
embedding your four ‘C’s (Caption, Creator,
searchable on- or offline,” said Michael Steidl,
Copyright Notice and Credit line) in all your
Managing Director of IPTC.
photographs so that you don’t have to think
about it. This can generally be set up when you
“If users provide captions, dates, a copyright
The first step is to ensure you are
notice and the creator within their images,
first ingest your files, or even be written by your
that data shouldn’t be removed when sharing
camera when you press the shutter button.
them on social media websites without their
Once it’s done, it’s done forever (or until you get
knowledge.”
a new camera).
The second thing you can do is to include
TEST RESULTS
a watermark on the front of your photos. Yes,
So how well did your favourite social media site
these can be cropped off or even retouched
go?
out - we can’t stop people who are determined
According to Robert Edwards, “It’s a mixed
to be thieves, but we can make it obvious that
bag of results with most sites improving their
our photographs are not to be used freely, and
metadata handling over the last few years, while
certainly not to be used without crediting us as
a few like Dropbox faired much worse. Adobe’s
the photographers.
new Behance service was the only site that
received full marks.
Results media release here: https://iptc.org/
news/many-social-media-sites-still-remove-
“You can see a graph of the results here:
http://www.embeddedmetadata.org/social-
42
Continuted Robert, “The AIPP is a founding
You can also read the Photo Metadata Test
image-rights-information-from-photos/