In the long term, paying close attention to file data can be one of the most important things you do for your company. And I know it’s not easy. If this isn’t your first trip to this blog, you’ve heard me sing this song before.

If you’re having trouble keeping up with all the metadata that should beattached to every image you create, you’re not alone. But we have some good news for you, especially if you’re an Adobe Photoshop user.

The International Press Telecommunications Council (iptc.org) – who are the people who came up with our last set of file-tagging conventions (IPTC file headers) – has updated the standard (it’s not new, the docs were released in 2005) – and it’s being used now in Adobe applications. The “IPTC Core schema for XMP” standards document describes the care and feeding of your metadata – we snagged a copy of it from the IPTC site for you to see:

Iptc4xmpCore_1.0-doc-CpanelsUserGuide_13.pdf (600kb PDF download)

It’ll walk you through the usage of all those fields and explain the how and whys of XMP tagging – but wait, there’s more.

On page 19, they describe how to batch process (automate) the loading of basic file information using Photoshop. It’s a step-by-step thing about a paragraph long. Easy.

If you have questions about what IPTC Core for XMP means for your shop, drop us a line, and in the meantime, happy tagging.