Information Interchange Model

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About ten years ago Adobe Systems Inc. developed the 'Image Resource Block' which is a technology to wrap metadata information and to insert this packet into digital image files of various formats, e.g. Photoshop (.psd), JPEG and TIFF. To populate this abstract wrapper Adobe adopted a subset of metadata elements from the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) standard 'Information Interchange Model - IIM', thus creating the so called 'IPTC headers'. In September 2001 Adobe Systems Inc. introduced its new metadata framework 'Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP)' and it was obvious this will make the 'Image Resource Blocks' sooner or later obsolete.

In March 2004 the IPTC discussed with Adobe ways for a smooth transfer of metadata values from the legacy 'Image Resource Blocks' to the XMP framework. A working group was formed by the IPTC and Adobe to achieve this which was later joined by the IDEAlliance organisation as they created the DISC XMP Schema for photo metadata earlier in 2004. The working group charter was: This project is a collaborative effort of the IPTC, AdobeSystems Inc. and IDEAlliance to specify a set of news object related metadata elements for the XMP environment. Its primary intention is to allow unambiguous mapping and a smooth transfer of metadata currently held in "IPTC Headers" of digital photo image files to a new scheme of IPTC metadata. This new scheme should also reflect the additional requirements for metadata elements as they emerged since the creation of the "IPTC Headers" about ten years ago. This project aims to deliver a specification for this new IPTC metadata scheme for XMP as an XML Schema, Customized Panels for Adobe software to allow editing the metadata, and a documentation for mapping metadata back and forth between the old "IPTC Header" and the new scheme. In October 2004 the specification of the 'IPTC Core' Schema for XMP, version 1.0, was approved by IPTC members, supporting documentation was created later that year.