Extensible Metadata Platform
Encyclopedia
The Adobe Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) is a standard, created by Adobe Systems Inc., for processing and storing standardized and proprietary information relating to the contents of a file.

XMP standardizes the definition, creation, and processing of extensible metadata
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...

. Serialized XMP can be embedded into a significant number of popular file formats, without breaking their readability by non-XMP-aware applications. Embedding metadata avoids many problems that occur when metadata is stored separately. XMP is used in PDF
Portable Document Format
Portable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....

, photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

 and photo editing
Graphics software
In computer graphics, graphics software or image editing software is a program or collection of programs that enable a person to manipulate visual images on a computer....

 applications.

XMP data model

XMP defines a metadata
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...

 model that can be used with any defined set of metadata items. XMP also defines particular schemas
XML schema
An XML schema is a description of a type of XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed by XML itself...

 for basic properties useful for recording the history of a resource as it passes through multiple processing steps, from being photographed, scanned
Image scanner
In computing, an image scanner—often abbreviated to just scanner—is a device that optically scans images, printed text, handwriting, or an object, and converts it to a digital image. Common examples found in offices are variations of the desktop scanner where the document is placed on a glass...

, or authored as text, through photo editing steps (such as cropping
Cropping (image)
Cropping refers to the removal of the outer parts of an image to improve framing, accentuate subject matter or change aspect ratio. Depending on the application, this may be performed on a physical photograph, artwork or film footage, or achieved digitally using image editing software...

 or color adjustment), to assembly into a final image. XMP allows each software program or device along the way to add its own information to a digital resource, which can then be retained in the final digital file.

XMP is most commonly serialized and stored using a subset of the W3C
World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web .Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the...

 Resource Description Framework
Resource Description Framework
The Resource Description Framework is a family of World Wide Web Consortium specifications originally designed as a metadata data model...

 (RDF), which is in turn expressed in XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

.

Serialization of XMP

Embedding metadata in files allows easy sharing and transfer of files across products, vendors, platforms, without metadata getting lost; embedding avoids a multitude of problems coming from proprietary vendor-specific metadata databases.

The most common metadata tags recorded in XMP data are those from the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata terms are a set of vocabulary terms which can be used to describe resources for the purposes of discovery. The terms can be used to describe a full range of web resources: video, images, web pages etc and physical resources such as books and objects like artworks...

, which include things like title, description, creator, and so on. The standard is designed to be extensible, allowing users to add their own custom types of metadata into the XMP data. XMP generally does not allow binary data types to be embedded. This means that any binary data one wants to carry in XMP, such as thumbnail
Thumbnail
Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words...

 images, must be encoded in some XML-friendly format, such as Base64
Base64
Base64 is a group of similar encoding schemes that represent binary data in an ASCII string format by translating it into a radix-64 representation...

.

XMP can be used in several file formats such as PDF, JPEG
JPEG
In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....

, JPEG 2000
JPEG 2000
JPEG 2000 is an image compression standard and coding system. It was created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee in 2000 with the intention of superseding their original discrete cosine transform-based JPEG standard with a newly designed, wavelet-based method...

, JPEG XR, GIF
GIF
The Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability....

, PNG, HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

, TIFF, Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems. Illustrator is similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to its competitors, CorelDraw, Xara Designer Pro and Macromedia FreeHand....

, PSD
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...

, MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

, MP4, Audio Video Interleave
Audio Video Interleave
Audio Video Interleave , known by its acronym AVI, is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as part of its Video for Windows technology. AVI files can contain both audio and video data in a file container that allows synchronous audio-with-video playback...

, WAV
WAV
Waveform Audio File Format , is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs...

, RF64
RF64
RF64 is a BWF-compatible multichannel file format enabling file sizes to exceed 4 GB. It has been specified by the European Broadcasting Union.The file format is designed to meet the requirements for multichannel sound in broadcasting and audio...

, Audio Interchange File Format, PostScript
PostScript
PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...

, Encapsulated PostScript
Encapsulated PostScript
Encapsulated PostScript, or EPS, is a DSC-conforming PostScript document with additional restrictions which is intended to be usable as a graphics file format...

, and proposed for DjVu
DjVu
DjVu is a computer file format designed primarily to store scanned documents, especially those containing a combination of text, line drawings, and photographs. It uses technologies such as image layer separation of text and background/images, progressive loading, arithmetic coding, and lossy...

. In a typical edited JPEG
JPEG
In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....

 file, XMP information is typically included alongside Exif and IPTC Information Interchange Model
IPTC Information Interchange Model
The Information Interchange Model is a file structure and set of metadata attributes that can be applied to text, images and other media types...

 data.

XMP metadata can describe a document as a whole (the "main" metadata), but can also describe parts of a document, such as pages or included images. This architecture makes it possible to retain authorship and rights information about, for example, images included in a published document. Similarly, it permits documents created from several smaller documents to retain the original metadata associated with the parts.

Example

This is an example XML for serialized XMP metadata in JPEG photos:

XMP Toolkit

The XMP Toolkit implements metadata handling in two libraries:
  • XMPCore for creation and manipulation of metadata that follows the XMP Data Model.
  • XMPFiles for embedding serialized metadata in files, and for retrieving embedded metadata.


Adobe provides the XMP Toolkit free of charge under a BSD license. The Toolkit includes specification and usage documents (PDFs), API documentation (doxygen/javadoc), C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

 source code (XMPCore and XMPFiles) and Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

 source code (currently only XMPCore). XMPFiles is currently available as a C++/Java implementation in Windows, Mac OS, Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

/Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

.

Various XMP tools (read/write support)

  • ACDSee Pro
    ACDSee
    ACDSee is a shareware image organizer, viewer, and editor software for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X 10.5 and higher developed by ACD Systems. It was originally distributed as a 16-bit application for Windows 3.0 and later supplanted by a 32-bit version for Windows 95.ACDSee displays a tree view...

     can read/write XMP information for DNG, GIF, JPEG, PNG and TIFF files (MS Windows, Mac OS X).
  • Bibble5
    Bibble (software)
    Bibble is a digital imaging program for multiple platforms by Bibble Labs, designed to assist photographers in post-production work and efficient optimization of images created in the Raw image format.- Bibble 5 :...

     can read/write XMP information for RAW, JPG and TIFF files (MS Windows, Mac OS X, Linux).
  • CC PDF Converter
    CC PDF Converter
    CC PDF Converter is a free open source program that allows users to convert documents into PDF files on Microsoft Windows operating systems, while embedding a Creative Commons license....

     - A free open source (GPL) program to convert documents to PDF with embedded Creative-Commons license (MS Windows).
  • Daminion - can read/write XMP for JPEG, TIFF, DNG, PNG, GIF, PDF, MOV, AVI, ASF, MP2, and MP4 formats (MS Windows).
  • DBGallery
    DBGallery
    DBGallery is a Digital Asset Management software package. It has a special focus on utilizing image meta-data for finding, exploring and organizing photos. It is a multi-user system for use in organizations.- History :...

     - can read/write XMP for JPEG, RAW, TIFF, DNG, PNG, GIF (MS Windows).
  • digiKam
    DigiKam
    digiKam is an image organizer and editor using KDE Platform. It runs on most known desktop environments and window managers if the required libraries are installed. It supports all major image file formats, and can organize collections of photographs in directory-based albums, or dynamic albums by...

     - open source (GPL) image tagger and organiser (KDE).
  • ExifTool
    ExifTool
    ExifTool is a free software program for reading, writing, and manipulating image, audio, and video metadata. It is platform independent, available as both a Perl library and command-line application...

     by Phil Harvey, open source PERL module or command line.
  • FastPictureViewer
    Fast Picture Viewer
    FastPictureViewer is a commercial 32 and 64-bit image viewer for Windows 7, Vista and XP. Its aim is to facilitate quick review, rating and annotation of large quantities of digital images in the early steps of the digital workflow, with an emphasis on simplicity and speed.As of v1.6, a basic...

     - Image viewer (Windows) with XMP embedding and/or sidecar files creation (xmp:Rating, xmp:Label, photoshop:Urgency) (MS Windows)
  • F-Spot
    F-Spot
    F-Spot is an image organizer, designed to provide personal photo management for the GNOME desktop environment. The name is a play on the words F-Stop and G-Spot.-Features:...

     - Linux/GNOME photo manager and editor
  • Geeqie - Lightweight Gtk+ based image manager (formerly GQView)
  • Gwenview
    Gwenview
    Gwenview is an image viewer for the KDE Software Compilation desktop environment. The current maintainer is Aurélien Gâteau. The word "Gwen" means "white" in the Breton language and is commonly used as a first name....

     - Linux/KDE photo manager and editor
  • IDimager - DAM software
  • IMatch
    IMatch
    IMatch is shareware digital asset management application for Windows.IMatch is targeted at professional and serious amateur photographers because of its organizing functions and its noted capability for managing large collections .- Features :Imported images can be sorted and organized in categories...

     - includes extensive XMP support, with XMP editor, ratings, display and extensions provide a mapping from/to XMP (MS Windows)
  • iText
    IText
    iText is a free and open source library for creating and manipulating PDF files in Java. It was written by Bruno Lowagie, Paulo Soares, and others. As of version 5.0.0 it is distributed under the Affero General Public License version 3. Previous versions of iText were distributed under the...

     - Open Source Java library that can read and write XMP embedded in PDF files.
  • MetadataTouch - can read/write XMP for JPEG, JPEG 2000, PNG, AVI, WAV, and MP4 formats (MS Windows).
  • Metalith - can read and compare Exif, IPTC and XMP
    XMP
    XMP may refer to:In software and data standards:* Extensible Metadata Platform, Adobe's standard for processing and embedding metadata in various file formats*EXtreme Memory ProfileIn gaming:...

     metadata of multiple JPG and TIFF files
  • Microsoft Windows Vista - Photo Gallery saves tags to XMP (MS Windows)
  • Microsoft Pro Photo Tools - Geocoding and XMP support (MS Windows, .NET 3.0)
  • PicaJet - Can read XMP for JPG, TIFF and DNG formats (MS Windows).
  • Shotwell
    Shotwell (software)
    Shotwell is an image organizer designed to provide personal photo management for the GNOME desktop environment. It has replaced F-Spot as the standard image tool for several GNOME-based Linux distributions, including Fedora in version 13 and Ubuntu in its 10.10 Maverick Meerkat...

     - Linux/GNOME photo manager, can read/write Exif, IPTC and XMP
    XMP
    XMP may refer to:In software and data standards:* Extensible Metadata Platform, Adobe's standard for processing and embedding metadata in various file formats*EXtreme Memory ProfileIn gaming:...

     metadata
  • Windows Imaging Component
    Windows Imaging Component
    The Windows Imaging Component is a Component Object Model based imaging codec framework introduced in Windows Vista and Windows XP Service Pack 3 for working with and processing digital images and image metadata...

     - Microsoft library for working with and processing digital images and image metadata (MS Windows)
  • Windows Live Photo Gallery
    Windows Live Photo Gallery
    Windows Live Photo Gallery is a photo management and photo sharing application released as a part of Microsoft's Windows Live initiative. It is an upgraded version of Windows Photo Gallery, which is a part of Windows Vista....

     - a photo management and sharing application released as a part of Microsoft's Windows Live initiative. It is an upgraded version of Windows Photo Gallery, which is a part of Windows Vista.
  • XnView
    XnView
    XnView is a cross-platform image viewer used for viewing, converting, organising and editing graphical & video files. It is free of charge for private, educational and non-profit organisations...

     - can read/write Exif, IPTC and XMP
    XMP
    XMP may refer to:In software and data standards:* Extensible Metadata Platform, Adobe's standard for processing and embedding metadata in various file formats*EXtreme Memory ProfileIn gaming:...

     information.
  • Zoner Photo Studio
    Zoner Photo Studio
    Zoner Photo Studio is a software application for viewing, editing, organizing, archiving, publishing and sharing digital images. It also supports GPS-assisted geotagging and creation of 3D pictures.- Versions :...

     - can read/write Exif, IPTC and XMP
    XMP
    XMP may refer to:In software and data standards:* Extensible Metadata Platform, Adobe's standard for processing and embedding metadata in various file formats*EXtreme Memory ProfileIn gaming:...

     information for DNG, JPEG, TIFF, HDP and various RAW files (MS Windows).


The mainstream IPTC Information Interchange Model
IPTC Information Interchange Model
The Information Interchange Model is a file structure and set of metadata attributes that can be applied to text, images and other media types...

 editing tools also support editing of XMP data.

Licensing

Adobe has a trademark on XMP, and retains control over the specification.

Initially, Adobe released source code for the XMP SDK under a license called the ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED — OPEN SOURCE LICENSE. The compatibility of this license with the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

 has been questioned. The license is not listed on the list maintained by the Open Source Initiative
Open Source Initiative
The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting open source software.The organization was founded in February 1998, by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond, prompted by Netscape Communications Corporation publishing the source code for its flagship Netscape Communicator product...

 and is different from the licenses for most of their open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 software.

On May 14, 2007, Adobe released the XMP Toolkit SDK under a standard BSD license.

On August 28, 2008, Adobe posted a public patent license for the XMP specification.

History

XMP was first introduced by Adobe
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...

 in April 2001 as part of the Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat is a family of application software developed by Adobe Systems to view, create, manipulate, print and manage files in Portable Document Format . All members of the family, except Adobe Reader , are commercial software, while the latter is available as freeware and can be downloaded...

 5.0 software product.

On June 21, 2004, Adobe announced its collaboration with the International Press Telecommunications Council
International Press Telecommunications Council
The International Press Telecommunications Council, based in London, United Kingdom, is a consortium of the world's major news agencies and news industry vendors...

. In July 2004, a working group led by Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...

' Gunar Penikis and IPTC's Michael Steidl was set up, and volunteers were recruited from AFP (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse is a French news agency, the oldest one in the world, and one of the three largest with Associated Press and Reuters. It is also the largest French news agency. Currently, its CEO is Emmanuel Hoog and its news director Philippe Massonnet...

, Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...

, ControlledVocabulary.com, IDEAlliance, Mainichi Shimbun
Mainichi Shimbun
The is one of the major newspapers in Japan, published by .-History:The history of the Mainichi Shimbun begins with founding of two papers during the Meiji period. The Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun was founded first, in 1872. The Mainichi claims that it is the oldest existing Japanese daily newspaper...

, Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...

, and others, to develop the new schema.

The "IPTC Core Schema for XMP" version 1.0 specification was released publicly on March 21, 2005. A set of custom panels for Adobe Photoshop CS can be downloaded from the IPTC. The package includes a User's Guide, example photos with embedded XMP information, the specification document, and an implementation guide for developers. The "User's Guide to the IPTC Core" goes into detail about how each of the fields should be used and is also available directly as a PDF (see external links below). The next version of the Adobe Creative Suite (CS2) included these custom panels as part of its default set.

The Windows Photo Gallery
Windows Photo Gallery
Windows Photo Gallery is a photo management, tagging, and editing tool developed by Microsoft, and is included with all editions of Windows Vista...

, released with Windows Vista
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...

, offers support for the XMP standard, the first time Microsoft has released metadata
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...

 compatibility beyond Exif.

Location in file types

For more details, the XMP specification listed below has details on embedding.
  • TIFF
    Tagged Image File Format
    TIFF is a file format for storing images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and both amateur and professional photographers in general. As of 2009, it is under the control of Adobe Systems...

     - Tag 700
  • JPEG
    JPEG
    In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....

     - Application segment 1 (0xFFE1) with segment header "http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/\x00"
  • JPEG 2000
    JPEG 2000
    JPEG 2000 is an image compression standard and coding system. It was created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee in 2000 with the intention of superseding their original discrete cosine transform-based JPEG standard with a newly designed, wavelet-based method...

     - 'uuid' atom with UID of 0xBE7ACFCB97A942E89C71999491E3AFAC
  • PNG - inside a 'iTXt' text block with the keyword 'XML:com.adobe.xmp'
  • GIF
    GIF
    The Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability....

     - as an Application Extension with identifier "XMP Data" and authentication code "XMP"
  • PDF
    Portable Document Format
    Portable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....

     - embedded in a metadata stream contained in a PDF object
  • For file formats that have no support for embedded XMP data, this data can be stored in external .xmp sidecar file
    Sidecar file
    Sidecar files, also known as buddy files or connected files, are files which store data which is not supported by the source file format.For each source file one or more sidecar files can be created...

    s.

See also

  • IPTC Information Interchange Model
    IPTC Information Interchange Model
    The Information Interchange Model is a file structure and set of metadata attributes that can be applied to text, images and other media types...

  • Resource Description Framework (RDF)
    Resource Description Framework
    The Resource Description Framework is a family of World Wide Web Consortium specifications originally designed as a metadata data model...

  • Astronomy Visualization Metadata (AVM)
    Astronomy Visualization Metadata
    Astronomy Visualization Metadata is a standard for tagging digital astronomical images stored in formats such as JPEG, GIF, PNG and TIFF. The AVM standard extends the concept of Extensible Metadata Platform headers to include useful astronomical information about the subject of the image as well...


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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