IPTC-IIM

File Format
Name	IPTC-IIM
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Metadata IPTC-IIM

IPTC is a metadata format used in some types of image files, named after the International Press Telecommunications Council, which developed this standard, intended to be used in the news media industry for pictures transmitted in conjunction with news stories with accompanying captions and other information. It is sometimes referred to as IPTC-NAA because the Newspaper Association of America is also involved in developing these standards.

Format

Structurally, IPTC is a sequence of data blocks, which the specification calls "DataSets". Each DataSet contains a 1-byte "record number" and a 1-byte "DataSet number", which together indicate the type of data stored in that DataSet.

Take note of DataSet {1, 90} (Coded Character Set), which indicates the character encoding used in other DataSets.

Multi-byte integers use big-endian byte order.

Related formats

• In a TIFF file, IPTC uses tag 33723.
• IPTC may be embedded in Photoshop Image Resources metadata, with Resource ID 0x0404.
• JPEG files often contain IPTC embedded in Photoshop Image Resources.

Specifications

• IPTC version 4.1
• Request for UUID Registration of IPTC Information (Embedding IPTC in JPEG 2000)

References

• ExifTool IPTC Tags
• Software supporting IPTC photo metadata standards IIM and "IPTC Core"
  • Software for Rights Test i.e. which software supports embedding rights metadata.
• Some more info on IPTC/NAA formats and standards.