I decided to write my own perl script to determine how PS manages IPTC content. Info about the script and for obtaining it is at the end of this posting. Here’s the results of the experiment.
Purpose: to see what IPTC fields were populated by using the "File Info" dialog box in PS7. Since the field names in the dialog box do not match the fields in the IPTC standard, the questions are: (1) how do the fields in the File Info dialog map to the IPTC fields? and (2) what fields are not translated to IPTC, and effectively invisible to apps outside of PS7?
Method: Open an image file, and use "File Info" to fill in every field with exactly the same text as the field header. So, "title" was given the value of "title", "author" was given the value of "author", etc. Fields that have dropdown lists, such as "priority" and "copyright status" were given the last value.
The file was then saved as a jpg and then examined using my itpc perl script.
Results: The following output was given (iptc field names on left, values populated by PS7’s File Info dilaog on right). If a field has a blank value (""), PS didn’t populate that field with a value.
"object name" = "title"
"originating program" = ""
"edit status" = ""
"program version" = ""
"editorial update" = ""
"object cycle" = ""
"urgency" = "8"
"by-line" = "author"
"subject reference" = ""
"by-line title" = "author’s position" "category" = "CAT"
"city" = "city"
"fixture identifier" = ""
"sub-location" = ""
"content location code" = ""
"province/state" = "state"
"content location name" = ""
"country/primary location code" = "" "release date" = ""
"country/primary location name" = "country" "release time" = ""
"original transmission reference" = "transmission reference" "expiration date" = ""
"headline" = "headline"
"expiration time" = ""
"credit" = "credit"
"special instructions" = "instructions" "source" = "source"
"action advised" = ""
"copyright notice" = "copyright notice" "reference service" = ""
"contact" = ""
"reference date" = ""
"caption/abstract" = "caption"
"reference number" = ""
"writer/editor" = "caption writer"
"date created" = "20031017"
"image type" = ""
"time created" = ""
"image orientation" = ""
"digital creation date" = ""
"language identifier" = ""
"digital creation time" = ""
keywords = "keyword1" "keyword2"
NOTE: The "Urgency" field was given the value of "low" in the PS7 dialog. This translated to "8" in the IPTC field.
As for question (2), what "File Info" fields are NOT translated to IPTC headers, the results are:
Job Name
Copyright Status
Owner URL
Conclusions:
1) PS should formally document what is does with IPTC headers and formalize its policy regarding what headers it will populate, where it will get that info, what is done "automatically", and finalize UI methods for setting or overriding default values.
2) PS should make extensive use of the info in EXIF, if available, and automatically fill in fields such as "orientation", "date created", "time created" and other data. (currently, EXIF info is ignored by PS7.)
3) PS should flesh out the File Info dialog to allow for users to completely fill in all available IPTC fields for any given image. The user interface should break the dialog into two parts: what is IPTC-specific data, and what is PS-specific data, so as to avoid confusion/assumptions.
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The script I wrote can be obtained from me by emailing me at >
