Edit IPTC Metadata to Make Files Searchable

Metadata, the data that describes your content, helps you and others find specific files. The efficiency with which you or others can find an image increases your Library's market value and can save your staff time and money. A good metadata workflow is crucial to a successful media library.

IPTC is user-editable image metadata. The IPTC Photo Metadata standard is the most widely used standard because of its universal acceptance among photographers, distributors, news organizations, archivists, and developers. Common photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Photo Mechanic, and PhotoShelter for Brands allows you to edit image IPTC metadata. PhotoShelter for Brands allows Admin, Editors, and Taggers to edit image IPTC metadata in batch or on individual images. You can also apply select metadata fields to Video and other file types.

• Editing Metadata for a Single File
• Editing Metadata for a Batch of Files
• Editing Video, Audio or Document Metadata
• IPTC Metadata Tips
• How Metadata is Displayed on the Portal
• Other kinds of Metadata
• How metadata is used outside the Portal

Editing Metadata for a Single File

1. In your Library, select a Gallery containing files
2. Select a file in the center pane
3. In the right pane, click the pen icon next to Metadata
4. Edit your metadata as needed
5. Click the ✓ to save your changes.

Note: You can use the left or right arrows on your keyboard to move to the next file to repeat this process.

Editing Metadata for a Batch of Files

While editing multiple images at once, you have the ability to append, replace or delete existing metadata.

1. In your Library, select a Gallery containing images
2. Select multiple images in the center pane
3. Click Batch edit metadata in the right pane
   
   
   
   
4. Edit your metadata as needed
   1. Choose the behavior of each field you edited (you can append, replace or delete existing metadata). Note that metadata changes cannot be undone.
      
      
5. Once you are happy with your changes, click Save

Editing Video, Audio or Document Metadata

Unlike images, other file types do not (yet) have a standard set of metadata fields. As such, we have created some basic fields to help make these files searchable and discoverable while they are stored in your account. The following fields are supported for video, audio and document files:

• Description/Caption
• Title
• Keywords

Note: You can select a mixture of images with video, audio or document files, but only changes to the supported fields for each file type will be applied. 

IPTC Metadata Tips

The only IPTC metadata fields that are indexed for file search in PhotoShelter for Brands are:

• Description/Caption
• Title
• Keywords
• Persons Shown
• City
• State
• Country

PhotoShelter for Brands also indexes the filename when you search the Library or your Invited Users search the Portal.

If you want to be able to search for a term within a singular IPTC Metadata field (Keywords but not Description/Caption, for example) make sure the words you have typed in the Keywords box are not also typed in the Description/Caption (and vice versa). Similarly, if you have important information that you wish to be searchable in the Copyright or Credit/Provider fields, be sure to also add that information to a searchable field, like Keywords.

Library Staff can use the "Contained In" field to search within a specific Gallery in PhotoShelter for Brands, but cannot search within a specific Collection (this is because files live in Galleries, not Collections). If you want a way to narrow down your results by Collection, you might want to apply the Collection title as a Keyword to the files nested within Galleries within that Collection. That way, a search for "Keyword & Collection_Name" will return matches within a specific Collection.

You may consider adding a Gallery name as a Keyword to your files. That way, if an Invited User is viewing a single image on the portal and sees the clickable Keyword buttons at the bottom of the right pane, clicking the Gallery name  Keyword will take them to a new search results page that is essentially a re-creation of the Gallery's contents.

Editing the IPTC Metadata of a file that has a virtual copy will edit the metadata on all copies.

IPTC Description/Caption also functions as Alt Text.

Non-English language is supported.

How Metadata is Displayed on the Portal

The following fields are displayed on the right pane of the single image view of the Portal:

• IPTC Headline
  • If there is no IPTC Headline, the topmost line will default to displaying the IPTC Title; if there is no IPTC Title, then it will default to displaying Filename.
• IPTC Description/Caption
• IPTC Headline
• IPTC Title
• Filename
• Copyright
• Uploaded date
• Modified date
• Image Size
• License Expiration Date (non-IPTC metadata field from the License Alerts workflow)
• IPTC Usage Rights
• Custom metadata fields (non-IPTC custom metadata fields that you can set up to show on your Portal)
• IPTC Keywords

This is how it will appear on the Portal if you have added metadata in every single field:

Other kinds of Metadata

RAW file (DNG)

IPTC metadata edits applied to DNG files will not embed on the original file when downloaded from PhotoShelter for Brands. You can find more information about RAW files in Prepare Your Files for Upload.

EXIF

EXIF is part of the automatically recorded metadata of an image. EXIF data cannot be altered by most image editing software, nor PhotoShelter for Brands.

GPS

Once limited to the military, GPS is commonplace on most smartphones. GPS uses a set of geosynchronous satellites to provide exact longitude and latitude coordinates that can be accurate to within a few feet. Although most smartphones automatically append GPS data, most professional DSLRs require an external GPS unit to annotate this information.

If GPS data is available for a photo, it will be recorded in the EXIF GPS field.

The downside to GPS is that it automatically records the location of the camera, not what the camera is looking at. This is where other IPTC Location fields can provide more accuracy.

How metadata is used outside the Portal

Files within galleries with "Everyone" visibility are publicly searchable by any Portal visitor, and can also be indexed by external search engines, such as Google.

PhotoShelter for Brands embeds some IPTC metadata in screen-resolution images, so that publicly searchable images have more contextual info available. The embedded IPTC fields are:

• Author (also known as Creator)
• Credit/Provider (also known as Credit Line)
• Copyright (also known as Copyright Notice)
• Headline
• Contact Email
• Contact Phone
• Contact URL

In 2018, Google Images added more rights-related metadata into a new "Image credits" section for search results. This displays metadata from the IPTC Creator, Credit, and Copyright fields when available.

Read more about how these fields are indexed on the official IPTC site.