Exposing Metadata: Use Cases

Use Case: Exposing Image Descriptions

Exposing metadata image descriptions like Exchangeable Image File (EXIF), International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC), and Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP), so that users can access them.

Scenarios

• A photographer takes a photo with his SLR digital camera. He describes the image in camera via text input (LCD monitor and multi-selector). It is stored in EXIF. He uploads that image to a photo image gallery application that does not offer a means to enter a text alternative. He would like to have that text description available for his visually impaired friends to access directly.
• A graphic designer creates an image in Photoshop. From the file menu, he chooses "File Info" then enters a IPTC headline and description. He uploads that image to a web page. A visually impaired person wants to directly access that headline and description.

Requirements

• A way to directly access EXIF, IPTC, XMP data

Possible Solutions

• Dom access
• Native Browser exposing
  • Maybe ala:
    • Exif Viewer Firefox Extension Displays the Exif and IPTC data in local and remote JPEG images.
    • FxIF Firefox Extension View EXIF data in image properties
    • Chrome exif-vewer-extension
    • Opera longdesc extension Respects a web page's visual design yet provides critical functionality. It will "Find things that have more description available, and show them on demand. Where images (or something else) have a longdesc attribute, the extension notifies by changing its icon and title, and enables the user to see a list of the descriptions available, in its popup. When the user selects an item in the popup, a new window opens with the description in it." TellMeMore blog post
    • iCab has native support for longdesc via context menu.
    • Longdesc Firefox Extension - adds a "View Image Longdesc" option to the image context menu that activates a link to a description

References

• RDFPic: a tool to embed an RDF description of a picture into the picture itself. The source code and documentation is available, as is a ready-to-run jar file.
• PHOTO-RDF: Describing and Retrieving Photos using RDF and HTTP.
• Flickr photo info to RDF image description
• Image Description
  • Image Description Rdf Examples
• Metadata Working Group (MWG)
• International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC)
• Exchangeable Image File (EXIF)
• Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) - Adobe.
• The PHP JPEG Metadata Toolkit
• CGM (Computer Graphics Metafile
• JPEG Metadata Format Specification and Usage Notes
• Image MetaData JPEG - Perl extension for showing/modifying JPEG (meta)data.
• PNG Metadata Format Specification
• Labeling Digital Photos
• Media metadata properties - Rob Burns.
• DOM method to return the EXIF metadata for an image as a JSON dictionary - T.V. Raman.
• Please review use cases relating to embedding micro-data in text/html - Ian Hickson.