Doug Kerr
Well-known member
It is our practice (I must admit, not always followed) to include a copyright notice in all image files that leave us electronically (including those posted on this or other forums).
We put the notice in three "places" in the file:
• Exif metadata
• IPTC metadata - IIF
• IPTC metadata - XMP
Until recently, the copyright notice read:
We had recently changed the basic form to this:
The inclusion of the copyright symbol ("©") was intended to increase the global effectivity of the notice.
We will probably soon convert to the use of Photoshop CS5 as our normal image editor (rather than Picture Publisher 10 - "PP10"). One motivation for this is to facilitate the application of metadata to our images, in these regards:
• Photoshop will preserve the basic Exif metadata from our camera files. It discards the MakerNote information, but we can live with that. [PP10 attempted to preserve the Exif metadata, but bungled the job, such that some items were lost and there were format errors such that some Exif-displaying applications would decline to report the metadata.]
• Photoshop will preserve IPTC metadata present in a file. {PP10 will not preserve IPTC metadata.]
• Photoshop allows us to apply a standard set of basic IPTC metadata (in both IIM and XMP forms), and supplementary Exif metadata, from a stored template, easily recalled. [PP10 has no integrated provision for applying IPTC metadata.]
A wrinkle is that Photoshop encodes characters in the windows-1252 character set (the basic character set for "US" Windows systems) that are beyond the ASCII character set (that includes the character "©") in UTF-8 encoded form, whether for including in IPTC metadata (of either flavor) or in Exif metadata.
That is wholly appropriate for IPTC metadata, but is questionable in Exif metadata. There is no provision in the applicable industry standards for UTF-8 encoding of information in Exif metadata (other than a special provision for the UserComment item.)
How then should these "beyond ASCII" characters be encoded in Exif metadata? Well, here it becomes sticky: the applicable industry standards do not "allow" their inclusion at all (only ASCII characters). But an obvious workaround is to encode them just as they are encoded in Windows: in windows-1252 form (one byte each, with code values greater than 0x9F). Thus, "©" would be encoded as the byte 0xA9.
All Exif-reading applications I know of will accept this encoding and properly display the character.
But Photoshop, in its mindless commitment to UTF-8, encodes "©", in all three metadata locations, as the byte sequence 0xC2 0xA9 (the UTF-8 representation).
However, most metadata-reading applications have no reason to expect UTF-8 encoded characters in Exif metadata. So they render this sequence as "©", nilkulturniy at best. (An exception is BreezeBrowser which, understanding the Photoshop idiosyncrasy, will decode UTF-8 encoded characters in any metadata location.)
In any case, as we convert to the use of Photoshop as our day-to-day image editor, we will change our practice so that our copyright notice will read:
We will look into the possibility that Photoshop will honor a specially-constructed template that will omit the "©" in the Exif metadata but include it in the two forms of IPTC metadata. I'll let you all know how that goes.
We put the notice in three "places" in the file:
• Exif metadata
• IPTC metadata - IIF
• IPTC metadata - XMP
Until recently, the copyright notice read:
Copyright 2010 Douglas A. Kerr
We had recently changed the basic form to this:
Copyright © 2010 Douglas A. Kerr. All rights reserved.
The inclusion of the copyright symbol ("©") was intended to increase the global effectivity of the notice.
We will probably soon convert to the use of Photoshop CS5 as our normal image editor (rather than Picture Publisher 10 - "PP10"). One motivation for this is to facilitate the application of metadata to our images, in these regards:
• Photoshop will preserve the basic Exif metadata from our camera files. It discards the MakerNote information, but we can live with that. [PP10 attempted to preserve the Exif metadata, but bungled the job, such that some items were lost and there were format errors such that some Exif-displaying applications would decline to report the metadata.]
• Photoshop will preserve IPTC metadata present in a file. {PP10 will not preserve IPTC metadata.]
• Photoshop allows us to apply a standard set of basic IPTC metadata (in both IIM and XMP forms), and supplementary Exif metadata, from a stored template, easily recalled. [PP10 has no integrated provision for applying IPTC metadata.]
A wrinkle is that Photoshop encodes characters in the windows-1252 character set (the basic character set for "US" Windows systems) that are beyond the ASCII character set (that includes the character "©") in UTF-8 encoded form, whether for including in IPTC metadata (of either flavor) or in Exif metadata.
That is wholly appropriate for IPTC metadata, but is questionable in Exif metadata. There is no provision in the applicable industry standards for UTF-8 encoding of information in Exif metadata (other than a special provision for the UserComment item.)
How then should these "beyond ASCII" characters be encoded in Exif metadata? Well, here it becomes sticky: the applicable industry standards do not "allow" their inclusion at all (only ASCII characters). But an obvious workaround is to encode them just as they are encoded in Windows: in windows-1252 form (one byte each, with code values greater than 0x9F). Thus, "©" would be encoded as the byte 0xA9.
All Exif-reading applications I know of will accept this encoding and properly display the character.
But Photoshop, in its mindless commitment to UTF-8, encodes "©", in all three metadata locations, as the byte sequence 0xC2 0xA9 (the UTF-8 representation).
However, most metadata-reading applications have no reason to expect UTF-8 encoded characters in Exif metadata. So they render this sequence as "©", nilkulturniy at best. (An exception is BreezeBrowser which, understanding the Photoshop idiosyncrasy, will decode UTF-8 encoded characters in any metadata location.)
In any case, as we convert to the use of Photoshop as our day-to-day image editor, we will change our practice so that our copyright notice will read:
Copyright 2010 Douglas A. Kerr. All rights reserved.
We will look into the possibility that Photoshop will honor a specially-constructed template that will omit the "©" in the Exif metadata but include it in the two forms of IPTC metadata. I'll let you all know how that goes.