The use of Exif Metadata in a newspaper workfl ow

Simon Spann

Trinity Mirror Newspapers

June 2007

Daily Mirror

Sunday Mirror

The People

Magazine titles

Regional titles

Contract Print

Trinity Mirror is the UK’s largest newspaper publisher, with a portfolio of more than 500 media brands

This includes some 240 local and regional newspapers, fi ve national newspapers and four sports titles, as well as over 300 websites

With its headquarters at Canary Wharf in London, the Group employs approximately 10,000 people in centres across the UK

The potential benefi ts of Exif Metadata...

• Facilitates faster processing of images

• Ensures greater consistency

• Removes subjective evaluation and correction

• Improves image quality

• “Future proofs”

• Makes economic sense

So what is Exif Metadata?

Exchangeable Image File Format

The information captured by your camera at the point at which a picture is takene.g. compression applied, colour information, shutter speed, time and date etc.

IPTC Metadata

The information entered by the photographer once the picture has been taken

Aids in the storage and retrieval of fi les and the easy identifi cation and captioning of pictures

Helps eliminate copyright issues

What is XMP?

XMP is the acronym for Extensible Metadata Platform a standard developed by Adobe

Adobe products such as Bridge, Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop store metadata using this standard

and fi nally a brief word on XML...

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a general-purpose markup language

Facilitates the sharing of data across different information systems

XML is recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium

It’s a fee-free open standard

Image Capture...

• Almost all digital cameras store extra information, called metadata, with your pictures

• Digital fi les are accessible to the paper more quickly and effi ciently than ever before

• Thanks to the signifi cant advances made by camera manufacturers, pictures are now much easier to take

• DSLR (Digital Single Lens Refl ex) camera’s are more accessible to users

Image Capture...

• The vast majority of images from DSLR cameras are in either thesRGB or Adobe RGB colour space

• It seems to logical to avoid multiple conversions

• Newspapers control of incoming pictures is limited, given the wide variety sources

• Camera manufacturers need to ensure that information is embeddedin a non-proprietary format

Camera raw fi les...

• Camera raw fi le formats are proprietary

• A raw image fi le contains data from the image sensor of a digital camera or scanner

• Raw fi les are so named because they are not yet processed and ready to be used with a bitmap graphics editor or printed

• They contain no CIE white point reference

• Further steps are required to produce a JPEG fi le

The Photoshop Raw format

• Don’t confuse Photoshop raw with camera raw fi le formats which are proprietary formats developed by various camera manufacturers

Adobe RGB may offer a more appropriate colour space for transformationto press CMYK than that of sRGB

Magazine products have a larger colour gamut than that of the web-offset newspaper gamut

Adobe RGB

sRGB

High Paper QualityCMYK

Current Trinity Mirror (Nationals) Workfl ow

CMYK PDF (1.3) pages

transmitted toPrint Sites

RGB to CMYKconversion in

via ICC profi les(IFRA 26)

RGBimage manipulationprior to conversion

PICTUREAGENCIES

Incoming picture fi les

PICTUREDESKS

PICDARIMAGE LIBRARY

10-15000 pictures arereceived

on a daily basis

Potential problems with Exif...

Choice of pictures is content driven

Only 10-15 percent of incoming fi les contained meaningful Exif in terms of conversion

Inappropriate Exif data for the subject matter

Live situations diffi cult to control or assess

No automated software currently available, capable of handling conversionsin an effi cient and appropriate manner

Workfl ow Issues...

Image correction is subjective i.e. Operator dependant

Time constraints impact on the ability to achieve optimal results

Multiple conversion/correction of image fi les may take place

Image sources fl owing into the Daily Mirror titles...

ISDN

(Group/Personal)

FTP (fi le transfer protocol)

Getty’s

(Group)

FTP(fi le transfer protocol)

(Group/Personal)

E-LOADERS

(Group/Personal)

PICTURE AGENCIES

Press Association (PA)Associated Press (AP)

Reuters Agence France-Presse (AFP)

PICDARIMAGE LIBRARY

10-15000 pictures arereceived

on a daily basis

Image sources fl owing into the Daily Mirror titles...

PICDAR

10-15000 pictures arereceived

on a daily basis

LIBRARY DATABASE

Saves proprietary Picdar EXIF-Jpeg with unique

reference number (URN)All IPTC and EXIF metadata

is preserved

PICTURE DESK

Daily Mirror

Sunday Mirror

The People

PICTURE EDITORSAccess to personal and group

databasesImages transferred to relevant

queues

NEWS DESK SPORTS DESK FEATURES DESK

WORKINGPICTURES

TIFF, EPSFEXIF-JPEG

(No EXIF metadata retained)

Potential Workfl ow...

PICTUREAGENCIES

CMYK PDF pages transmitted to

Print SitesIncoming picture fi les

PICTUREDESKS

PICDARIMAGE LIBRARY

10-15000 pictures arereceived

on a daily basis

AutomaticConversion

of Exif images

Manualintervention intervention

on“failed images”“failed images”

Automated batchimage

processing

Vettingof

completed fi les

What I’d like to see…

Further development of software capable of using Exif metadataProducts such as Agfa Intellitune

Education of photographers (in terms of manipulating images prior to us receiving them)