1Image::IPTCInfo README 2by Josh Carter <josh@multipart-mixed.com> 3 4OVERVIEW 5 6Ever wish you add information to your photos like a caption, the place 7you took it, the date, and perhaps even keywords and categories? You 8already can. The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) 9defines a format for exchanging meta-information in news content, and 10that includes photographs. You can embed all kinds of information in 11your images. The trick is putting it to use. 12 13That's where this IPTCInfo Perl module comes into play. You can embed 14information using many programs, including Adobe Photoshop, and 15IPTCInfo will let your web server -- and other automated server 16programs -- pull it back out. You can use the information directly in 17Perl programs, export it to XML, or even export SQL statements ready 18to be fed into a database. 19 20As of version 1.5, you can also add IPTC info to JPEG files. Now 21marking all your images with your name (or a folder full of images 22with a date and location, whatever) becomes a piece of cake. Great 23news for people who can't stand the tedium of using the "File Info..." 24command in Photoshop a billion times! 25 26NEW FEATURES IN 1.7 27 28Just a couple bug fixes (see Changes file). 29 30NEW FEATURES IN 1.6 31 32Better support all-around for JPEGs. It will now handle all JPEGs 33instead of insisting on JFIF; notably, EXIF files generated by digital 34cameras are now supported. SaveAs() is also improved with an important 35bug fix. (If got the error message in Photoshop, "this file is not 36supported by this version of Photoshop" after saving a file with 37IPTCInfo, that's fixed.) I'd still suggest trying SaveAs() on copies 38of images, but I believe all the kinks have been worked out. 39 40NEW FEATURES IN 1.5 41 42You can now modify IPTC info objects and resave the file. Thus, you 43can very easily do something like add copyright notices to all your 44images, set the creation date of all images in a folder to something, 45etc.. Super-huge bonus. NOTE: Please only work with *copies* of your 46images, or use SaveAs(), since I don't have enough field reports to 47say the code is definitely bulletproof. 48 49Also, file parsing on JPEGs is much smarter. IPTCInfo should always be 50able to find the info, even if there's other meta-data in your images 51(e.g. EXIF) that messed up previous versions. 52 53INSTALLING 54 55Instaling IPTCInfo is just like any other Perl module. Run the 56following from the module's director: 57 58 perl Makefile.PL 59 make 60 make test 61 make install 62 63The last line must be done with superuser access if you're installing 64into the system's perl libraries (default). 65 66DOCUMENTATION 67 68Run: perldoc Image::IPTCInfo 69 70PROBLEMS? 71 72Send me an email with any questions, comments, bug reports, etc: 73josh@multipart-mixed.com 74 75CREDITS 76 77IPTCInfo has turned out to be very popular -- much more than I 78expected. That means I've had a wonderful user base sending me emails 79with suggestions, bug reports, test files, and so forth. Many thanks 80go to all who have helped! The test files have been especially useful 81in ensuring compatibility with all graphics programs and digital 82cameras. I'm sure I've left some people off this list by accident, but 83here are some users who have contributed to IPTCInfo: 84 85Dirk Koppers Paul Bayer 86Murray Chapman Lee J Carmichael 87Sean Warburton Alfred A. Lorber 88Paul Krohn Nils Rossmann 89Alexander Ng 90 91My apologies again to people whose names I've missed. 92