Microsoft is committed to kicking up a notch the level of interoperability when it comes to metadata in digital photography. The Redmond giant, along with Adobe, Apple, Canon, Nokia and Sony, namely the Metadata Working Group, has released the first specification designed to deliver the necessary guidelines for the metadata of digital images to be preserved and become interoperable not only across software solutions, but also across services and devices.

 

“Lack of metadata interoperability has led to significant frustration for both consumer and pro photographers, and our companies have spent considerable resources trying to deal with the problem,” said Josh Weisberg, chairman and founder of the Metadata Working Group and director of Microsoft’s Rich Media Group.

 

The end purpose of the Metadata Working Group is to bring to the center stage a single standard for metadata. According to Microsoft, the main focus of the group remains on the still photo metadata, but the members of the initiative intend to go even further than that. However, for the initial milestone, the Metadata Working Group's specification will tackle the most common issues with the “data about data,” namely the ubiquitous problems faced by photographers when it comes down to tagging their images across various software, devices and services.

 

Microsoft has also revealed that, as the work of the Metadata Working Group will progress, the organization will also deal with additional issues, including overlapping content, consistency and interoperability.

 

“Getting these industry leaders together to rally around metadata interoperability is a real turning point, one that we believe will result in technology that’s easier for photographers to use. We’ve been working very hard to produce guidelines that are compatible across all applications, devices and services and that provide best practices for how, when and where metadata should be changed in popular file formats.” Weisberg further explained.