Image::IPTCInfo README
by Josh Carter <josh@multipart-mixed.com>

OVERVIEW

Ever wish you add information to your photos like a caption, the place
you took it, the date, and perhaps even keywords and categories? You
already can. The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC)
defines a format for exchanging meta-information in news content, and
that includes photographs. You can embed all kinds of information in
your images. The trick is putting it to use.

That's where this IPTCInfo Perl module comes into play. You can embed
information using many programs, including Adobe Photoshop, and
IPTCInfo will let your web server -- and other automated server
programs -- pull it back out. You can use the information directly in
Perl programs, export it to XML, or even export SQL statements ready
to be fed into a database.

As of version 1.5, you can also add IPTC info to JPEG files. Now
marking all your images with your name (or a folder full of images
with a date and location, whatever) becomes a piece of cake. Great
news for people who can't stand the tedium of using the "File Info..."
command in Photoshop a billion times!

NEW FEATURES IN 1.7

Just a couple bug fixes (see Changes file).

NEW FEATURES IN 1.6

Better support all-around for JPEGs. It will now handle all JPEGs
instead of insisting on JFIF; notably, EXIF files generated by digital
cameras are now supported. SaveAs() is also improved with an important
bug fix. (If got the error message in Photoshop, "this file is not
supported by this version of Photoshop" after saving a file with
IPTCInfo, that's fixed.) I'd still suggest trying SaveAs() on copies
of images, but I believe all the kinks have been worked out.

NEW FEATURES IN 1.5

You can now modify IPTC info objects and resave the file. Thus, you
can very easily do something like add copyright notices to all your
images, set the creation date of all images in a folder to something,
etc.. Super-huge bonus. NOTE: Please only work with *copies* of your
images, or use SaveAs(), since I don't have enough field reports to
say the code is definitely bulletproof.

Also, file parsing on JPEGs is much smarter. IPTCInfo should always be
able to find the info, even if there's other meta-data in your images
(e.g. EXIF) that messed up previous versions.

INSTALLING

Instaling IPTCInfo is just like any other Perl module. Run the
following from the module's director:

  perl Makefile.PL
  make
  make test
  make install

The last line must be done with superuser access if you're installing
into the system's perl libraries (default).

DOCUMENTATION

Run: perldoc Image::IPTCInfo

PROBLEMS?

Send me an email with any questions, comments, bug reports, etc:
josh@multipart-mixed.com

CREDITS

IPTCInfo has turned out to be very popular -- much more than I
expected. That means I've had a wonderful user base sending me emails
with suggestions, bug reports, test files, and so forth. Many thanks
go to all who have helped! The test files have been especially useful
in ensuring compatibility with all graphics programs and digital
cameras. I'm sure I've left some people off this list by accident, but
here are some users who have contributed to IPTCInfo:

Dirk Koppers                  Paul Bayer
Murray Chapman                Lee J Carmichael
Sean Warburton                Alfred A. Lorber
Paul Krohn                    Nils Rossmann
Alexander Ng                  

My apologies again to people whose names I've missed.