Photos Export: XMP vs IMTC?

IPTC is an archival standard which stands for "International Press Telecommunications Council". It was developed a standard for information that can be embedded into a digital photo.

XMP Files (Extensible Metadata Platform files) hold the image metadata of your photo that was created by Adobe. When you make any changes to your photo in Lightroom or Photoshop, they are written into the XMP file. These files are used to remember image adjustments and save the editing information applied to a photo. Originally designed for RAW photos, which are sensor dumps. Photos can create them when exporting any file, RAW, regular photo or video and includes the ITPC fields.

Hi

You need to distinguish between the file metadata (information about the file) and the image metadata (information about the image in the file)

If you copy a file the copies creation date will normally be set to the date the file was copied. The image metadata inside the file (which you can view in preview with the inspector window, iptc tab) will show the image capture date.

Summary:

The File metadata is kept in the file system, and represents when that copy of the file is created or modified

The image metadata is kept inside the file, as exif and IPTC data. This won't change when you copy / move the file.

(Depending on your system version, if you export unmodified original from photos, you will usually get a file with the same creation date as the image)


You can also see the two different dates in finder, as shown in the screenshot with finder in column view. This is from an image I exported from photos in july 2019 - so the file has been created and last modified then, but the content creation date is still showing 2011...

However, finder (which is a file manager) can only sort by file dates, not by the photo metadata. You need a photo app for that.

In Photos.app "Export Unmodified Original, Export IPTC as XMP" means that it exports the original imported file plus any modified IPTC/XMP metadata (dates, captions, keywords, locations) as a sidecar .xmp file that can be joined to the original .jpg with 3rd party apps like GraphicConverter or exiftool.

IPTC is the older metadata format (for captions and keywords etc) and XMP is the newer format and they overlap so usually both should be updated.

https://learn.fotoware.com/On-Premises/Getting_started_with_FotoWare_on-premises/Metadata_in_the_FotoWare_system/02_Types_of_metadata_the_FotoWare_DAM_system_can_use/Metadata%3A_The_differences_between_XMP_and_IPTC

Thanks for the clarification. I had this question too. I went ahead and selected this option, however, when I select "Get Info"after the photo has been transferred to my external hard drive, the details have been overwritten. For example, the picture's Date Created & Date Modified appears as the day I transferred them, not the date the photo was taken. I've had this issue for a while. Apple customer service told me I haven't actually lost that information - that it's there, but they weren't helpful in showing me where to find it. I really don't want to lose the date the pics were taken. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

> picture's Date Created & Date Modified appears as the day I transferred them, not the date the photo was taken

Finder reports the file date there. But you can set the Finder view to show the EXIF metadata datetime original via Finder > View > Show details (or something like that ... I am on Windows right now...). Or open the Photo in Preview.app and check the Get Info > EXIF tab.

There are 3rd party apps that can copy the EXIF date to the file date (GraphicConverter, Better Finder rename, exiftool etc). I wish Apple did this automatically in its apps because this causes a lot of unnecessary confusion.

> I went ahead and selected this option

Which exact option?