The IPTC Photo Metadata Conference took place over the weekend. The IPTC, or International Press Telecommunications Council, is a global standards body for the news media, developing and promoting technical standards for managing and distributing information, and users of Photo Mechanic will be quite familiar with the use of IPTC standards in metadata management.
The annual event is always very informative as metadata is always evolving when new technologies emerge, and the 2025 edition was no different. The whole conference is a treasure trove of info for metadata users, but we wanted to share one particular panel that covers an area that will be important for many Photo Mechanic users in the future: Content Authenticity and the C2PA, the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity — a project that develops an open technical standard for digital content creators and consumers to establish the origin and editing history of media like photos, videos, and audio. From the IPTC’s own description of the panel:
“Brendan Quinn of IPTC gives an update on recent developments in the world of C2PA from an IPTC perspective. Tim Bray gives the view of how C2PA is going from the perspective of a technical hobbyist who has seen many technical standards come and go. Marcos Armstrong of CBC / Radio Canada presents his work on mapping image publishing workflows at CBC.”
We think the panel is worth a watch if you are curious about the current state of C2PA development.