The goal of this White Paper is to devise a way for improving photo workflows with the help of consistent use of metadata, which is summarised by these statements:

• Metadata is essential to identify and track digital images
• Metadata is essential to properly describe the content by natural or formal language, and in this way make it possible to easily search for photographs
• Metadata is essential to express technical characteristics of photographs in an interoperable way across technical systems
• Metadata is essential to express rights and licensing terms that pertain to a digital image, hence ownership metadata must never be removed
• Metadata is essential for a seamless photo workflow, and must be written in formats that can be easily understood by all