A couple of weeks ago, after carefully editing the IPTC information for one of my photos in Photoshop CS2, I was shocked to find out that it disappeared when I used the Save for Web option.

I thought I was alone, till I discovered others are aware of this problem; see this Google search for plenty of links. Apparently using ImageReady to save the image preserves the EXIF data, but it does not preserve the IPTC data. Saving the image directly from Photoshop preserves both EXIF and IPTC data, but robs the user of examining and tweaking the quality and resolution of the JPG file before pressing the Save button. But, neither option preservers vendor-specific EXIF tags, like the ISO tag writen by Nikon cameras.

Seems to me users shouldn’t have to dance around Photoshop and ImageReady in order to preserve the vital information present in the EXIF and IPTC data of their photos. It’s pretty sad that Adobe hasn’t standardized the photo data options in Photoshop and ImageReady. Why is it that only ImageReady has the extra option for the meta data, and why does it only save the EXIF data instead of both EXIF and IPTC data? Furthermore, I can’t believe an easy option for preserving EXIF and IPTC data isn’t made available in the Save for Web option. Don’t tell me it’s because of file size, because I’m not going to buy that argument. A few kilobytes here and there simply don’t matter nowadays, and besides, users should be able to make that decision, not the software. And don’t tell me it’s too expensive to do it. Exifer is free.

Bottom line: we deserve to have the option to preserve the extra data in our photos.