Better Visual Web with Image Display Control

“Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.” — G.K. Chesterton

Around 80% of human sensory data is absorbed visually, so the visual landscape tells us a lot about the world we live in. Over the past decade, visual content has undergone major upheaval. New technologies have emerged without taking into account how images fit into these new environments or how technical limitations affect visual expression and culture.

Together, we can build a better visual experience for everyone on the web. Image Display Control (IDC) technology connects all the stakeholders involved in the image lifecycle, empowering every industry.

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Benefits OF

IDC

  • Ensure the future of Visual Culture
  • Better workflows more creativity
  • Ready for the future technologies

Every pixel counts - IDC Keeps Originals Intact

Currently, there's no sustainable way to communicate downstream how an image should be used. This is a huge problem for media, advertising, branding, and ecommerce.

If parts of an image have been cut off, they can't be recovered, so more and more of the image is lost every time the image is redistributed. This means you lose part of the story and diminish the scope of creating different vertical and horizontal versions. It also leads to pixelation when higher resolutions are required and the original full resolution image is not available.

The answer is Image Display Control, or IDC. It is a standard that chains together the various steps of the image lifecycle using image metadata. Image-specific display instructions spread across platforms behind the scenes in the embedded metadata of the image file.

Established with our friends at  IPTC  — the global standards body of the news media — IDC embeds all relevant display options into the metadata of an image.

It's like having a "wardrobe" of display options for every occasion. For example, a photographer can define display instructions that a publisher — or anyone else who needs to share the image — can rely on. Or when a website is undergoing a redesign, all old image material can be easily converted to fit the new look.

There are endless use cases and scenarios, and that's what makes IDC so powerful. Developers and vendors can easily contribute, tailoring IDC to their own users and extending the ecosystem.

Illustration showcasing abbreviations important for Frameright's Image Display Control technology: IDC, IPTC, CSS, HTML, and CDN.

IDC: Fighting Bias in Visual Content

We believe AI should be transparent and that an augmented intelligence approach — fusing the best of AI and human intelligence — is the way forward. IDC brings a healthy skepticism towards the decision-making power of AI, embracing diversity in both the creative and technical sides of image production.

Bias can stem from human behavior and attitudes or from machine learning models trained on skewed datasets. IDC helps to fight this problem by guaranteeing access to the original version of image material, so that images can be verified, questioned, and corrected for bias.

Commitment to a Better Visual Web

Getting started in building a healthy visual future is simple:

  1. Respect copyrights.
  2. Fight against biased content and for equal representation: speak up for marginalized groups and make active efforts to be inclusive in media representation, in hiring choices, and editorial practices.
  3. Don't erase embedded metadata. The data that is hidden in every image file helps the photographer by keeping copyright information intact, tells about the origins of the image, and carries the IDC instructions.
  4. Use up-to-date, open standards and formats.
  5. Fact-checking — for example, by checking with established media sources or doing reverse image searches to identify the provenance of images.
  6. Support your local photographers and creatives, for example, by attending exhibitions and buying their artwork.
  7. Spread the word: Talk about visual matters, and respect visual culture.

You are invited to join our mission for a better visual future. Together, we can raise awareness and come up with new solutions. We want to acknowledge the role of creators, developers, and legislators as important stakeholders in the development of our visual world.


Illustration of a brain and infromation blocks showing how we can build a better visual web with Image Display Control. IDC helps fight bias and ensures the integrity of original images.