Join the movement
for a Better Visual Web

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 vertical and horizontal versions. It also leads to pixelation when higher resolutions are required and the original full resolution image cannot be accessed. Every pixel counts.

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

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 the old image material can be easily converted to fit the new look.

There are endless possible users 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.

‍Building healthy visual future is simple:

‍
1. Support your local photographers and creatives, for example, by attending exhibitions and buying their art work
2. Fight against biased content and equalize representation: speak up for minorities and marginalised 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 entails the IDC instructions
4. Use up-to-date, open standards and formats
5. Respect copyrights
6. Fact checking — for example, by checking with established media sources or doing reverse image searches to identify the provenance of images
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.