IPTC metadata is embedded within the images themselves, meaning that the system can pick up titles, captions and tags straight from the image files upon upload. When uploading images using IPTC metadata, you only need to upload the images via FTP, and our system will do the rest.
However, when using CSV metadata, you’ll need to upload a CSV file (spreadsheet exported as .csv) with columns containing the titles, captions and (minimum five) tags of each image along with the corresponding image filename. Our system then merges the column data associated with the images that have been uploaded to the FTP server, and we can then display the image titles, captions and tags on Picfair.
Formatting your CSV metadata
When uploading images via FTP using CSV metadata, we’ll need the CSV file to be correctly formatted to be compatible with our system. The FTP uploader requires four columns, which must be titled as follows (titles are case-sensitive):
- Filename
- Title
- Caption
- Tags
The data in the ‘Filename’ column must match the filenames of the .jpg or .jpeg images you upload, as this is how our system merges your CSV metadata with the images you upload. You can choose to include or exclude the image file extension (.jpg or .jpeg) within the CSV ‘Filename’ column - our system should recognise either format.
Please ensure your CSV file is in the format .csv - you can easily export .xls or .xlsx files to .csv format using Microsoft Excel or your chosen spreadsheet editor.
Lastly, please note that the system will merge CSV metadata only for images already uploaded to the server; therefore you must upload images first, and then upload the corresponding CSV file containing the image data.
Sample CSV data:
| Filename | Title | Caption | Tags |
| DSC_0761 | Glistening Water Droplet | A glistening water droplet on a lily leaf | glistening,lily,meniscus,radiating,shimmering,water,water droplets |
| DSC_0762 | Life on the Yarra | A woman cooking in her shack on the banks of the Yarra River, Australia | home,life,yarra river,Victoria,Australia,poor,riverside,shack |
| DSC_0763 | Fraser Island Sunset | Fraser Island Sunset | grass,beach,Australia,Fraser Island,summer,sunset,nature,water,mountains |
Provided your spreadsheet data is correctly formatted to be compatible with our system, you can simply upload the CSV file to the FTP server, along with the corresponding image files. You’ll need to ensure all images are uploaded to the server before uploading the corresponding CSV file, as our system only merges data for images already added to the server.
You can either create separate directory-level folders to upload your images and CSV file, or you can upload images and the corresponding CSV file to the same directory folder. Our system will then ingest the images and merge the corresponding CSV metadata.
We'll then process your FTP upload within one business day.