Expression Media

Expression Media 2.0 / iView Media Pro

Additional Information about the previous version available at: http://www.iview-multimedia.com/ (the old iView site was maintained by Microsoft through 9/13/2012, this link is to that content in the Internet Archive "wayback" machine).

Microsoft Expression Media is an image-cataloging tool with powerful metadata features.

Unlike many other applications for editing and viewing photo metadata, Expression Media, (formerly iView Media Pro) requires no set up - other than specifying the size of thumbnails. It's a Swiss Army knife for the digital photographer, a truly multi-faceted digital image application.

It does an excellent job of reading the metadata in a wide variety of image file formats. It boasts both quick-find and advanced-search options. You can even create and distribute a self-running version of any catalog on CD, create custom web galleries, print contact sheets and turn a sequence of images into a QuickTime Movie.

Expression Media can import a smorgasbord of file types - too many to list. It can read legacy IPTC (IPTC-IIM) and IPTC Core (XMP) metadata in TIFF, JPEG, PSD, DNG, as well as the proprietary Nikon NEF and Canon CR2 Raw file formats. And it can write metadata to a similarly long list.

Expression Media (and iView 3.13) can read XMP data in Adobe DNG files. It writes XMP metadata - including IPTC Core and Expression Media-specific fields, such as its proprietary Catalog Sets. Expression Media catalogs can even store custom metadata and write them to the original files (that support embedded metadata) in XMP format.

In addition to writing metadata, Expression Media enables quick viewing of "media" (images and more). A Light Table feature includes a Magnifier to check for sharpness, as well as a histogram and warning feature to highlight parts of an image that are over- or underexposed.