The Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) is a standard for processing and storing standardized and proprietary metadata.

XMP standardizes the definition, creation, and processing of extensible metadata. Serialized XMP can be embedded into a significant number of popular file formats, without breaking their readability by non-XMP-aware applications. Embedding metadata ("the truth is in the file") avoids many problems that occur when metadata is stored separately.

ACDSee uses XMP to embed database information in each file. Only some file formats and file extensions support XMP. These include GIF, JPG, DNG, PNG, and TIF. In the case of these file formats, the database information is inside the file and so they can be moved outside of ACDSee and you will be able to retrieve the database information.

For formats that currently do not support XMP, including RAW, PSD, ABR, the database information is written to a sidecar file in the same folder as its file. Because a sidecar file is separate from the file itself, if you do not rename or move them together, you could lose the database information permanently.