MicrostockGroup

Wonder how do you keep track of what photographs have been submitted by you?
Personally I've just sorted all photos for submission created folders for each stock and copied there what was already submitted. But thanks to Lee's idea I decide to make excel file where store numbers of submitted photos and keep track of what was submit and where, exclusive images and rest of info.
I also think about writing own program which would keep track of this but not sure if it's really needed as right now I think that spreadsheet should do the job.
Wonder if anyone use different ways of storing such info or maybe use some program?

 I use Lightroom. Many find it very good for organizing images. I keep folders by year dates and subfolders by subjects. Without LR I would have been lost with my 800+ images (plus equal number of tiffs).

I use a spreadsheet.  Different sheets for different subjects - landscapes, finance, textures, etc.  Sites in columns, images in lines, at the crossing I mark in yellow what is waiting for submission, in green what was accepted and in red what was rejected.  Then on these green squares I keep track of number of sales.  Unsubmitted remains clear, except when an image is smaller than a site's minimum size, so I know I can not upload it there.  On each line (i.e., each image) I also make notes about the edition process.  I insert a comment in images that got ELs.

All my edited files go to one folder with subfolders that relate to the subjects in the spreadsheet.

Regards,
Adelaide

wrote an excel spreadsheet.... I track everything about the image across 12 agencies now.  I'm still thinking about Lightroom.  =tom

I use a simple Excel spreadsheet. One column with file names, and one column per stock. Cell shows status - can upload, pending, accepted or rejected. I can get a good overview in one glance.

I use a separate sheet for sales statistics - I only track totals per stock per month.

Combination of LightRoom and MS Access.

After a shoot in LR, I'm give star ratings
* = trash
** = personal keeper
*** = submit for stock

After processing, *** become **** - at which point I have a JPEG in my stock folder.

I just arrange by dates - 2 folders per year (probably break it down by quarter soon). 

Once I've uploaded an image, I put it into my Access database
I have a duplicate set of fields for each stock site, with image ID numbe r(if there is one, then I've uploaded it, if not, I haven't uploaded it yet).  I've got a checkbox for accepted, and a notes to why it was rejected and if I will bother resubmitting).

That's about the size or it for me too.

When I create a new batch of at least five new photos...

D: New Stock to Upload (where I have final photos after editing and keywording) Then I copy all of them to:

One directory for each stock agency, under that in the tree or each agency: 1) New to be uploaded, 2) Uploaded, 3) accepted, 4) Rejected. I'm getting to the point of dropping #4 because who cares, and #3 is useless after they are accepted, because they are on the site. But that way I move them out of the #2 uploaded folder. Once entered into the database, they are removed from 3 and 4.

As for tracking uploads and sales in a simple printout, I started using Excel, photo name in the left column, then each agency across the top.

Under review / uploaded = Lt. Blue, (as a reminder to myself that I did upload them) If accepted Yellow, rejected Pink, When something sells,  I change it to Green. Simple visual way to see if there's a line going across of Pink, I shouldn't bother uploading it elsewhere and remove it from the to be uploaded folder. Yellow line, consider for other agencies. Green, make sure it goes to everyplace.

I don't track sales other than if it sold at least once.

The mixed lines are the most interesting. But everyone here knows that by now. Accepted at 7 sites, rejected at 2. Next photo accepted at 7 but rejected at a different 2. 

Photos that go to Alamy or Featurepics as editorial, don't go to RF. Art photos that are on that type site, don't go to EN (editorial/News) or RF. Everything at Alamy and Featurepics, is exclusive to one or the other of them. Which has more to do with content than anything else.

Subject to change at any moment or on a whim. 

Database - File Maker Pro. ( I use it on a MAC)

I am self-taught and it is really easy to figure out. I had never used a database program until I started working at my current job.

I use it to keep track of all sorts of image and contact information. 

For example I work for a stock photo company and we send out images to 50+ distributors each time we finish a shoot. I set up one database that keeps track of the distributors contact and submission information.

 I set up another database for our 10,000 images containing all of the metadata and photo information (including a thumbnail preview). I also set up a database for tracking which drives and assets are sent where. This way I can generate any number of reports on demand.

I use to do all of this in Excel and it became overwhelming.

-Corey

may you share your template? have you write some applescripts to import thumbnails or other usefull tasks in the records? I do one for File maker pro 5.0 version but it don't work in the last release. I can share it if someone like to adapt it to his database

Our new Submissions page on Zymmetrical (http://www.zymmetrical.com/account/submissions/) let's you export your submission history to Excel, CSV, Word or PDF.   

PDF + Word output include thumbs of the pics too.  Some of the formatting may not be perfect on different systems so any feedback is appreciated.

Neither of the 3 first methods gives thumbs (the most important!)

The PDF method gives this:
A critical error has occurred.
Could not find file

Great idea. We could do it with a simple offline webpage save too, but the Change page and Page size textboxes can't be altered.

Funny comments of YawningDog ;-)

Image thumbs 2215-2217 (uploaded August) are gone in this page. I hope these thumbs are a different set of what the customers can view.

In the Sales Manager we can see for how much we sold and when, but a tiny thumb there would help.

Offline web page save would be pretty hard to clean up.. plus we have the options: Export only data and  Ignore paging (exports all pages)   so getting the data out this way is no problem.       I guess the only one missing is XML but thats more geek-friendly than user-friendly.   

I looked at your queue and I believe the problem is you have some incomplete JPG's that were rejected, they didn't get uploaded all the way. Once I remove these the thumbs should show up and it won't throw that error.

"may you share your template? have you write some applescripts to import thumbnails or other useful tasks in the records? I do one for File maker pro 5.0 version but it don't work in the last release. I can share it if someone like to adapt it to his database"

I do all of the work within in File Maker Pro 8.5 I don't use Apple scripts because FMP does all of this for you. I simply add a thumbnail field to the database, point FMP to the thumbnail folder, and if the Image IDs match, FMP imports the thumbnail.

I also create scrips in FMP to run multiple batch operations at once. For example I need to send our new images and metadata to 50+ distributors all over the world and some like Alamy, Jupiter, and Veer have very specific metadata requirements. Instead of building all these metadata sheets by hand in excel ( which I was doing a first) I import the all metadata fields into FMP first and write a script that exports the metadata fields into the correct format based on distributor. Then I wrote a script that runs all of the individual exports at once so I don't have to do them one by one.  This all may sound confusing but it really isn't if you just spend a little time to understand databases and FMP ( I had no formal training when I opened up FMP).  Spending a few hours learning FMP has saved me, and my company, hundreds of hours of time, money, and headaches.

Databases are powerful in that if you set them up correctly, you only have to put the information in once and use any number of reporting functions to customize the data the you want to see it.

My rule of thumb with any type of digital information is  " If you find yourself doing a repetitive task on a computer, someone has written software that can do it better..."