Hi
This is my first post as a newby in microstock.  Having read thro' loads of posts it's obvious that most submit to multiple libraries.  My question is, how do you keep track of what images go where, especially as a lot of folks have a lot of images in lots of places!  What sort of image management do you use. Sorry if the question seems obvious

I use the simple and cheap power of hard drives.

I have a folder for each agency I submit to. Within each folder are 'Model Releases', 'Next Upload', 'Uploaded', 'Rejected', 'Online' and 'Offline' folders. I name my images in subject-number  fashion (e.g. 'teen122.jpg', 'mountains12.jpg', 'boat63.jpg', ...). When I began shooting stock I used a spreadsheet, then migrated to a database, but I eventually found it too cumbersome to maintain. Sure, keeping things in folders takes up a lot of hard drive space, but managing my portfolios is a cinch.

I have all my 1400 images jpegs  in one folder on my windows XP . And all raw in Lightroom.
Also I backup to 300GB external drive.

So how do you tell what's online and what isn't? Do you upload everything to everywhere as soon as you create it? I'm guessing you don't bother keeping track of rejections and/or resubmissions.

Thinking about this reminds me of a thread I started about image management and upload scheduling. The overwhelming opinion was that I was wasting my time on such things and would be better off creating new imagery.

I have all my photos on my 500 GB external drive. When I transfer the photos to my computer, the Canon cameras automatically create folders with the month day and year and these are kept in the RAW folder. I have a folder for PSD files, a folder for artwork and graphics and a folder for the stock agencies by name. Mainly I get photos ready for IS and put them in a folder with the date for the week they are uploaded. These files also go to 6 other agencies. It is a good idea to have an extra backup drive handy. I use ProStockMaster to upload the files.

I'm using Aperture keywords and smart albums (I'm on a Mac). After a shoot, I transfer them to Aperture then review them and tag some as Potentials. I have a smart album that display all photos tagged as Potentials. I go there and post-process my photo then transfer them in a folder called keywording. I keyword them then export them to my hard drive for submission. I upload them via FTP to the different sites I'm contributing to then go back to Aperture and tagged them as Submit. I have a subcategory in the submit keyword for each site I submitted them and tagged them correspondingly. After they are reviewed, I removed the submit tag for the site that reviewed them and tagged them as either approved or rejected. When I sell them, I tagged them as Sold.

I keep stats in a Number spreadsheet (Excel competitor) with the sales per photo, per month, per site and many other thing.

I do the same thing as vphoto.  Not enough time to track all of my submissions.

However, if the day ever comes when I can afford to hire an assistant, I will have that person develop a tracking tool...probably an Access database.

I use Lightroom catalogs to organize my files.  I keep the original file names on all versions (raw, jpg and .psd) so there's never any question as to which files are processed versions of my raw file.  When I upload from my card, I create a new folder with the camera model, date and major subject of the shoot. An example:

If I uploaded a card today the folder name would be: D200_08_09_12 (major subject)
I put the year first because they all then sort by date even though the file name is a string rather than a real date.

I do not keep track of which agencies except which images except for RM images.  Of course, I don't really need to do that either anymore since PSC is closing.  They're the only agency for RM I had to worry about rejections.  Below my main folder, I have various subfolders - Micro Processed, Micro Submitted, RM Processed, RM Submitted, snapshots.  The processed folders are for images I have post-processed but not yet submitted.  Submitted folders are self-explanatory. Snapshots are for non-stock quality images, but images I want to keep for sentimental reasons.

I have 3 primary hard drives and two 500gb hard drives that are mirrored as backups. I also backup on DVD.  I got some of the ideas I used from "The DAM Book" by Peter Krogh.  It's excellent and has been updated since I first bought it 2-3 years ago.

I don't think there's a right way or a wrong way for DAM.  It's whatever works for you.  My method has been evolving for the past two years and continues to evolve.  I also started with an Excel spreadsheet like others here.  I just found it too cumbersome over time and I also found I didn't really need to track acceptance and/or rejection for each image.  Each site seems to do a fine job tracking sales so no need to duplicate that data.  I just track overall monthly sales by agency in Excel.  This way I can see how I'm doing YTD for each and overall.

Hope that helps!

I have all my raws in an internal slave drive in folders labeled with the date and subject.  These are imported into Lightroom for sorting and raw processing.  I sort all at once, then process the raws in small batches into photoshop where I make final tweaks and then upload to all sites the same day (except istock because of their restrictive limits)

Uploaded files are placed in an "awaiting approval" folder.  Once approved they are archived by subject matter in two external hard drives where I keep complete sets of my portfolio images.

To me it doesn't really matter which ones are accepted where.  The majority are accepted everywhere, and for the one here and there that is rejected at one site, it is still part of my portfolio because it is on the others. 

I agree with the philosophy that it is a waste of time (and space) to keep up with which images are on which site.  My portfolio is almost identical on all sites I submit to, with the exception that there is usually a backlog waiting to be uploaded to istock. 

At the moment, i use an Excel-Sheet and hard drive folders.
If i�ve enough time, after working, shooting pics, image editing, uploading and last but not least having time for family, i should become acquainted with adobe lightroom.

i'm working right now on a blog covering this subject - briefly, it's similar to other replies here -- using a excel worksheet for simplicity and ease of use is much preferable to a database system [even though i'm a db consultant by training]  in this case a db is overkill

Before jumping in take some time to analyze what you need to do

My needs:
   Unique number for any image
   Fast sorting by date, topic, etc
   Ability to analyze images accepted � rating & sorts
      Used  to decide what to edit, submit to other sites, those w ltd upls


My excel sheet looks like this:
[set of col for each  ms]  [image id] [desc] [keywords]

this lets you get away from the need to store all images and move them among different folders.  i caption & kw in this sheet, then add IPTC info from there - this means you can quickly paste info from similar images later.


this solution leaves out one big area - tracking sales.  there's no simple way to automate this, as many MS sites dont make the info easily avaialble for download, and even those that do use their own numbering system and eliminate the name you used. 

 update 10/7:  the blog mentioned above is at http://photoinfos.blogspot.com/2008/10/building-microstock-submission-tracking.html

Hi Everyone
Thanks for all of your useful advice and comments.  It seems that most people have developed their own system of tracking and management, and it's a case of whatever works for you etc...
I have come across a book on D.A.M. by Peter Krogh that offers a lot of useful info. I'd be interested in anyone's comments on it.  IviewPro seems to be a decent prog. so i'm going to try that for a while.  I'm looking a a firewire Drobo for storage and backup. Has anyone got one? Is it any good?

iView Media Pro was purchased by Microsoft several years ago and is now called Expression Media and is now at version 2.  I really like it.

To track stock I create a catalog set for each agency with subsets of submitted, accepted and rejected.  With some of the sorting I can readily find out if s file has been sent out and where it has been sent out. 

I think this is a great approach.

Scott

Being the absolute geek that I am I have a SAN (Storage Area Network) in my basement with around 500 GB and then it has a tape backup which runs every night.  Like others I keep all my photos organized with a file structure

Agency
     Online     Processing     Rejected     Waiting

This seems to work for me however the mention of a spreadsheet is almost making me think about a database so that I can actually pull statistics down the road.

Either way this is my fist post so ... hello everyone.