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In the field of photography, the typical enterprise customer amasses an average of 2-6 TB of information per month, and in just a few months, data can accumulate to overwhelming and unmanageable proportions. One of the most important aspects of managing large volumes of data is the proper handling of metadata – how it is designed, written, extracted, processed, edited and searched. In this realm, there are some offline tools, such as Adobe Lightroom, that offer good metadata tools. However, professional users can quickly face limitations as their catalog grows and they must contend with asset organization on external drives or local servers. (Read our blog “Taking Charge of Your File Storage” about the challenges of self-managed offline storage.)
The volume of data created by digital photography makes the use case a perfect candidate for cloud storage. Enter DF Studio, which has developed simple yet powerful tools and architecture to handle large volumes of photography with robust metadata management tools.
Smart Ingestion Rules
DF Studio’s intelligent ingestion process ensures that metadata is handled correctly from the moment a file enters the system.
DF Studio’s “file stacking” technology makes it easy to manage files related to a single image.
First, same-named files of varying formats (e.g. JPG, TIFF, CR2, XMP) are stacked and associated with a single image; then, based on proprietary heuristics, competing metadata from varying file formats and standards is sorted-through and merged. This ensures that metadata is intelligently mapped and merged in order to give the user the cleanest form of metadata. We support EXIF, IPTC and XMP metadata standards.
Metadata Editing
DF Studio has both single-pane and batch metadata editors with a set of commonly used photography metadata fields, such as caption, keywords and copyright, available for editing. The information entered into these fields is saved in DF Studio and is written back so that it travels with the file.
Enterprise clients may further customize their metadata editors with a variety of custom fields, including drop-down lists, text fields, or radio buttons, and may request them to be mapped and written to specific IPTC or XMP fields.
DF Studio is now a one stop shop metadata management tool, eliminating users’ dependency on offline metadata editing software. Assets can be organized, tagged and cataloged entirely online, which further minimizes the chance of metadata pollution or asset duplication.
Custom Metadata
With the August, 2015 release, DF Studio broke new ground in metadata management by introducing a new custom field designed to record multiple successive entries, each with user and timestamp information. This unique field can be used to track the usage history of each image, for uses such as where the image appeared in publication, who it was sent to for retouching, or which department serviced it last. History entries can help coordinate the efforts of multiple departments by providing pertinent information about the past usage of an image.
Search and Faceting
DF Studio’s unique search capabilities allow enterprise clients to conduct searches on their custom fields. The significance of this feature cannot be overstated. With DF Studio, Enterprises are able to grow their library without storage limitations, and now they are free to design their own metadata structure and search on all fields that are pertinent to their custom cataloging needs with minimal initial setup. No local server architecture rivals the ease with which DF Studio can be deployed and rolled out into the enterprise environment.
An example of a custom faceting display
Furthermore, DF Studio allows any custom field to be faceted, meaning that custom fields can be used to further filter down larger search results–again, another way that enterprise clients can leverage DF Studio for their company’s custom needs.
Conclusion:
Clean metadata management is key to the long-term success of an organized archive. DF Studio is at the forefront of developing technologies that simplify the execution of complex asset management principles so that every-day users can understand and apply them to their archive. With more than 10 years of experience, the DF Studio team not only assists enterprise and individual clients in the initial rollout of our system, but through expert consulting and support, we educate clients to stay current with the best asset management tools.
