A Guide to Image Management in Art Centres Contact For further information about this guide, please contact sam@desart.com.au. VERSION: 20 th June 2017
Contents Overview... 2 Setting the scene... 2 Digital Assets and DAM... 2 Metadata... 2 Image File Formats... 3 Image Size (Pixels & Megabytes)... 5 Software... 5 Metadata Suggestions... 6 Workflow for image management... 7 Resizing Tool for SAM... 8 Image Storage... 9 Artwork Images... 9 Non-Artwork Images... 9 Backup... 10 1 P a g e
Overview Art Centres do many jobs, but the production and sale of works of art is at their core. Properly documenting artworks before they are sold is intrinsic to this. Good documentation is a critical marketing and sales tool. It is also a record of cultural and aesthetic information and an invaluable resource for the artists, the art centre and the community. Once an artwork is sold, the only record left at the art centre is the photograph and any accompanying text. It is therefore crucial that artwork photographs are as good as they can be and that they are stored properly with the right information. While digital technologies can streamline lots of art centre work, they also require the user art centre managers and arts workers to harness that power and set up a smart, efficient and best-practice system to manage digital images. This guide gives an overview of the theory and practice of managing digital photographs. There are suggestions for developing an image management system at your art centre and ensuring the system integrates with your SAM database. Setting the scene In managing digital photographs certain concepts and technical terms are sometimes used. Key ones are explained below. Digital Assets and DAM Digital assets are any digitally stored information that you create and need to look after. These assets might include digital photographs, audio and video files, as well as normal office-type files (Word, Excel etc.). Office-type files are easily managed through normal filing and search options, but looking after image/video/audio files is more complex. The term Digital Asset Management (DAM) is generally used to describe solutions to managing these type of files (though some organisations include all digital records in their DAM system). DAM is a fancy way of describing software (programs such as Adobe Lightroom, Stockroom or Portfolio) that manages your digital assets in an efficient way, from importing and storage through to retrieval and security. DAM systems work because they use and control metadata. Metadata Metadata is data about an object, whether it is physical or digital. Metadata is information that is attached to every digital file on your computer. It describes the properties of that record it s like a label telling you certain things about the nature and history of that file. For example, if you right click on any file, and select Properties, you ll see some basic metadata. There are many categories of metadata, but at its simplest a file name is metadata. 2 P a g e
Metadata is searchable and can be added or changed at any time, using certain software. Because photo, video and audio files are more difficult to manage than standard, office-type digital files, metadata (the information about those files) is correspondingly more important. Metadata can be information including: Content such as who is in a photo, what the subject is etc. Details about when and where the photo was taken and who made it. The format and file type. Technical details, such as the camera settings. How the file can be used (cultural restrictions, copyright). Metadata can travel with digital files. If you copy or email a digital photograph, the metadata embedded into that image can be accessed (assuming the right software is in place) by the receiver of a copied or emailed file. The real power of metadata is that it is searchable. For example, you may know nothing about a digital photo other than the date on which a photo was taken. With the right software, you can readily search for that date (or date range) and locate the image. There s multiple reasons for art centres to set up good metadata: Integration with SAM. Seamless and speedy response to image request for marketing, publications etc. Legacy photographs will be useful into the future. Easily find the best images for funding applications, uploading to social media etc. Adding meta-tags to website images so that these images are searchable by Google. Meeting cultural protocols and legal obligations. Sharing with secure long-term archival facilities. Establish a valuable record of an artist s career development. Metadata is added to a file (such as a photograph) using DAM software. That metadata will make that photography truly useful; it will be both searchable and have information that can be used for captions, authorship etc. Good metadata will also ensure your photographs have a legacy, providing information that enables them to be used in a culturally appropriate, legal and ethical way. Image File Formats All computer files have specific file types; these are related to the type of software that created them. These are shown as an abbreviation at the end of the file name, such as.doc or.pdf. Image files work the same way however there are hundreds of image file formats. Many file formats are proprietary, meaning they are specific to one manufacturer or certain hardware/software, and have special purposes. For art centre use, there are a small number of common file types to be aware of: 3 P a g e
JPEG: the most widely used type of image file. Popular because JPEG images are relatively small and therefore easier to store, upload, share etc. However, the trade-off for their small size and portability is that JPEG images are compressed. Through this compression, image information is lost. This information can t be retrieved; hence JPEG is regarded as lossy. However, JPEG images are recommended for SAM and are the standard image format for emailing, social media etc. Raw: there are many types of raw images, specific to each camera manufacturer. For example, Canon cameras create CR2 files while Nikon s generate NEF files. Raw files record the most complete set of image information, but the image needs processing before it can be used. If you look at an unprocessed RAW file, it looks flat and muddy. Raw images are large around five times bigger than a JPEG image. TIFF: high quality, uncompressed image format basically a ready-to-use version of a raw file. Consequently, TIFF files are also large. Their primary use is for printed publications and graphic design. DNG: is a relatively new image format that has become the industry-standard format for storing images. DNG files retain the original raw data but the file size is reduced, which makes them easier to manage. DNG is an abbreviation of digital negative. PNG: like a JPEG in the way it works, but a PNG file is generally better quality; however, the resulting file may be larger than an equivalent JPEG. GIF and BMP: specialised and older image file formats, no longer relevant for day-today use. To deal with the problem of losing image data (and hence image quality) when working with and copying images, the ideal workflow is: 1. Take photos using the raw setting. 2. Import the raw images into your software, converting them to DNG files in the process. 3. Delete the raw files. 4. Edit the DNG images as required (including addition of metadata). 5. The DNG files become your master copy and are stored permanently. 6. As needed, export JPEG images for use in SAM, emailing, website etc. 4 P a g e
Image Size (Pixels & Megabytes) Image size is important. Big files take up considerable space and are difficult to share, especially with the slow internet speeds in many remote communities. As a guide, with a reasonable quality DSLR camera producing a raw file of around 15 megabytes, then the: TIFF: will be around 70% of that size. DNG: approximately 50%. JPG: around 10-15%. The size of any photo is a combination of the camera s pixels, the complexity of what you are photographing and the depth of colour your camera is set to. Pixels: the sensor in your digital camera is made up of pixels (tiny, light sensitive dots). A sensor of 3000 x 2000 pixels results in 6 million pixels, or 6 megapixels (or 6MP). The following images show how pixels make up an image and what happens if you zoom in or crop too much. Different size and types of cameras (and phones) have different sized sensors and generally the bigger the sensor, the more expensive the camera. Image complexity: a simple subject (eg a line drawing on white paper) will give a smaller image size than a complex one, such as a landscape photo with lots of different textures and colours. Colour depth: pixels only see red, green or blue. However, from these three colours every other colour can be made (or at least 16 million of them). The intensity and combination of red, green and blue are recorded as bits you may see references to 8 bit or 16 bit colour. How many bits of colour information each pixel records adds to the complexity (and hence the size) of an image. Software There is a lot of image management software available, both free and paid. Given what an important and sizable task looking after digital photographs is, it is worth investing in something that is right for your art centre s needs. Good imaging software should combine editing and management, creating a one-stop shop for your photographs. One of the best 5 P a g e
features of good software is the ability to batch edit that is, add metadata to all (or a selection of) images at once. Adobe Lightroom is a good example of such software. Lightroom (screenshot shown here) imports photos, gives you some powerful editing tools and easily adds metadata, with a range of filing and search options. Importantly, Lightroom is non-destructive that is, when you make changes to a photo, the original is always preserved. This avoids multiple copies and degraded images caused by resizing or converting to different image formats. Suggested software options include Lightroom, ACDSee and Photo Director 8. There are also good, free image software options. However, these tend to have more limited functions. For example, they may not be able to add/search metadata or may be more of a viewer than an editor or struggle with Raw images. Some suggested free software options include Picasa, XnView and iphoto and Aperture. Go to Connecting Up for reduced costs for software for not-for-profit organisations. https://www.connectingup.org Metadata Suggestions The number of possible metadata fields is exhaustive, but most are for specialised uses. There are three standard types of metadata: technical (mostly generated by the camera), descriptive (user added to make it easy to find) and administrative (copyright, restrictions etc.). See right for the main list of metadata in Lightroom. For art centres, the important metadata to add to, or change in an image is: File name: change these from the automatic cameragenerated ones (e.g. the date stamp format) to something that makes sense (e.g. the SAM catalogue number or bush trip January 2017 ). Copyright: two copyrights potentially apply copyright in the image itself and the copyright of any artwork in the photograph. Be clear. Creator/Photo by: who took the photo; this is important 6 P a g e
because under copyright law, the photographer may have a moral right to be attributed. Caption: description of who is in the photo, or the event etc. Remember, this image may be used years into the future. Keywords: this is a way of grouping images by themes. It is a high-level category. For example, adding the keyword bush trip enables a search for all images with that keyword. This is a quick and easy way to find a specific image. You should aim to have around a dozen keywords only and these should be set by the Manager. Other metadata is likely to be automatically generated, including: Date and time: the date/time the photo was created and potentially the date/time of any edits. Camera settings: everything from camera and lens details to whether the flash was used. Location: GPS is a common option in cameras; you can then map where photos were taken. Metadata Sample Metadata image management sample. These are available as excel sheets for image, video and audio. See separate attachments. 1 Workflow for image management Workflow is a term often used when dealing with digital images. It describes the steps between taking a photo and its final catalogued place on your computer. A good workflow reduces your workload by streamlining image handling and creating certainty and security with a standard process for all users to follow. It also ensures the quality and integrity of images. Because every camera, software and computer setup is different across the art centre network, it s impossible to have a fixed set of 1 This Metadata profile was adapted from guidelines established through the National Remote Indigenous Archiving Plan. Contact the Indigenous Remote Communications Association for more information at http://irca.net.au/. 7 P a g e
recommendations. However, the following is a list of suggestions and key things to think about: Photography: have a camera set up to take photos of artworks, with standardised lighting 2 and camera settings, including lens, shutter speed, and ISO. Use the raw file setting and use a tripod if your shutter speed is less than 1/125 of a second. Download: move images from the camera to the hard-drive or server on your computer. Then delete them off your camera (preferably by formatting the whole camera card). Import the images into your editing/dam software, converting to a DNG format. Store the images in the right folder and follow the filing and naming protocols (see Image Storage). Delete excess photos duplicates, out of focus or otherwise not usable. Edit photos as needed (crop, levels etc.). Add metadata (filenames, copyright, captions, key words etc.). Metadata can be added in batches to speed things up for any groups of photographs belong together in some way. For example, if all the images are of paintings by the one artist and the photos were taken by the one photographer, both pieces of metadata can be added to all the images at the same time not one-by-one. Batch editing is a powerful tool. Prepare artwork images for use in SAM; depending on your camera, software, computer and/or filing system, this may involve things like renaming or resizing. Further, if you re using software like Lightroom, you will need to export the images, ready for SAM to import them. For SAM, the maximum image size is 5MB. If you re using software that doesn t have this option built in there is software than can automate and/or streamline resizing. See the below link to an image-resizing tool. Where appropriate try to keep high resolution artwork images and store them outside of SAM. These images will need to have a file name (and/or other metadata such as artist s name) that is the same as the catalogue number and related SAM information. This means the image will be searchable. Resizing Tool for SAM A free image-resizing tool is available. Download and use it to speed up the resizing of images that you want to upload to SAM. Go to: https://sam.org.au/imageresizerhelp.htm 2 Avoid taking artwork photos under artificial lighting, especially fluorescent lighting. Ideally, use indirect or direct sunlight or a proper photographic lighting setup. 8 P a g e
Image Storage There are two main types of images that art centres need to manage and store. Artwork Images While a suggested workflow for processing artwork images is set out above, there are some additional considerations with managing them for the long term. While the 5MB image that SAM stores will serve many purposes, the larger images produced by modern digital cameras can be important. This means storing and managing the DNG (master copy) files. This will provide both legacy (certainty as software and hardware changes over time) and quality (best possible image). While every art centre setup is different, a basic approach to looking after artwork images outside of SAM is: De-clutter: don t keep unnecessary duplicates or poor quality images; Add metadata: as part of the cataloguing process, add metadata to the original file, mirroring that which is in SAM. Then both the SAM JPG and non-sam original will always be searchable. File: use your DAM software (e.g. Lightroom) to manage and file your images. Create a dedicated folder for such images and then sub-folders, by year. For example, 2017/Artist Name/Catalogue Number Backup: make sure that images are stored on a part of your computer system that is backed up and secure. Non-Artwork Images Art centres generally create large number of images of people, events and activities. Managing these images is important and time-consuming. Using good DAM software is a crucial first step. Other suggestions are: Add metadata: with no SAM information as a starting point or cross-reference, metadata is even more important. Caption and names (of subject/s and photographer) are particularly important. Keywords are an important shortcut once you have many images, so consider creating a short list of keywords (no more than about a dozen) that make sense for your art centre. Establish and maintain a protocol for filenames. The industry standard is: year_twodigitmonth_placeorevent_artistname_001.dng File: use a clear, centralised folder structure, perhaps organised by year. Backup: crucial. 9 P a g e
Backup The most important part of storing images is to ensure they are backed up. Best practice is to have both onsite and offsite backup. For onsite backup, an external drive or server provides an easy way to ensure all files are safe if your computer crashes or files are lost. For external backup, rotate external drives regularly (weekly) and alternately storing one full copy offsite. A good option for onsite backup is Network Access Storage (NAS) Drive Synology, with the minimum of two disks. Alternatively, backup in the cloud. This will ensure that you have an offsite backup external to your art centre, art centre house and community. Cloud storage suggestions: Amazon s3 1. Create a free account on the AWS Free Tier Page 2. Put some data into Amazon S3 using CloudBerry Explorer Free Edition GoogleCloud Microsoft Azure 10 P a g e