Validation

[p1ppa]

Hi All


I am trying to validate a business idea so would really appreciate it if you could please give me some feedback.


If there was a service that offered to collate and organise your photos (no edit, just organisation) would you use it and if so how much would you be willing to pay for that kind of service?


Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

[I @ M]

Going to be blunt here ----

No, would not use.
No, would not pay.

There is plenty of software out there ranging from free to moderate cost that does all that already.
My first thoughts on "outsourcing" image files is that there is a massive security risk with ones images.

[Kym]

There are well established cloud services that do this backed by huge investments - so you are a no go.

Flickr etc.

[ricktas]

No. Why would I pay for something that DAM software like Lightroom already does.

[MarkChap]

Yeah, no
Wouldn't use
Wouldn't Pay

What would the use be of sending you my files to organise them.
I would still have to "organise" them every time you sent them back to me

[jim]

I actually wouldn't mind having someone organise my photos if they did it for free. And if I were a pro photographer and had lots of money, I might well consider employing a personal assistant to organise them. But as it is, not.

[wayn0i]

Interesting idea, I have thousands of images not ideally organised.

Yes software can sort them but I still need to tag them with keywords if I want them in anything other than a metadata order right.

So having someone apply the keywords to my images would be helpful, but yes security of the images would be a consideration.

Not sure what I'd pay


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[ricktas]

See

Interesting idea, I have thousands of images not ideally organised.

Yes software can sort them but I still need to tag them with keywords if I want them in anything other than a metadata order right.

So having someone apply the keywords to my images would be helpful, but yes security of the images would be a consideration.

Not sure what I'd pay


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Sure. But how will this third party know things like a location? If I took some beach sunsets and asked you to organise them, would you be able to identify the beach? Would you know if it was a sunrise or sunset? Or portraits, identify the people in the photos? You would just get generic tags from a third party : beach, sunset, sea, ocean? Not Spring Beach, sunrise, my birthday. Or a Wedding, you would get tags such as wedding, garden, vineyard.. But who's wedding? What is the vineyard called?

IMO the photographer is the best person to catalogue their own photos. Any use of a third party will result in generic keywords. Or require a greater deal of collaboration with the photographer for names, locations etc, such that the photographer might as well just do it themselves.

[wayn0i]

True Ricktas , but if I look at my collection, a lot would include my bride and kids, so that would be easy to provide names to the tagger.

Your point about beach, park, city would still provide benefit. Depending on cost you might use such a service as a first level of tagging with the author to do the more refined tagging if necessary.

Just a thought


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[TwinII]

I think for me I wouldn't use it as my images are already organised. What might be useful for me is setting up and maintaining a backup (onsite/offsite/cloud).

[Brian500au]

it is an interesting idea but you would be competing with some well established professional services which already offer these services as part of the package.

If I was a wedding photographer I can upload my images, have them culled, minor edits, tagged, watermarked and categorised over night for a fraction of the cost of the overall price charged for the wedding.

[arthurking83]

..... a lot would include my bride and kids, so that would be easy to provide names to the tagger.

.....

Keywording is my major concern with photography at the moment.
I'm concentrating basically 90% of my current photographic time going back through my archive just adding keywords to those that didn't get the treatment for the first 6(odd)years of my digital photography adventure.

I've tried just about all the cataloging software out there, and my personal fave no longer exists .. but have come to appreciate the most basic of basic tools for the job.
For Windows PC owners, as far as I can currently tell, nothing beats the very simple(and free) Microsoft Photo Gallery(or may be called simply Gallerym depending on what version of Windows you use).
For most of us tho it'll be Photo Gallery.
It has face recognition ability, so that once you've loaded just a few images of family/friends/etc, and more images of those people come up, it offers you the option to tag those faces to those names automagically(which you confirm or deny).

There are important points to consider when adding keywords, and it's not only the keywords you use, but also any structure type you want to involve(eg. a heirarchy of sub keywords within general keywording frameworks.

Eg. I use a few old manual lenses where the brand/model aren't embedded in the exif, so a part of my keywording involved creating a Lens keyword directory, and then brand and model sub keyword structures below that.

So that for one obscure lens I have the keyword structure(and hence tagged name) looks like Lens\Schacht-Novoflex Travenon\135mm\f4.
When searching for any of those terms between the \ and \ can be searched for independently.

I originally got Lightroom because many people recommended it for it's cataloging ability .. which I ended up both hating and being underwhelmed with.
A bit convoluted, and even Nikon's ViewNX2 was easier to use(although very tedious).
The glacial Photo Gallery(it does run quite slow sometimes) has made tagging many thousands of images in a easy to manage session much easier to tolerate now, and once you start tagging, it then offers a useful, but still easy to ignore, assistance to tagging images.

[jim]

I'm concentrating basically 90% of my current photographic time going back through my archive just adding keywords...

This post fills me with horror. Horror!

[ameerat42]

This post fills me with horror. Horror!

I feel your Bane!

[Warbler]

Photo Mechanic is another program that seeks to make cataloging easier because it can be applied when downloading from your camera/card reader. Using variables, you can also caption, headline, and describe your photos using shortcuts. The labels applied are recognised in Lightroom, Bridge and photoshop, and can be seen on Windows explorer. I don't have a Mac, but I'm sure if it works in windows, then the Mac will also recognise these. It does require a bit of an analytical mind to set it up from scratch though, or like Arthur (and me), a few years down the track you might find you have to make changes to the structure and that really is a horror. Maybe the OP should look at setting up the method for photographers to do their own cataloging, rather than doing the cataloging itself if you get my meaning.

[arthurking83]

...... The labels applied are recognised in Lightroom, Bridge and photoshop, and can be seen on Windows explorer. .....

On Windows Explorer only if the images tagged are not raw files. That is jpgs and tifs only. But it can't add tags to raw files.
This is why I choose the (somewhat limited) Photo Gallery option instead. I only really concern myself with cataloging raw(in this case NEF) files. I do tag jpgs and tifs where they currently exist, but the majority of them are disposable images(being offshoots of the raw files).
I do have many scans of old photos, saved in tifs(and jpgs) and those file formats are easily tagged in many applications that can tag keeping to a universal tagging format.
But the main issue(at least for me) is tagging raw files which very few, if any, thirdparty programs can do.

(my)Biggest gripe with Gallery at the moment is it's inability to copy-paste tagged info from one image into another. For that I still use ViewNX2.
It still does batch tagging, where you select a series of images and then add tag info, and is applied to all images(easy to do).

I used to use tagging images during downloading to the PC, but it became cumbersome to add unique tags to images that required it in any one session .. so I now prefer the batch tagging method instead.

I still do the tagging during import process tho, but really only use a few generic tag term endemic to that session. eg. a trip to Bourke .. tag will be Bourke Trip for all those images even they weren't shot near the town Bourke .. Bourke Trip being the important bit of info.
A key factor to tagging, apart from having a well thought out structure, is the importance of having added at least some basic tag info to them as Warbler says .. during import.
At least at some point later on, using some cataloging software, you sift through them all and give them unique identifiers, but they are much easier to differentiate if at least one simple set of tag info has been added.
I still have 29680 images(of my types) still categorised as 'untagged' in Gallery. While it's easy to view them all, they aren't intuitively easy to add tags too as there's no immediate indication as to what each image is or where it was taken.
I have managed to get the number of untagged images down tho .. from over 100K when I first started to get stuck into it all. I just do it on and off in fits and bursts.


What concerns me about the OP's idea is ..
Whilst the notion of initiating a cataloging business could prove to be useful, what file formats will this system support?
What catalogue format will it be created in/with?
For a cataloging system to be of any use, it really needs a database to make it searchable.
For a business that is dependent only on the consumption side of photography, the choice of format is easy .. jpg .. you really don't need anything other than that for most uses.
But for the content creators(ie. us photogs) .. cataloging files other than the raw files(for those of us that only really shoot in raw) the issue of file compatibility arises.
Not many programs can add tag data to raw files .. so is this service for 'real photographers' or the the more general snap shooter/selfie junkie!

If course many professional togs shoot jpg straight from camera, but the vast majority will be shooting in jpg mode.
Those that shoot in jpg mode already know what they're doing and how to do it.
As an example a sports shooter(content provider) at a major event will usually shoot jpg mode due to the need for immediate upload to their customer(consumption based business).
The sports tog has been doing it for ages already, and will have a system in place to tag the images during import to their preferred software.
This will have been set up in advance of the session.
So I can't see that this type of photographer will have any need for this type of service. It's simply wasted duplication!

In another instance of (say) a wedding tog. They would almost certainly be shooting in raw format, getting images uploaded to pc in a much more leisurely fashion(compared to the sports pro!) .. where they will also have a system in place to add generic tag info to that session(eg. Betty and Bob's wedding).
After import, they may also see the value of adding unique tags to images(random examples could be wedding rings/signing of registry/dress/trash/cake/shoes/etc).
This is where a service like this 'could' be handy in that it takes time to sift through images adding unique tag info.
But if wedding tog A uses Canon and wedding tog B uses Nikon and they both shoot in their respective raw formats .. the software requirements are different.
Like I said, very few apps can do this with raw files.
And using a closed format/proprietary system such as Adobe's or Photo Mechanic's then limits the photographer to only use that software too.
So the system has to be an open format, or unique to this specific service where the package then involves the photographer to use this unique software to search the catalogue ... etc, etc.

So for validation purposes of such a service ..
A/. as already said by others: services already exist that cater to a generic system.

B/. there is an issue in that an open format system that caters for the majority of photographers .. really doesn't exist(properly)!
For the anally retentive types(basically me! ) .. I use a series of software to achieve a specific end result.
To summarise that end result is: I just don't want to lose track of my raw files(which I basically have) .. but I also don't want to be locked into a proprietary system either.
I just want key info embedded in my raw files, and it'd be nice to find a way to easily search those images and then add a bit more as the ideas enter into my consciousness.
A decent system of a ready made structure would be nice to have access too(I currently make things up a little as I go), I sometimes lack the knowledge of what some things actually are(birds, insects, etc).
But the one thing that is probably going to be key here in all of this is the underlying software required for it to work.

So for validation of the what the OP has posted ... zero!... zip, null, nothing, nope, confirmation that the service described above probably is too limited to be of any real use.

But! .. as a general all purpose 'can do everything' system, which would include software as wel as the service .. very useful.

In a futile attempt to help me with my current tagging'keywording situation, many years ago I paid $129 for an almost perfect system ... IDImager, but which the dev stopped supporting and changed to a new version(which I didn't like).
Other than the app was a little slow in running, it's abilities were unparalled. Did everything!
I'm willing to pay more if need be and the system is both open(as in source and format types) and maintained.

One day I'm going to try Photo Supreme again(which I didn't like as the replacement for IDImager) .. as it's now at v3(from V1) .. and see if it's changed.
My main issue is paying $100 for a program that may one day cease to exist .. again!

[bcys1961]

True Ricktas , but if I look at my collection, a lot would include my bride and kids, so that would be easy to provide names to the tagger.

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Face recognition feature in LR6 will do 90% of that job for you now. Just find and tag the first few of each person and it will start identifying all the rest for you.

[ricktas]

Maybe the OP knew the answer before she posted the question, she hasn't been back to the site since.

[jim]

Well, starting up a new business can be time-consuming.

[Mark L]

^Had the time to be an OP here though Jim.
Wouldn't mind knowing what the business idea is?
If collate and organise photos is important to the business then employ someone and not outsource??