Catalog Workflow
Primarily in an effort to speed this handling of files and previews, and heavily borrowed from asset-management and database disciplines, the Catalog model takes your original files and builds “pointers” back to the original files. They still will generate previews, but they keep them in a database that will refer to the original file location. This allows you to import your files, make collections and groupings that feel like you’re moving originals, but you’re just pointing back to the master file with small text files. An example of this use in a database is Extensis Portfolio, and iView. Extensis allows you to build collections, save relatively small files that will show you the preview thumbnail, and all the attributes of the file, and tell you where that file is. You do a search for fire hydrant photos, Portfolio will show you all your hydrant images. You select one, and it tells you it’s on CD#4208, in your file cabinet upstairs.
Every time you point a Browser at a folder it’s got to rebuild its previews. The Catalog model saves these previews as part of the catalog file, along with the attribute information and the location information. It is a wonderful application for a computer, applying many of the logical filing and cross-referencing structures present in even the analog world, and leveraging the power of digital processing to it. It is still based on the “propagation” principle, but it give you a lot of power over how to manage all those propagated files.
Importing Files, Sorting and Rating, Purposing Files
The Catalog gives you the ability to track information in the files during Import, it allows you to sort and rate in much the same way as the Browser model. It also allows you to group files into collections which you can then target to different projects. Because it’s a database at heart, it will also keep track of how the files are used, where they are, and what’s been backed up and not. Once the files have been imported, you access the catalog files, not the originals, so reviewing images is fast and efficient.
Backup and Archive
With the additional tool of the database, tracking versions, the task of keeping your files backed up and archived is easier, but still space-consuming. Although your groupings haven’t propagated files, your versions for each project are full versions which take up their full space on the hard drive. We still have the issue of what to backup and what to save in an archive, and have to track each generation of versions to avoid overwriting a previous generation.
To be completely fair, I have to admit I’ve never implemented any catalog for managing my images. I’ve always been kind of a ’64 Bug kind of person, anyway, but I will say that I know a lot of people who have a great deal of my respect who swear by one or another of these programs to manage their files. The highest evolution of this strategy I’ve been able to find is a product called AlienBrain (www.alienbrain.com). Take a look at the demo on the web site, it will change your life. This has been developed primarily for the video industry, where’s they’re trying to manage huge numbers of components of gigantic projects, with many different people contributing to the production. It’s a network-based catalog and management system based on propagated files then imported into a non-linear editing application like Final Cut.
-Ted Dillard
(Excertped from the draft "Photographic Project Management:
Data Management Solutions for Photography Projects)
