tracking your print editions

[Hollis]

Hello all, I am starting to finally see some steady sales start to happen with my images in a ;fine art' capacity and was wondering if anyone uses or has heard of any software that helps track your Print editions. I have thought about just creating an Xcel spreadsheet but that will not be a very good long term solution. Best case scenario would be some software that allowed me to include a thumbnail of the image in question so as to be able to reference it easily and also for info as to who bought the print so as to stay connected to my collectors (assuming I have collectors?).

Please, let me know.

[Jim Cole]

Hi Hollis,

I think you can buy a database program like Nutshell that would allow you to set up a simple database. At least I think it may still be available.

I used Microsoft Access to build a simple database that tracks:

Print Unique # (includes edition #)
State - Print only, matted, framed
On Display? Y/N
Where on Display:
Hang Date:
Scheduled Take Down Date:
Sold? Y/N
Amount Sold For:

I set up some simple reports that let me know what is where, what has sold, prints in stock, etc. My print numbers are set up like 12345-999 where 12345 is the unique stock number and the 999 is the edition #. It makes it easy to search for a specific print when I need to change the status to sold to to put it in a show or after taking it down.

Jim Cole
www.jimcolephoto.com

[John Bowen]

Although not cheap, Kevin Saitta (sp) has developed a product called Artsoft. It is a database like you are looking for and a web presence. Kevin advertises on the unblinkingeye.com website.

[Capocheny]

Hollis,

Although you can set up your own database, which is easy enough to do through excel or a proper database program, I'd also suggest Kevin Saitta's product, Artsoft.

Remember, if you're earning income from the sale of your images, you can also deduct the cost of these packages as a "cost of doing business" from your income tax.

[Caveat: This is what happens in Canada... it may be different for folks in the US. So, check with your CPA. :)]

Cheers

[PViapiano]

Hollis...

I love your work, wonderful images with a great feel!

You deserve to be selling more of it...good luck to you!

Paul

[Hollis]

Thanks for the comments, I appreciate them. I am about to have a huge ammount of images produced after my 9 month road trip and would like to get a handle on it as early as possible.

Hollis

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Thanks for the comments, I appreciate them. I am about to have a huge ammount of images produced after my 9 month road trip and would like to get a handle on it as early as possible.

Hollis

I don't know that Kevin's software is that expensive considering all that it does. I use it and I love it.

[Stefano]

I've just started my little "business" ;) selling my prints, and I use a very analog system, I worked as store keeper for a long time before to get promoted(accountant),so, I use a store keeper book, where I write all information down about my print, the seller, and little note.
Maybe one day I'll put them in a digital world(a usually database), but I'm sure that continuing to use my pen and my book. :D

Stefano

[Tomaas]

I don't know that Kevin's software is that expensive considering all that it does. I use it and I love it.

Jorge, you are correct. The cost is pretty minimal in comparison to its capabilities.

Best

[photographs42]

Back in the mid ‘80’s I started using a MS Works database to track my print inventory and sales. I have almost 2400 entries in it now and it has served me pretty well. The one drawback is that when one person buy’s multiple prints, I have to enter the same personal data multiple times. I can copy and paste the data but it would be nice if I had a single table for customer data. A relational database would solve that problem but I haven’t been happy with the MS Access versions I have set up.

If you decide to use a digital form of record keeping, I have three words of advice. BACK-UP, BACK-UP and BACK-UP.

If you go with a database, think about how you will use it when creating the fields. I have several fields that are only there to make it easy to sort and /or filter to find different things.

I strongly recommend that you keep a paper trail of sales information. I use a simple receipt book from Office Depot that has two copies, I keep one copy in the book.

The first entry in my database is only two fields. First is a statement “AA Last File Modification Date” and then the “Date” field. Every time I make a change to the database I change the date. I know that the file data tells you when the file was last saved but it doesn’t mean it was changed then. The AA part is there to keep that record at the top of the list.

I number every print. At first, I tried to keep track of print numbers in the darkroom but that was too much of a hassle and I found a better way. When I leave the darkroom after a print session, I take a piece of paper with me that has the name of the print, the date, the size and how many prints were made. This usually occurs around 1:00 AM and I have to go to work the next morning. I put the note next to my computer so I can enter the data the next evening. Latter when I’m mounting and matting prints, I check my database to get the next number. The trick is to keep everything up to date at much as possible.

My way is only one of many. Hope this helps.
Jerome

[David_Senesac]

Although one can use a canned commercial application, there isn't anything very complicated about what needs to be done structure wise that any spreadsheet application cannot easily handle. Not being familiar with what is out there, I have some doubts about how thorough such canned applications might be. The main task for doing it yourself is to to figure out what needs to be tracked. A commercial application is like to incorporate thumbnails into its data base whereas a pure spreadsheet will not have that beyond html links. However lots of programs can generate thumbnail listings. The freeware program Irfanview does so with good flexibility though the result will not be directly visually accessible in the resulting database application unless the result is say html based.

Given this is a large format board, everyone here is going to have film. For all with color print end products, that means one is going to need to have their media scanned. Thus one has three basic items to track, original media, scan files, and prints. The original media does not change while both the scans files and prints may. The first key thing one ought to do is decide on a syntax for naming the original media. That is a personal thing. Although some may prefer to categorize by the nature of the subject, there is much to be said for a capture time aka date based system. All digital cameras automatically designate file today so. The main advantage is all images taken during a given period, ie date, will have the same alphanumeric prefix with a sequential numeric suffix that can be easily identified. For example abc101 thru abc104. Otherwise one may have files like newyork1, newyork2, boston1, boston2 etc taken on a given trip mixed up 5 years later with newyork 8, newyork9, and boston4 that were taken on subsequent trips. Simply more confusing. And with a date based system one can incorporate part of the date into the image name, for example 08 could stand for image made in 2008 so 08abc101 thru 08abc104. Whatever one chooses for an image naming process, a shorter character length will work better than one that is more descriptive but long.

For each original media image one will want to keep track of the designated image name, type of media, ie Velvia film or Kodacolor etc, film size of media, orientation, ie horizontal or vertical, scanning process, ie flatbed scan, drum scan etc, date of scan, and scan file name. Thus for a transparency 08abc104 one may have a cheap scan made with an flatbed scanner, then a year later improve with an Imacon, and a couple years later send it out for a drum scan. For each such scan one must post process for a new image file that will result in relatively different end prints. One might also have a drum scan made and then re-process it over a period of years more than once as one say becomes more skilled with Photoshop. The resulting prints from each of those post processing sessions will result in differences in the end prints. One will want to add any cropping information to the film process file data. So one might designate the print file from a Epson flatbed scan as 08abce104 and one from a Tango drum scan as 08abct104. And all print files out to have a note section because there will be things worth recording like "dust artifact not removed at pixel location 4123x3987" or "print seems too dark"

For the prints one will want to know the image print filename used as a source, the date printed, what type of machine printed the image, the width by height of the image area, the width by height of the print that includes the white space beyond the image area necessary to fascilitate mounting, and who/where the customer was. And one ought to numerate prints starting for instance at 201 so a few years later one knows how many of each were printed.

I could continue down and add more data field information to each of the above three categories but my purpose here is not to be thorough but rather to show this whole subject is not so simple and ought to be considered carefully if one is a serious photographer. Else several years down the road one may end up with a difficult to maintain and track awkward system that would be increasingly difficult to change or rebuild.

...David

[David_Senesac]

Although one can use a commercial application, there isn't anything very complicated about what needs to be done structure wise that any spreadsheet application cannot easily handle. Not being familiar with what is out there, I have some doubts about how thorough such programs might be. The main task to use such is to figure out what needs to be tracked. A commercial application is like to incorporate thumbnails into its data base whereas a pure spreadsheet will not have that. However lots of programs can generate thumbnail listings. The freeware program Irfanview does so with good flexibility though the result will not be directly visually accessible in the resulting database application.

Given this is a large format board, everyone here is going to have film. For all with color print end products, that means one is going to need to have their media scanned. Thus one has three basic items to track, original media, scan files, and prints. The original media does not change while both the scans files and prints may. The first key thing one ought to do is decide on a syntax for naming the original media. That is a personal thing. Although some may prefer to categorize by the nature of the subject, there is much to be said for a capture time aka date based system. All digital cameras automatically designate files today so. The main advantage is all images taken during a given period, ie date, will have the same alphanumeric prefix with a sequential numeric suffix that can be easily identified. For example abc101 thru abc104. Otherwise one may have files like newyork1, newyork2, boston1, boston2 etc taken on a given trip mixed up 5 years later with newyork 8, newyork9, and boston4 that were taken on subsequent trips. Simply more confusing. And with a date based system one can incorporate part of the date into the image name, for example 08 could stand for images made in 2008 so 08abc101 thru 08abc104. Whatever one chooses for an image naming process, a shorter character length will work better than one that is more descriptive but long. There is much more to be said about image naming.

For each original media image one will want to keep track of the designated image name, type of media, ie Velvia film or Kodacolor etc, film size of media, orientation, ie horizontal or vertical, scanning process, ie flatbed scan, drum scan etc, date of scan, and scan file name. Thus for a transparency 08abc104 one may have a cheap scan made with an flatbed scanner, then a year later improve with an Imacon, and a couple years later send it out for a drum scan. For each such scan one must post process for a new image file that will result in relatively different end prints. One might also have a drum scan made and then re-process it over a period of years more than once as one say becomes more skilled with Photoshop. The resulting prints from each of those post processing sessions will result in differences in the end prints. One will want to add any cropping information to the film process file data. So one might designate the print file from a Epson flatbed scan as 08abce104 and one from a Tango drum scan as 08abct104. And all print files out to have a note section because there will be things worth recording like "dust artifact not removed at pixel location 4123x3987" or "print seems too dark"

For the prints one will want to know the image print filename used as a source, the date printed, what type of machine printed the image, the width by height of the image area, the width by height of the print that includes the white space beyond the image area necessary to fascilitate mounting, and who/where the customer was. And one ought to numerate prints starting for instance at 201 so a few years later one knows how many of each were printed.

I could continue down and add more data field information to each of the above three categories but my purpose here is not to be thorough but rather to show this whole subject is not so simple and ought to be considered carefully if one is a serious photographer. Else several years down the road one may end up with a difficult to maintain and track awkward system that would be increasingly difficult to change or rebuild.

...David

[David_Senesac]

Although one can use a commercial application, there isn't anything very complicated about what needs to be done structure wise that any spreadsheet application cannot easily handle. Not being familiar with what is out there, I have some doubts about how thorough such programs might be. The main task to use such is to figure out what needs to be tracked. A commercial application is like to incorporate thumbnails into its data base whereas a pure spreadsheet will not have that. However lots of programs can generate thumbnail listings. The freeware program Irfanview does so with good flexibility though the result will not be directly visually accessible in the resulting database application.

Given this is a large format board, everyone here is going to have film. For all with color print end products, that means one is going to need to have their media scanned. Thus one has three basic items to track, original media, scan files, and prints. The original media does not change while both the scans files and prints may. The first key thing one ought to do is decide on a syntax for naming the original media. That is a personal thing. Although some may prefer to categorize by the nature of the subject, there is much to be said for a capture time aka date based system. All digital cameras automatically designate files today so. The main advantage is all images taken during a given period, ie date, will have the same alphanumeric prefix with a sequential numeric suffix that can be easily identified. For example abc101 thru abc104. Otherwise one may have files like newyork1, newyork2, boston1, boston2 etc taken on a given trip mixed up 5 years later with newyork 8, newyork9, and boston4 that were taken on subsequent trips. Simply more confusing. And with a date based system one can incorporate part of the date into the image name, for example 08 could stand for images made in 2008 so 08abc101 thru 08abc104. Whatever one chooses for an image naming process, a shorter character length will work better than one that is more descriptive but long. There is much more to be said about image naming.

For each original media image one will want to keep track of the designated image name, type of media, ie Velvia film or Kodacolor etc, film size of media, orientation, ie horizontal or vertical, scanning process, ie flatbed scan, drum scan etc, date of scan, and scan file name. Thus for a transparency 08abc104 one may have a cheap scan made with an flatbed scanner, then a year later improve with an Imacon, and a couple years later send it out for a drum scan. For each such scan one must post process for a new image file that will result in relatively different end prints. One might also have a drum scan made and then re-process it over a period of years more than once as one say becomes more skilled with Photoshop. The resulting prints from each of those post processing sessions will result in differences in the end prints. One will want to add any cropping information to the film process file data. So one might designate the print file from a Epson flatbed scan as 08abce104 and one from a Tango drum scan as 08abct104. And all print files ought to have a note section because there will be things worth recording like "dust artifact not removed at pixel location 4123x3987" or "print seems too dark"

For the prints one will want to know the image print filename used as a source, the date printed, what type of machine printed the image, the width by height of the image area, the width by height of the print that includes the white space beyond the image area necessary to fascilitate mounting, and who/where the customer was. And one ought to numerate prints starting for instance at 201 so a few years later one knows how many of each were printed.

I could continue down and add more data field information to each of the above three categories but my purpose here is not to be thorough but rather to show this whole subject is not so simple and ought to be considered carefully if one is a serious photographer. Else several years down the road one may end up with a difficult to maintain and track awkward system that would be increasingly difficult to change or rebuild.

...David