What is DBGallery?

A shared photo database, DBGallery is a software tool allowing everyone in an organization to quickly access digital photo assets. This is accomplished by utilizing data about photographs. It includes tools to dramatically decrease entry of data for photos, such as auto fill options and easy to use data presets. Photos may be browsed via GPS location on a map, via data in approx 30 data-trees, and shared virtual sets.

Having a photo collection containing data and being organized increases the value of that collection ten-fold.

No longer is browsing folders full of thumbnails the way to organize and find photos.

Who are the end users?

They include anyone in an organization who consume photos as well as those who administer the collection.

Who are it's key customers?

To date the majority of customers are in engineering, historical societies, and sciences (e.g. geological organizations).

Individual photographers with large collections also form a small subset of those finding this product highly valuable.

What are it's specific capabilities?

Logical Views

Do you browse your photos the old fashioned way? DBGallery allows the browsing of photos in a Windows Explorer-like tree view, but instead of folders the tree consists of years and months, camera models, keywords, titles, exposures, and many more practical layouts.

Photo Data Editor

IPTC/XMP data editor with powerful, quick, and easy edit features (too many to discuss here). Data is stored in your photos in an industry standard manor and read by most websites (Flickr, PhotoBucket, SmugMug, etc, etc) and software (Adobe's PhotoShop & Bridge & others, Windows Vista, etc). Once data is collected for sets of photos it can be used in interesting useful ways for years to come.

Facilitates Fast Data Entry

Tuned for quick data entry, it has several features which enables fast meta-data entry. Data templates allow a preset collection of data field values to be saved and later applied to images. This facilitates quick subsequent tagging of one or many photos with these pre-filled data fields. Shortcut keys allow storing and retrieval of favorites and previously keyed entries. There is a video overview of these features.

Excellent Data Search Capabilities

Search via IPTC/XMP data (keywords, description, title, etc), Exif data (stored by camera, such as model, exposure, flash fired) and file names. Use AND, OR, NOT, and IN to refine searches.

Reports

Professional reports show formal stats in great looking layouts. Show formal stats such as number of photos per year, number of photos by camera, and others.

Share via Email and Websites

Share data and photos via extremely easy email as well as a website generator. These are called EmailGallery and WebGallery respectively.

Handy Collections

Collections of photos may be created using an area called “Handy Collections”. This name may be changed to represent how you see these collections: Rooms, Drawers, Buckets, etc.

Stock Agency Features

Holds data for status of photos at each agency and sales amount and quantity of each. Search based on agency, status and sales. Run reports like sales, acceptance ratios, sales by photo, by agency, and several others.

Multi-User

For office environments...everyone in the organization can use the same set of photos, organization, and data. This is due to the use of MySql as the central database plus client-server features built into DBGallery.

Photo Central!

This leads to a tool that would be used as your Photo Central, where photos are quickly found then something done with. Once found they can be dragged and dropped to programs for whatever needs to be done with them (editing PhotoShop or Gimp, drop them onto a print program, to a website builder, ad campaign, etc, etc). Internal to DBGallery you may quickly find and email photos, create websites, build collections, view and even set your favorite excellent photos as windows wallpaper.

Works extremely well with Adobe's products' metadata because DBGallery uses Adobe's XMP Toolkit to read and write IPTC/XMP data! So use DBGallery to find photos then drop them onto Adobe's products. Editing data back and forth between DBGallery and Bridge or any of Adobe programs' File Info dialogs works well because of the use of the XMP Toolkit and the compatability benefits this provides.

Summary

Think using Windows Explorer is the place to go to find photos? DBGallery simply shows these same folders PLUS adds all these evolutionary capabilities. And if you need to go back to using Explorer data is stored in your photos, and not just lost if you decide not to use DBGallery.

DBGallery...it's a whole new and addictive way to search, use and enjoy a photo collection.