Open Forum

Dear Colleagues,

I am working with Lowe Art Museum team members to clean up our One Drive database and in turn our TMS files related to collections management. Does anyone have a template they could share for basic image conventions and file and folder naming conventions they have used for doing this? What are your parameters for what constitutes "hi-res" images and do you have any guidelines you follow for uploading images into TMS? Any other information or resource recommendations would be welcomed.

Hi Natasha. We maintain 3 levels of photography: an uncorrected master image, usually a DNG file; a TIF that we consider to be publication size, 300 ppi, and then a JPG, 1000 pixels on the longer side, that we attach to our website and database (we're on Embark, TMS's cousin). These are all named with the accession number and then a suffix: _M1 for master photo, _P1 for print photo, and _A1 for access. That way if you have multiple versions you can go to _A2, _A3, etc. We process photos in Lightroom, and have export routines set up to derive the appropriate formats and file sizes. We also have lots of what we consider "inventory shots," shot in the galleries or in storage without color correction or anything, for condition checking, as we unpack new arrivals, etc., and those get an _I1 suffix so we know they are not for public use.