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Photo management

Refreshing ways for a business to organize stock photos

by Canto  |  April 29, 2016

2 min. read
Several photos are arranges on a wooden backgound; they show various scenes and items such as shoes, hands holding a coffee mug and trains.

Stock photos necessitate different methods of image organization and storage due to the fact they are used professionally. Common image and graphic files can be sorted in similar fashion, but the urgency to do so is lessened. Stock photos are purchased, downloaded images that are intended for specific business purposes. As such, they need to be quickly accessible and searchable. Learn some unique ways to organize stock photos so that your professional image needs are met.

Quickly locate stock photos using metadata

Use metadata to efficiently arrange stock photos through important, relevant information. As stock photos typically require use from numerous users, such as team members of a company project, they need to be located quickly and methodically. Managing metadata offers the greatest chances for quick location of stock photos when they’re needed for a webpage, campaign or project.

Working with laptop and metadata
Metadata is vital for organizing stock photos.

Using metadata to help organize stock photos also keeps the images separated in terms of things like date and location. This is important because stock photos downloaded for company use are needed by different teams for various projects, and they generally require different types of photos for their respective campaigns.

Use software to automate most of the organization process

Using software to organize stock photos is increasingly popular and extremely efficient. All the methods of organization that companies wish to employ are enhanced and utilized by digital photo software. The key to finding the right software to handle this task is looking for one that centralizes your stock photos.

Digital asset management is a powerful tool that meets the specific needs of companies with large amounts of stock photos. With DAM, you’ll never have to search through desktop folders, shared drives or email chains for images. It creates a single, accessible image library your team can use to find, share or publish images.

Photo image metadata at work
Digital asset management handles specific company needs for sorting stock photos.

Organize stock photos departmentally to boost efficiency

Make a conscious decision to organize stock photos by department. That is, sort them into folders and paths that are specific to a certain department. For example, photos with people feeding dogs might be more useful to the marketing department of a dog food company. If they know where to look immediately for the types of stock photos needed, it saves valuable time.

One possible solution to efficiently sort stock photos departmentally is to instruct team members to download stock photos directly to folders pre-made for each department. Whether the folders are located on the company network or in a cloud storage, ensure they are easily marked for departments to find.

Stock photos have different storage and organization requirements, as they serve different purposes than most other images. Recognize the particular ways to sort them to maximize company success.