digitalrailroad.net

Features

Digital Railroad's tools automate at least 90% of your time-consuming production tasks for you. Our servers automatically resize your images to multiple resolutions, distribute original files to our multiple redundant data storage facilities, batch-caption groups of images, and allow you to set up FTP syndication to handle transmission of your photos to multiple clients. You can share production responsibilities with another user, such as an assistant or co-worker working in another region of the world, by granting them access to your member archive through their own membername.

As a Digital Railroad member archive owner, you will handle production tasks in the top portion of your screen, which represents your online member archive.Your personal production area contains all work in your member archive. It is the place where you can edit and group photos into first selects, seconds and outs. To respond to customer requests, you can collect the photos you want from your member archive and place them in your online lightbox, as depicted at the bottom of the screen. Then you can easily share that lightbox with anyone privately or publicly.

Upload Images

Upload your images via browser or FTP (File Transfer Protocol). We presently support both TIFF and JPEG file types and you can also easily upload directly from popular photo editing software like Apple Aperture and Microsoft iView, and more are in development.

FTP — FTP software is widely used in the photo industry for quickly and efficiently transmitting large, high-resolution images. FTP is also the fastest way to upload images to your Digital Railroad member archive. Don't have one yet? We can recommend the perfect FTP software for you. We suggest using FTP software for uploading high resolution images or large batches of images.

Browser — uploading through your browser is fast and easy, especially for smaller images. We support the latest versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox, and Apple's Safari.

Apple Aperture —

The Digital Railroad Aperture plug-in gives you a one-click solution for transferring image files from Aperture version 1.5 directly into your member archive. Upload photos in JPEG or TIFF format and keep working in Aperture while your images upload. The uploader also allows you to keep track of which files you have uploaded to your member archive via the "Digital Railroad Status" custom metadata field. Check out the Digital Railroad Export Plug-in for Aperture <http://www.digitalrailroad.net/exporters/DRRExportPluginForAperture.dmg>.

"The combination of the new plug-in and our archive powered by Digital Railroad has taken many of the repetitive and time-consuming tasks out of the workflow process," said long-time National Geographic photographers Sisse Brimberg and Cotton Coulson, owners of Keenpress (www.keenpress.com). "Uploading images has never been faster and simpler."

Microsoft iView —

This one-click uploader enables you to transfer image files from an iView MediaPro catalog directly into your member archive. MediaPro allows you to export IPTC metadata from a MediaPro catalog to your member archive, eliminating repetitive production steps like entering metadata twice. MediaPro can also quickly and easily convert a variety of image file formats, such as RAW, into the JPEG and TIFF formats for uploading to Digital Railroad. Check out the uploader and discount offer.<http://www.digitalrailroad.net/corpsite/iview.html>

"As a Digital Railroad member and an iView MediaPro user, I am looking forward to using this new service," said Ed Kashi, photojournalist and co-author of Aging in America: The Years Ahead. "As a photojournalist, more seamless connection of both products will help enormously in my digital workflow, giving me more time for reporting and making pictures."

Check back often to our Tools area for the latest plug-ins, uploaders and other time saving products.

Automatic Resize and JPEG Creation

Digital Railroad stores your images at their original file size in geographically redundant servers. Our servers format and automatically resize them as JPEGs at small (900x450), medium (1500x900), and large (3000x1800) resolutions. Images are not sized greater than their original resolution and you can also customize the resizing to whatever sizes/names is best for your business.

Organize Groups

You can place your images into groups, organized by subject matter, date or any other criteria you choose.

Captions and Keywords

Digital Railroad supports IPTC standards and will automatically extract the metadata entered into your images via most desktop image editors. Caption your images individually or batch caption them in your editing software and/or online in your member archive powered by Digital Railroad. Digital Railroad maintains the most updated IPTC caption data associated with your images. Your keywords help buyers find the images they need so make sure to add appropriate metadata and keywords whenever possible in order to increase your photo sales.

Digital Railroad and JaincoTech are working together to bring Jaincotech's industry-leading services to Digital Railroad's members, including:

Image Digitization and Scanning
Captioning and Keywording
Raw to Tiff conversion
Dust Spotting and Retouching

Learn More

Edit Selects

We have created a unique digital editing system that is similar to how you edit your best images. You can edit your images by selecting "firsts," "seconds," and "outs." You can also move images to new groups or lightboxes to further refine and organize your edits. This also allows you to edit with friends, mentors and clients remotely via your member archive in a more efficient manner.

Publish Images

In your member archive

How do you show clients and potential image buyers your amazing images? By publishing them! With Digital Railroad's customer relationship tools, you can make your images available to the general public or to select individuals and/or lists of individuals. The My Site Production workspace displays an overview of your member archive's image groups, which are classified as:

Production: Control and manage who and how people have access.
Private:Great for managing assignments for specific clients and one-click for publishing publicly after the assignment embargo has passed. Publish the group privately and, when the embargo lifts, move this group to the public group in your member archive.
Public: Anyone who comes to your member archive will be able to see the images in these groups.

Until you choose to "publish" your images, they remain in your private production workspace awaiting captions, edits, or image tasks.

To Marketplace

Publishing your images in Marketplace is a simple automated process. With our unique online tools, you can prep and then publish your images — singly or as a group. During this submission process, you publish images and control access to images by designating territories. Within Marketplace, territories are defined as countries and regions of the world that:

Are recognized by the United Nations.
Member archive owners choose which territories they wish to make their photos available in digitalrailroad.net's Marketplace.

Share Production Tasks

Member archive owners can provide access for assistants and co-workers to answer pricing requests and to complete production tasks under their own login.

Search

Digital Railroad's Search functionality allows you, your clients, and potential buyers to search your images and find the metadata you input. They can search by keywords, image ID, source, city, state/province, and country, as well as by date or within a date range. Through our Archive Preferences feature, you can also allow searches by source filename. Buyers can specify if they require images that have model and/or property releases, as well as indicate if they would like to see RF images, RM images, or both. As the member archive owner, you can additionally search by image Restrictions and find images that are priced with specific Pricing Templates.