Previous methods of image keywording almost always involved downloading an image from a server, adding metadata and reuploading it back. In cases of outsourcing images to keywording companies, this involved huge volumes of data traveling back and forth. Piksee, a new software package from New Zealand metadata company Keedup, eliminates the loss of time associated with data transfer by sampling images off a server and adding keywords and other information without moving images themselves.
Particularly useful for breaking news and other time-sensitive imagery, Piksee eliminates as much as 90% of Internet data traffic associated with adding metadata. It also addresses a related problem: “Where news and celebrity images once went out to clients and sub-agents with hardly any metadata, there is now the opportunity to get the information into the IPTC fields of the images from the beginning,” says Keedup chief executive officer Kevin Townsend.
Piksee is not the first to offer on-server keywording, but Townsend explains that previous options typically used virtual private networks or Internet browsers that could only handle one image at a time and as such were extremely slow. Because of this, companies with large image volumes have often elected to source out keywording to specialized companies, whose customized systems allowed for fastest possible metadata input but also necessitated FTP transfer of high-resolution images.
A year in development using workflows of companies like Toyota as examples, Piksee has been written in Java and is Macintosh and PC-compatible. It works with existing agency workflows; for instance, if the agency’s keywording software needs to be changed or updated, Piksee’s operations would not be affected. Townsend says the software was manufactured to be installed an operated with “a minumum of fuss”—an emphasis was on versatility and simplicity.