Mimetic Galleries

[See the newer posting to learn the another, easier method for adding pictures by email that works when you haven't added the IPTC caption information for picture!]

Did you know you can add pictures to your exhibitions by emailing them to your gallery website? It works this way:

1. You caption your picture with your name and the exhibition “nickname” with a catalog program, such as Lightroom, Aperture, iPhoto, PhotoMechanic, iView, and Expression Media.
2. Email the picture your gallery website. The email address is of the form, pix@mygallery.com. So, if your gallery website is Mimetic.com, then the email address to use is “pix@mimetic.com”
3. The gallery website will put the picture into the right gallery.

Step 1: Caption your picture

To send pictures by email, you must have your name as the creator of the picture. In iView and Microsoft Expression, this IPTC field is called “Creator”. In Photoshop it’s called “Author.” In Lightroom, it’s called “Creator.” Sometimes, it’s called “Byline” or “Source”. Here’s what it looks like in Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop:

Be very sure to use the same name here as you use in your gallery! If you’re John Doe in your gallery, and JD in your captions, the system won’t figure out that JD is John Doe!

Next, you can add an instruction to tell the gallery website which exhibition the picture belongs to. If you don’t do this, the picture will go into your default exhibition, your portfolio. The instruction goes into the “instructions” field (also called “special instructions”) in your catalog program. Write “project=” followed by the nickname of the exhibition. In the example below, the nickname of the exhibition is “tsumani”, so the instruction is “project=tsunami”.

Where do I find an exhibition’s nickname, you ask? Open up an exhibition in the administration area, and you’ll see the “Nickname” field right below the Title of the exhibition.

I suggest you also fill the main caption fields: Headline (sometimes called Title), Creation Date, Caption, City, and Country. These are the fields you use if you file to a photo agency, by the way. Here’s an example in Adobe Lightroom:

Finally, be sure to update your picture file with the new caption information. In many catalog programs, this is a second step.

2. Email your pictures

Now, email your pictures to the gallery website. Send the pictures to “pix” at your website. So, if your gallery website is Mimetic.com, then the email address to use is “pix@mimetic.com”. I recommend sending only one or two pictures per email, because many email systems refuse large emails.

That’s it. The gallery system will read your emails and extract the pictures. One by one, the gallery system will put the pictures into the appropriate exhibitions. Most gallery systems are set to process one picture per minute.

Why is this so cool?

Sometimes, email is your only access to the Internet. It could be your friend in the United Nations mission can email for your but not give you access to the website. This method means you can file your pictures to the gallery.

And, if you have automatic FTP forwarding turned on, then the pictures will be forwarded to your agency, client, or archive…wherever you want.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 1:53 AM and is filed under How To. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.