Catch The Wave

 Trudy Levy

In 1994 Kodak's effort to develop a digital product market with photo processing studios began to catch the eye of many people, including Helen Dimoff of Gensler, the largest architecture, design and planning firm. Six years later Gensler has launched a web based ImageBank which makes available to their 22 offices worldwide a complete library of more than 5,000 corporate marketing images. Using this system Gensler staff around the world can now browse through images of their many offices' work, download printable versions for use in their individual office or send an email request to Corporate for special needs. It would seem that Gensler caught the digital imaging wave and rode it successfully. So how was the Trip?

It began with a small exploration. Kodak invited Gensler to participate in a group of Architects and Designers who were Beta testing an image management software which Kodak was developing called Shoebox. Kodak had begun their own digital imaging product development with an eye on the consumer, but were finding that it was the professional photographers and those who had professional slide collections who were using the product which most of us know as the PhotoCD. They wondered if this same group would be interested in Shoebox. Gensler was and if anyone from Kodak is reading this for the next five years they pushed that little program to the max. Unfortunately Kodak soon dropped support of the product, so that it never was evolved to a network capable program, but as it was a capable and flexible program, Gensler was able to create a solid image library with it.

Gensler manages all professional photography of finished projects at the corporate level. In 1994 it was decided to scan all new photography and photography from the previous ten years using the PhotoCD technology. These digital images were all entered into Shoebox as they were created. Michele Sheehan, Photography coordinator, is responsible for providing the various offices' marketing groups with any imaging which they require, both film and digital. Initially she used Shoebox to file information about the photographs for which she was responsible and to help herself a retrieve digital images by developing useful descriptive terms.

While Gensler had initially set up Shoebox with fields which they felt would be useful, it was the actual use of the information, that defined which fields were maintained. The images themselves could be searched for using descriptive keywords, but Michele found that they often searched for images based on certain project information such as, the Gensler office responsible for the project, the client, or the location. Without easy access between the image library and the project data it was necessary to include some project data in the image data. By 1999 Michele had an Image library of 4,232 records, though as it turns out she actually had an image library of over 5,000 images. Shoebox had exceeded its capabilities and was quietly corrupting information. Also the requests for digital images had grown to the point that easier access for the individual offices would clearly be more effective.

In 1999 during a telephone conference between the Corporate Communications groups in San Francisco and in New York City and their digital image consultants - Image Integration, it was decided that a web based library was the logical next step. Beth Pappas, who had already developed a small web site for the marketing groups to share their latest marketing material, would develop the web aspect of the Library in NYC to be coordinated with the corporate Intranet which she was also developing. She opted to use SQL server as her web data server. Michele Sheehan with the assistance of Image Integration would extract the data she had already assembled in Shoebox program and create JPGs for thumbnail browsing and TIFs for downloading to be printed in house from the PhotoCDs.

The text data was exported relatively smoothly into a tab delimited text file, though it did need to be cleaned up in a spreadsheet program especially where data had started to corrupt. As each record in Shoebox included a PhotoCD file name which is composed of the unique PhotoCD number and an image number, it was decided to reuse this file name for the images in the library. This way there would be a key field to relate the text data to image file. This file name, as it included the PhotoCD number, would also identify where the original was stored. As they had been scanning on master PhotoCD format which has five levels of resolutions, they chose the 4th level resolution to be the printable image size. It is about 4.5 MB. or 1200 x 1536 pixels. After experimentation the thumbnail was set at 256 x171 pixels. Equilibrium's Debabelizer was used to batch convert all the PhotoCDs to these image file sizes and types, although Michele found the program required more tender loving care then she thought proper.

With the basic pieces ready Michele and Beth began the real design of the system. Combining Michele's experience with what worked and what didn't with Beth's technical expertise they made certain decisions.

• To end the duplication of data the image library was integrated with the general information system, so that people could now have coordinated access to project data.
• Only the descriptive terms which Michele had found useful were maintained.
• As Email requests are the main communication method between Gensler offices, the ability to ³email this collection request ³ was added.
• It was decided not to include the temporary marketing images in this collection. They would be kept where all marketing groups upload their latest marketing materials for others to share, but the ImageBank would represent the Final images of built projects which would continue to be managed by corporate

Of course the ride isn't over yet. As more people now use the library, more needs and improvements are discovered and implemented. The first one has been that not everyone can or wants to do the improvement required for some PhotoCD scans. So, while it is still being used for the initial scan, some photos, where the PhotoCD scan is not acceptable, are being rescanned in house on the new improved flatbed scanners. As the technology continues to evolve, Gensler continues to explore how technology can help them to streamline and improve the development of marketing materials in a global firm while maintaining quality control. When you catch a good wave you keep riding it....right?

Nov.10,2000