How Things Work

Photo Archiving and Picture Desk Software Reinvents A Contest

By Maria Mann

With installed systems at the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe, MerlinOne is one of the leading suppliers of picture desk and photo archive systems to the publishing industry. At the NPPA, MerlinOne provided a system to handle every stage of the Best of Photojournalism Contest: from entering photos, to viewing photos on-line via the Internet, to judging them and selecting the winners.

MerlinOne hosted a Merlin system at its Quincy, Massachusetts office to organize and store all of the images submitted. Contestants around the globe submitted photos on-line. MerlinOne's caption plug-in for Photoshop was used to help photographers fill in IPTC information such as date, location, title, category and caption. Submissions were uploaded to the Quincy server via FTP, and the IPTC data was used to automate input and registration. Images were soon thereafter registered and available for browsing.

With a standard web browser, on a Mac or PC, any photographer could access the hosted Merlin server and view any and all contest entries by category. Field information was hidden until finalists were announced. For the first time, all entries were continuously available as a learning tool to photography students and seasoned photojournalists.

Merlin picture desk software was used during the actual contest judging at The Poynter Institute last Spring. Judges could view images by group or individually, handling some 23,000 images over the course of a week.

About Merlin

MerlinOne is a leading provider of media management solutions. MerlinOne technology helps companies manage their digital photos, graphics, PDFs, QuickTime movies, and other visual content with powerful save, search, and management tools. These electronic collections can then be accessed and managed via client and web-based applications to allow geographically distributed enterprises to share resources and work collaboratively.

Merlin archive and management systems have been in real-time, real-world use since 1994, and today Merlin has more than 90 installations at newspapers such as, The New York Times, The Chicago Sun Times, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post and at companies like MSNBC, Bravo, Pfizer, and Marvel Comics.