iView Multimedia is committed to empowering professional photographers to work smarter and more efficiently. To that end, we recently administered a survey entitled "How Do Professional Photographers Feel about Digital Photography?", asking photographers what they need and want to help them take advantage of new technological developments in photography.

The response we received was tremendous! A big thank you to all those who took the time to share your valuable opinions. The results of our research will be used to inform and influence our ongoing product development.

Read on for the press release and full survey results...

New research identifies file management as most pressing concern of professional photographers

Half (51 per cent) of professional photographers say file management is the greatest challenge associated with digital photography, according to new research from iView Multimedia, makers of the award-winning digital asset management (DAM) application iView MediaPro.

To better understand the needs of MediaPro’s core users, iView asked professional photographers to describe the benefits and challenges of digital photography. Digital photography enables photographers to take more photos and experiment more without regard for film availability or cost. The result is that photographers are often left with an unwieldy number of files to manage. The survey clearly identified file management as the greatest challenge of digital photography.

Four main challenges relating to file management emerged from the research: effective and efficient file storage and retrieval; the lack of an industry standard file format enabling consistent capture and population of metadata fields; the learning curve associated with learning a new photo management software; and the time spent at the computer rather than taking pictures.

When asked to describe the specific challenges of digital photography, photographers responded with comments such as these below:

Effective and efficient file storage and retrieval

• “Developing an easy and reliable way to archive ‘everything’, from RAW files to final TIFF cuts, and to be able to search through it all.”
• “Finding a secure way to store thousands of images and being able to browse them quickly. Digital cameras let you take many more photos than you could take with film, since it's virtually free and you tend to experiment more.
• “Managing the sheer volume of images captured. Finding what you want when you want it.”

The lack of an industry standard file format enabling consistent capture and population of metadata fields

• “Cross-application, seamless metadata storage for images.”
• “METADATA - the problem of consistency between programs and having access to a full range of recordable information in all programs. What good is having 10,000 digital images on your hard disk if you can't find the one you want? Finding that image is based on metadata searching.”
• “Reliable integration of annotation software with imaging and output.”

The learning curve

• “Understanding all aspects of digital imaging and being able to manage the many files created daily.”
• “The learning curve in conjunction with file management and organization.”

Time spent at the computer, rather than taking pictures

• “Time. My computer and I are always duking it out! I'm always looking for faster, smoother ways to view, sort, process, save, and publish my images.”
• “Getting the most out of every image in the shortest amount of time. Meaning creative assurance from the shutter click to the editing, managing and saving of information in the shortest amount of time so you can spend more time shooting and less in the digital darkroom.”
• “With greater control comes greater time commitment. Finding the time to effectively process all these images is tough.”

Yan Calotychos, founder and CTO of iView Multimedia said “The digital imaging industry must be sensitive to the financial and emotional attachments photographers have to their digital files. We must provide solutions that ease the technological learning curve and enable photographers to realize their visions and easily access all their digital assets. iView customer feedback provides us with crucial information that informs iView product development.”

Full survey results:

The survey also included a qualitative question asking: "In your own words, what is the most pressing concern of photographers using digital technology?"
Responses to this question provided a valuable insight into the needs and wants of professional photographers, and will certainly influence our ongoing product development.