Announcing DeepMeta 4

Introduction

Since version 1 of DeepMeta came out in July 2007 it has become the favorite tool for thousands of iStock and Getty Images contributors. Submissions can be prepared and keyworded locally and then sent in one go to the Getty Images server.

Multi-edit and advanced keyword suggestions were added later, to make the process easier, almost enjoyable (ok, maybe not quite yet ;)

The addition of comprehensive Sales statistics and integration with Briefs turned DeepMeta into a bit of a Swiss knife. Every DeepMeta user has their favorite parts, fitting their particular workflow.

It's now 17 years and 3 versions later and time for a new chapter ... bring on DeepMeta version 4!

Challenges

Over the years we've been obsessively collecting, discussing, and analyzing all your precious feedback. Some requests could be implemented within the same week, others seem to have collected dust in our impressively long Feature Request List.

This is why we're so thrilled that DeepMeta 4 will make many of these previously challenging features finally a possibility.

It's also true that technology has changed significantly over the past decade and web technology has matured as a platform for applications. Like many others, we found the time right to embrace the web as an application platform.

Architecture

DeepMeta 4 will consist of a Windows and Mac application, as it did before, but most of its features will also be available online.

Here's a quick overview:

The partial move of DeepMeta to the cloud has many advantages:

• Always up to date: we will no longer be torturing you with the phrase "What version are you running? Ah you need to update to the latest one"

• Portability: if you use more than one computer to work with DeepMeta, your data will be automatically shared. When you move to a new computer, you won't need to copy or migrate your data over. Note that for uploads, of course, your app still needs access to the original files until the upload is done.

• Collaboration: if you work with someone who does the metadata and keywording for you, you can easily share your data. We'll even add some features to streamline the process.

• Backups: we'll take care of backing up your data. If your computer crashes, you lose nothing. (at least not related to DeepMeta, we're not magicians yet ;)

• Creative networking and promotion: many more possibilities to promote your stock portfolio. We will focus very much on making this happen, as you will see below.

• Better support: if you have trouble with editing or an upload, we'll be able to help you much better, since we have access to the data, and can even fix things for you, if at all possible.

• More features: having just one codebase to maintain - based on web standards - makes it so much easier for us to build new features quickly. With DeepMeta v1 up to v3, we had to do most things twice: once for Windows and then the same thing all over for Mac, in completely different environments.

• Prettier: It's true, this is a matter of taste, but it's much easier to build a good-looking web interface than using native tools across platforms. And we'll finally have the much-requested Dark Mode for Windows ... something that was notoriously hard to do in our old development environment. (Hint: the light/dark mode switch is at the bottom right of this page...)

Timeline & planning

We've been working hard for months on this and will finalize building DeepMeta 4 over the coming months "in the open". This means we'll publish new functionality weekly, take your feedback and improve.

The advantage for you is that you get access to functionality quickly, and for us so we can keep your experience and suggestions in a close loop.

Please check out our Roadmap for DeepMeta 4, and check back from time to time. We continuously update it as we progress):

Transition

During the transition to DeepMeta 4, you'll be able to keep using the current version 3. Do keep in mind that some functionality is already affected by recent changes on the side of the Getty servers.

Syncing Portfolio is limited to the first 10k files of your portfolio, while in DeepMeta 4 it will not be limited, even for portfolios of more than 100k images. Display of thumbnails in DeepMeta 3 is also not complete, while DeepMeta 4 should show all thumbnails (as long as the files are still available for sale)

The good news is that we've prioritized the Portfolio and Sales Statistics functionality in DeepMeta 4, so it will be available in the coming weeks. Once you have tried the new Portfolio and Sales statistics, you won't want to go back to the DeepMeta 3 stats!

Batch, Files, Inspections, Briefs, and Upload functionality in DeepMeta 3 will continue to operate perfectly.

And of course, DeepMeta 4 remains free, as you're used from us. We're a long-term trusted contractor for Getty Images, allowing us to provide all stock Portfolio features at no cost to all of you.

Preview

A few screenshots of the Sales Statistics feature, soon to be released:

One more thing

DeepMeta will be a privileged partner of creativ.zone, a brand new and ambitious platform we created for creatives, where you can share your work with others.

Read all about it in this blog post!