I deal with an ass load of content every week. Each week it piles onto the previous week, and at the end of the month, we have an unbelievable portfolio of content to manage here. In dealing with different producers and providers, and doing all I can to make it a little easier to deal with and move the content into a "live" state, I have collected a little list of peves that just get me all fired up...
Why do I care? Because for every extra little thing I have to do once I recieve the content, it takes time away from me doing what I do well. Exclusive providers I think should put more detail into the products to make them "delivable" in a usable state as recieved (IMHO).
This list may not apply to many of you, but for those of you wanting to get more business, this may help you keep people like me happy and return for more business.
1. Please, PLEASE, rotate the damn pictures before you drop them on a DVD or FTP them somewhere. There is nothing worse than having to download, re-orient, then re-upload content before we can dump it into a CMS because half the pics are sideways. If you can't afford a camera with the auto-rotate option, at least take the 5 minutes to check the pictures to make sure they are all in an upright position.
2. Please use some common naming conventions when saving the pictures as a copy! I just recieved a batch of content, 20 sets of pics, that all had to be renamed, and almost every set of pics had to be done using a custom inclusion/exclusion line. Geez, spaces, "&" signs, "()" symbols, CMS's do not like those kinds of things and those of us who process this stuff have to take more time to try to figure out just exactly what you were thinking when you named it something so goofy. If it makes sense to you for your own storage cool, but when sending it to a client, please just use simple file names.
3. Lower case letters, everywhere, if possible. I don't know how many pictures I have seen lately that have .JPG or the first name of the model is capitol. Most of the time all that shit has to be corrected before the content can be used. Many CMS's prefer lowercase file names, especially custom ones.
4. Review the content you actually send to your clients to make sure you don't have 30 of the same basic pose/outfit. About 5 sets I hammered on tonight had around 100 pics each in them. In those 100 pics there were sometimes 20+ pictures of the SAME pose/style/outfit step. I would rather not have a full hundred pictures in the set if I have to waste time and space going in and deleting half the damn pictures...
I could go on, but no one will read down this far anyway I presume.
</rant> - for now anyway...