Overview

How to use jobs to keep track of pictures from individual photo shoots.

About jobs

Jobs are groups of files acquired from a source using the Acquire function in FotoStation. A uniquely named job is created every time you acquire files, and these collections are made available for viewing in the Jobs side panel. When accessing the Jobs side panel you can also prepare jobs – create empty jobs and assign names and descriptions to them before acquiring files later using the Acquire function.

The Acquire function used to import files and add them to a job is described in detail in the Acquiring files chapter. Hence, this chapter will focus on how you can prepare jobs that you can later add files to using Acquire.

Storage location for jobs

The location of jobs is set in the program configuration. You can change it by opening the File menu and choosing Configuration, then expanding the General node and choosing Miscellaneous. Then simply choose a new folder in the Job data (Acquire) field. By choosing a shared network folder you can create shared jobs and view and modify other users’ jobs. It's only information about each job that is stored here, not the actual pictures that you import from your camera. You can think of a job as a project that keeps pictures from one photo shoot separate from another, while the actual files are stored in the location you choose when performing the actual import operation.

Preparing a job

To prepare a job, open the Jobs side panel and click on the Prepare new job button located below the list of jobs. Enter a job name in the Name field and a description in the Description field, then click on Next to continue. You will notice that the next pages where you select source and destination folders and related options are identical to those in the Acquire module described in the Acquiring files chapter. However, when preparing a job the actual file import process doesn’t start immediately. Instead, the settings you choose are stored for later use so that you can add files to a an existing, empty job that has been prepared for this purpose. Thus, when acquiring files later by clicking on the Acquire button in the toolbar, you can add the files to a prepared, empty job by choosing Add to existing job on the first page in the acquire wizard.

Please refer to the topic on importing files in the related articles column above to learn more about the various source and target folder options that can be set when preparing jobs.

Finding files belonging to the same job

All acquired files are assigned to a job and given a unique job identifier, known as the Job ID. The Job ID is a number, a globally unique identifier (GUID), it is not based on the actual job name you assign to it in FotoStation. This number is stored in a special metadata field and can for example be used to retrieve files from the same job. If you find an interesting image in FotoStation and want to find all the files from the job it belongs to, you can right-click the image and choose Find, then Same Job ID.