PhotoShelter MU Users & Permissions

Overview

PhotoShelter MU is designed as a "single archive, multi-user" system for organizations that need to manage and distribute their image assets. A site administrator can add users and grant them various permissions within the system. This controlled access makes PhotoShelter useable by everyone within your organization, whether they are a photographer, editor or intern. This ability makes PhotoShelter MU well-suited as an enterprise digital asset management system.

Users & Permissions

Because PhotoShelter MU allows multiple users within an organization to interact with the archive, it's necessary to first create users and permissions.

Organization -> Users & Permissions

User Types

There are three main types of users within MU:

1. Editors: The editor has the ability to access most aspects of MU, and can login to the MU Editors area within PhotoShelter. An administrator can grant different permission sets to each editor within their organization. The MU comes with five (5) Editor seats by default. Each additional seat is a paid seat.
2. Contributors: Contributors are photographers or image professionals that submit work to your organization. An MU can have an unlimited number of Contributor seats. Contributors can only upload images. They do not have access to the images once they have been submitted.
3. ClientPlus: The ClientPlus users are photo buyers that have special access to parts of the archive. The MU comes with one hundred (100) ClientPlus seats by default.

Permission Sets

Before you create additional users in your MU account, you need to set up a permission set. Each editor needs to be granted a permission set to control what they can do within the system (Site administrators have full access regardless of what permission set they are granted). The site administrator can set up an unlimited number of Permission Sets depending on how many nuanced levels of access they want to create within their organization.

To create a Permission Set:

• Click "Organization -> Users & Permissions"
• Click the "Permission Sets" tab
• Click "Create a New Permission Set"
• Name the Set and checkmark the types of activities you want to grant.

You can always go back and edit the permission sets at a later date. Changes to the permission set affect all users to which it is assigned.

Editors

"Editor" is the designation for anyone who has the ability to login to the PhotoShelter MU site, and adminster images within the archive. A photographer, intern, or cheif editor within your organization might have an editor seat. Editor seats are available via a paid monthly subscription.

Adding an Editor

• Click "Organization -> Users & Permissions"
• Click the "Editors" tab
• Click the "Add a new Editor" link
• Select a person from your address book, or enter their e-mail
• Then select a Permission set, grant administor rights/listed as photographer
• You can choose to send them an invitation e-mail at the moment the account is created, or send it later.

If you are configuring your account, and don't want to notify the users yet, do not send the e-mail.

Adding additional Editor slots

The default MU account comes with (2) Editor seats. If you need to add additional seats, you can do this on a self-service basis.

• Click "My Account -> MU Subscriptions"
• At the bottom of the page, click the red "Add Editors" arrow
• Check the radio button, and click "Continue"
• Fill in the appropriate billing information

Once you have completed these steps, you will have added an Editor seat "slot" to your account, which will allow you to assign a user to it.

Editing a user's permissions

To edit a user's permission set:

• Click "Organization -> Users & Permissions"
• Click the "Editors" tab
• Click the "edit" link next to the appropriate user.
• Select the appropriate Permission Set from the select list.
• Click Submit

The user is now restricted to the permissions defined in the set.

Contributors

Contributors are people that need to be able to upload images into your MU archive. In most cases, contributors are photographers who submit images to you. But they could also be retouchers, captioning specialists, or other professionals that are involved with submission of image assets.

You can designate an unlimited number of Contributors for your organization.

Contributors cannot login to the PhotoShelter MU area. However, they can create a free PhotoShelter account and upload images using the PhotoShelter Uploader or through the web interface. Alternately, if they have a PhotoShelter subscriber account, they can copy images directly to your organization. You need to define a contributor for anyone who will be uploading images into your archive. A contributor could be:

• a photographer
• an illustrator
• a retoucher
• a caption/keyword expert
• a scanning operator
• etc

Listing a Contributor as a "Photographer"

Like Editors, Contributors can be "Listed as Photographer" which means their name appears in a select list when you want to attribute images to a specific user. For example, you might not list a retoucher as a photographer since they are doing work that wouldn't be credited as the primary creative.

Contributors with/without an e-mail

PhotoShelter MU allows you to add Contributors who will directly upload images into your archive, and those who might not. An example of a contributor who might not could be a deceased photographer, or a non-technically savvy photographer.

In these cases, you would set up a contributor without an e-mail address, and with the "Listed as a Photographer" option checked, in order to attribute images to them.

If you think there is any chance of the photographer uploading an image themself in the future, you should create an account with an e-mail, as it is not possible to change a "without" into a "with" on a self-service basis.

Adding a Contributor

• Click "Organization -> Users & Permissions"
• Click the "Contributors" tab
• Click "Add a new Contributor"
• If you want to add a contributor who has an e-mail, enter it here. Otherwise, click the "Contributor without an e-mail address" link.
• Check "Upload" if you want them to be able to upload images. In most cases, you will want this option.
• Check "Listed as Photographer" if you want to attribute images to the user.
• When setting up your list of Contributors, you can also decide whether you want to notify the Contributor right away. You might delay notification if you want to set-up your organization before notifying your users.

When you add a contributor, PhotoShelter automatically creates a free account for them. You can always edit a user once they have been added.

Uploading Images as a Contributor

Contributors can upload images to your PhotoShelter account in the following ways:

• Using the "My PhotoShelter" web upload (from the public site, click "My PhotoShelter -> Upload to Organization")
• Downloading the PhotoShelter Uploader from the public "My PhotoShelter" area (from the public site, click "My PhotoShelter -> Upload to Organization" then click the "PhotoShelter Uploader" link.
• Using Photo Mechanic™ version 4.4.3 or greater
• Copying images from their own PhotoShelter account

FAQ

Can I FTP images into my MU Account?
Sure! Please visit our documentation on Uploading via FTP.

I want to remove an editor. How do I do this? What is the impact?

• Click "Organizations -> Users & Permissions"
• Click "Remove" next to the appropriate user.