photo.avscript.tv tutorial: from memory card to agency

photo.avscript.tv is a photodesk for news and photo agencies: one place where photographers and the photo desk handle the whole life of a picture — from the camera card, through selection, captioning and editing, to delivery to the agency. It runs in the browser (Chrome, Edge, Brave) with nothing to install, and it keeps working offline.

This tutorial follows the order of a real assignment. Work through it top to bottom and tick things off as you go. Inside the app you can always get back here through the ? icon in the top right corner, next to Odjava (sign out).

Interface language: the app is in Croatian. Button and panel names are quoted here in Croatian, with the English meaning next to them.

Photodesk — lighttable with a gallery, selection and publishing

Step 01

Open a gallery from the assignment

Every assignment from the agency’s daily schedule (najava) becomes a gallery. The assignment text is copied into the gallery as the master caption — the AI later writes each photo’s caption from it.

Open photo.avscript.tv/app and sign inIn the left column, in the moji zadaci (my assignments) panel, click your assignment — a gallery named after the event is createdNo assignment? Click + nova sesija (new session). The app detects whether you are online or offline and creates a server or local gallery accordingly

Offline: without a connection, photos are kept in a working folder you choose on your own disk — never hidden inside the browser. When the connection comes back, the gallery syncs automatically.

Editor: an assignment for a photographer

Assignments are made by the editor (or a desk member whose admin enabled the najave checkbox) on the najave (assignments) page in the top menu.

Click + novi zadatak (new task), enter title, place, date and time, the brief and the photographer, then click Spremi (save)Paste the whole daily schedule into the field and click ↓ parsiraj (parse): tasks are built automatically and the photographer is recognised by surname. Check the list and click + kreiraj sve zadatke (create all tasks)A task can only be given to a member of your organisation. If the parser finds someone who is not a member, the task stays unassigned and you assign it by handThe photographer sees the task in the photodesk right away, in the moji zadaci (my tasks) panel

Step 02

Bring in the photos

Three ways, same result. Uploads run in the background — you can keep clicking, selecting and working while photos go up.

Drag photos from Finder or Explorer anywhere onto the windowOr click + dodaj fotke u trenutnu (add photos to current) and pick JPG and RAW filesFor a camera card use 📥 ingest s kartice (ingest from card), described right below

Ingest from a memory card

See the card before copying: thumbnails, in-camera star ratings and a large preview. Copy only what you want into your working folder, renamed by your pattern. The card is only read, and it all works offline.

Ingest from card: thumbnail grid with in-camera stars, rating filter and frame selection

In the left sesije (sessions) panel click 📥 ingest s kartice. You need a working folder set in the settings, because ingest copies into it📁 Odaberi karticu/folder (choose card/folder): a card from the reader or a USB drive. A thumbnail grid appears; RAW and JPG of the same frame are one cardIn-camera stars are read automatically. The bez · ★1 · ★2 · ★3 · ★4 · ★5 buttons choose exactly which ratings to copy, e.g. only ★1, ★3 and ★5The checkbox on a thumbnail includes or excludes the frame. odaberi sve (select all) and ništa (none) apply to the frames shownPreimenuj (rename): a pattern with {date}, {time}, {event}, {photographer}, {seq}, {basename} and {ext}. Empty keeps original namesKopiraj u (copy to) a new or existing offline session and click ↓ Ingest. Only frames shown and selected are copied, and their stars come along into the photodesk

Large preview and sharpness

Large preview of a frame on the card with stars and selection

Enter or double-click opens the large preview. For CR2 and NEF it is the camera’s full-resolution preview, and only that part of the file is readZ or click the image: 100 %, one image pixel per screen pixel. Click a spot to zoom right there, e.g. the eyes to check focus← → next and previous frame, space include or exclude, 1–5 rating (0 clears), Esc back to the grid

Locked (protected) photos: the browser cannot see the card’s protect flag. If you pick frames with the protect button in the field, switch that button to a rating (e.g. ★5) in the camera menu, then include only ★5 in ingest.

Step 03

Pick the best frames

Full-screen review with the same keyboard shortcuts as Photo Mechanic and Lightroom.

Click a photo and press Space — full-screen review opens; ← → for next and previousRate with 1–5, colour-label with 6–9, and 0 clears all marksThe mouse wheel zooms up to 100 % to check focus, Z fits the whole frame againUse the top bar to filter by rating and colour so only your selects remain

Key	Action
Space	open / close full-screen review
1 – 5	stars
6 7 8 9	red, yellow, green, blue
0	clear rating and colour
wheel · Z	zoom to 100 % · back to fit
⌘A · Esc	select all · clear selection

Step 04

Master caption · assignment brief

A panel in the right column, directly above the metadata. If you opened the gallery from an assignment, the brief is already there. If it is empty, write what you shot: who, what, where and when.

Master caption panel with the write-captions button

Check or complete the text in the master caption · najava panel — it saves itselfClick ✦ napiši captione (write captions). With nothing selected, the AI only writes captions for photos that don’t have one yet, so existing captions stay untouched. With a selection, it writes for the selected photosFor each photo the AI describes what is visible, grounded in the names and place from the brief, and adds at most one sentence of event context

No invention: the AI may only use what it sees in the photo and what the master caption says. It will not add names that are neither in the frame nor in the brief.

Step 05

Polish captions, keywords and IPTC

Every photo has its own caption and keywords. For many photos at once there is batch IPTC.

Select a photo and edit the text in uređivanje metapodataka (metadata) — the caption saves automaticallyShortcodes from the people base: type p12 and you get the person’s name; at a match d8 becomes the Dinamo player wearing number 8. ＋ vars inserts variables such as date and placeSelect several photos — the panel switches to batch: enter credit, source, city, country, category and headline once for all of them

Step 06

Recognise people

The system compares faces in your photos with your agency’s people base and suggests names. The base is shared across your whole agency; other agencies never see it. A name is suggested only when the system is confident (90 % or more), and you always confirm it.

In the ljudi · prepoznavanje (people) panel click 🔍 prepoznaj ljude na svim fotkama (recognise people in all photos)Known people are tagged automatically. Unknown faces are grouped per person — the same person on ten photos is one cardIn ⓘ identify nepoznate (identify unknown) type the name and press Enter, skip with Esc, or click ⊘ ignoriraj (ignore) for people who are not tagged. If someone else’s face is in a card, click that small thumbnail to split it into its own cardIf you type a name that already exists in the base, a check opens: the new face and the face from the base side by side, with the match in percent. Green means very likely the same person, yellow means check, red means probably a different person with the same name. Click Da, ista osoba (yes, same person) or Ne, druga osoba istog imena (no, a different person)A named face goes straight into the base, so the system recognises the person in every colleague’s next galleries

Add a person and their faces

Someone you expect at a shoot, e.g. a new minister or player, can be added in advance under organizacija → Prepoznavanje lica (organisation → face recognition). The pictures show drawn characters, not real people.

Face base: person cards with faces, category and number of faces in the system

Click + nova osoba (new person) and type the full nameOn the person’s card click + lica (faces) and pick 3–8 photos where the face is clearly visible: different light, slightly from the left and right, no sunglassesClick Spremi (save). The faces are written into the recognition system and the card shows e.g. 6 slika lica · ☁ 6Pick a category (politics, sport, culture, other) and optionally a group, e.g. a club or party🔍 test prepoznavanja (recognition test): load any photo to see who the system recognises and how sure it is. Nothing is saved

Face gallery of one person with a button to delete a wrong face

Click the person’s picture to open their face gallery: every image the system learns fromIf someone else’s face slipped in, click 🗑 on it. The person is re-enrolled right away from the remaining faces onlyIf the base has several cards with the same name, a yellow bar appears at the top: ⚠ Isto ime ima više kartica (same name on several cards). Click provjeri i spoji (check and merge)For each group you see the faces and the match. Choose which card stays, then ista osoba — spoji (same person, merge), različite osobe (different people) or preskoči (skip), and click Primijeni (apply). Faces move to the card that stays and the old code (e.g. p23) keeps working. Different people with the same name are remembered and you are not asked again

Who can do what: photographers add people and faces. Deleting a face or a person, renaming and merging duplicates is for desk, editor or organisation admin. Do not add private individuals or minors — the rules are in the GDPR package.

Step 07

Edit a photo — with the AI suggestion

Double-click a photo to open the darkroom. The original is never changed: slider settings are kept as a recipe and come back until you reset them.

Darkroom with the AI suggestion applied: straightening, crop and tone

Click ✦ AI prijedlog (AI suggestion): crop and horizon straightening come from the AI analysis, while exposure, white balance and levels are calculated from the photo’s histogramYour style is added on top — how far you usually move away from the automatic settings and which crops you choose. Hover the button to see a summary, e.g. crop 4:5 · warmer +6 · contrast +10Fine-tune the sliders. ↩ bez prijedloga (without suggestion) restores the previous stateCrop: C or the aspect menu (4:5, 3:2, 16:9, 1:1…). After straightening, the crop always stays inside the image — no black corners. White-balance picker: click it, then click something neutral grey or white↑ spremi u galeriju (save to gallery) saves a full-resolution JPG at 100 % quality — and teaches the system your style for next time

Key	Darkroom action
C	crop
⌥ + ← / → · ctrl + ← / →	straighten ±1° · ±0.1°
B	before / after
L	loupe
⌘C · ⌘V	copy / paste sliders to another photo
R · ⇧R	reset sliders · reset everything
F / ⌘0 · Esc	fit · close

Step 08

Develop RAW to JPG

RAW files (CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF, DNG…) are developed in the browser, on the graphics card. The editor is the same as for JPG.

Double-click a RAW — the 🎞 RAW → JPG badge in the toolbar means it has been developedEdit it like a JPG and click ⇢ razvij u JPG (develop to JPG) — a developed JPG with the same name appears right after the RAWThe RAW stays whole and untouched: the crop goes only into the developed JPG, and you can always develop a new version from the same RAW

Step 09

Publish to the desk

The photographer publishes; the desk approves or sends back with a reason.

↑ objavi galeriju (publish gallery) sends the whole gallery, ↑ objavi samo odabir (publish selection only) just the selected photosThe desk sees the photos in review and clicks ✓ odobri (approve) or ↩ vrati (return) with a reason the photographer sees in the publishing panel

Step 10

ZIP for the agency — JPG + XMP

The whole gallery or a selection in one click. Next to every JPG goes an XMP sidecar with the same name (BPH_4120.JPG + BPH_4120.xmp), which Photo Mechanic, FotoWare and Lightroom read.

ZIP dialog: Title, Headline, Keywords and the photographer's credit line

Click ⬇ ZIP · JPG + XMP in the publishing panel, or ⬇ ZIP odabira (ZIP of selection) for the selected photosCheck Title / Object Name, Headline and Keywords — they are suggested from the gallery nameThe credit line is appended to every caption, e.g. foto BION PHOTO/ John DOE/ jd. It is taken from the photographer who owns the gallery, so the desk exports with the photographer’s credit, not its ownNames of recognised people go into Persons shown and into the keywordsThe upiši caption i u sam JPG (write caption into the JPG) box is on by default: caption, credit line and keywords are also embedded in the JPG itself (IPTC + XMP), so agency systems see them even without the sidecarClick ⬇ napravi ZIP (create ZIP) and choose where to save it — the ZIP is written straight to disk, so it works even for multi-gigabyte galleries

Highest quality: the image data in the JPG stays byte-for-byte identical to the original — embedding the caption only changes the metadata header. An edited photo is rendered from the original at full resolution and 100 % quality. The ZIP adds no compression.

Step 11

Original retention

Originals do not stay on the server forever. The organisation admin sets the period. Only the image is deleted — caption, keywords and time stay on record.

Delivered photos (approved on the desk and, if enabled, confirmed by the agency publishing them) are deleted 14 days after approval, undelivered ones 30 days after upload7 days before deletion the photodesk shows a yellow bar ⚠ … se briše u idućih 7 dana (deleted within 7 days) and an e-mail arrives. Clicking a session in the bar opens itOriginals are your authored work: download them with ⬇ napravi ZIP before the deadlineAn important event? In the gallery switch on 📌 zadrži, ne briši po roku (keep, do not delete)

Admin: the period is set in organizacija → Pohrana → Rok čuvanja originala (0 = never delete). It also shows how many photos are due for deletion now and within 7 days.

Step 12

Members and roles

The organisation console is at photo.avscript.tv/admin/org (top menu: organizacija). On the left are Users, Agency AI style, Face recognition, Storage and Usage. You only ever see your own organisation. A person can be a member of one organisation only.

Enter first name, last name and email, pick a role and click + Dodaj člana (add member). The member signs in with that emailRoles: the photographer shoots, uploads and can always edit their own photos. Desk captions, adds metadata, checks and sends. The editor (chief) also runs assignments and changes roles. The organisation admin manages everything in the organisationChange a role right in the table. ⇄ zamjena… (stand-in) gives a temporary role until a date, e.g. desk while a colleague is on holiday. After that day the member returns to their own role automaticallyCheckboxes set what desk, editor and admin may do: foto editor (edit other people’s photos), odobrava (check and send), najave (assignments) and baza lica (face base). Desk has only odobrava by defaultThe last name is added as an alias automatically, so the assignment parser recognises the photographer by surname. An organisation always keeps at least one admin

Step 13

Agency AI style

How the AI writes for your agency: captions, keywords and editing. The instructions apply to all your photographers and nobody outside the organisation sees them.

In the organisation console open AI stil agencije (agency AI style) — visible to the organisation adminFill in Opisi (caption), Ključne riječi (keywords), Obrada (cropping and levelling) and Primjeri opisa (caption examples): e.g. order of names and titles, the credit foto BION PHOTO/ John DOE/ jd, words you never useClick Spremi upute (save instructions). They apply to the next AI analyses; photos already captioned stay as they are until you analyse them again

Step 14

Storage and usage

How many photos and how much space the organisation uses, and whether it is within its monthly quota.

Organisation usage against the quota: AI analyses, face recognitions and storage

Pohrana (storage): photos on the server, sessions, published to the desk and the face base, in total and per photographerPotrošnja (usage): AI analyses and face recognitions this month against the quota — green is within, yellow close to it, red overThe quota is agreed with AVScript. Going over it never stops your workPohrana also holds Rok čuvanja originala (original retention) — see step 11

Arrange the interface your way

Panels in the left and right columns can be arranged however you like. Click a panel title to open or close it; drag the title to move the panel. The icons at the top of each column:

Icon	Action
⌃⌄	collapse or expand all panels
↓	save the current layout as yours
★	restore your saved layout (orange when active)
↺	restore the default layout — with confirmation

Your layout follows you: it is saved to your account, so it is the same on every computer you sign in from.

Security and privacy

Every organisation is closed: photos, assignments, the face base and statistics are visible only to its members.
Organisations are never connected: a person can be a member of one organisation only, and an assignment can only go to a member.
Photos open only through links that expire within two days, and face images only for signed-in members.
Originals are never compressed: not in storage, not on delivery, not in the ZIP.
Signing out clears everything the app remembered on the computer, so shared newsroom computers are safe.
Data protection documents for agencies: photo.avscript.tv/gdpr.

That is the whole path: from the assignment and the memory card to the ZIP for the agency. Questions and suggestions: hello@avscript.tv.