For publishers with their own in-house editorial content management system it can be helpful to view both graphics and pictures in one location. For this purpose visuals of graphics are sent by FTP rather than the actual graphic files.
  • Why visuals? It is better to include visuals designed for this purpose rather than the graphics themselves because graphics are available in multiple formats for different purposes,. One visual for each graphic avoids duplication on the picture desk, and means interactive graphics can be represented as well (which wouldn’t otherwise be possible).
  • Searching: Editors should be able to view graphics alone, or graphics plus pictures. This is because there are many more pictures than graphics -- Graphic News might post something like 1,500 graphics a year whereas a picture agency might post 1,000 pictures a day! If you can’t search separately for graphics they could get buried under the pictures.
  • Storage: Graphics need to be available for longer than pictures before being deleted because pictures tend to be released for the immediate news cycle whereas graphics are, wherever possible, released in advance. In addition, where stories remain topical over a period of days or weeks, rather than re-issue a graphic repeatedly with small changes in words, it is more sensible for the end-user to edit the words on the day that they are actually publishing the graphic.