Fully Managed Piwigo
as a Service

Cultural institutions running Piwigo as their digital photo archive typically align with Spectrum 5.1 (the UK Collections Trust collections-management standard, adopted internationally) and use RightsStatements.org URIs to label reuse rights in IPTC Copyright Notice fields. ICOM CIDOC CRM-style metadata mapping is achievable through Piwigo's custom-field engine.

How we configure it. Custom metadata fields for Object Number (accession), Object Name, Production Date, and Production Place. Default new-album visibility set to "private until curator approval" via the standard album permissions plus the Expiry Date plugin. External ImageMagick forced as the graphics library so PSD, TIFF, and high-resolution archive masters generate thumbnails reliably.

Workflow. Cataloguer ingests a digitisation batch from the flatbed scanner output folder via FTP or the Piwigo sync plugin. Batch Manager bulk-tags with collection name and accession-number range. Curator reviews the "pending" album. On approval, visibility flips to public or embargoed-until-date.
Quantifiable: a major digitisation campaign typically produces around 30 GB of archive masters with sidecar XMP, easily picked up by the daily off-site backup.

Clubs affiliated with FIAP (Fédération Internationale de l'Art Photographique) or PSA (Photographic Society of America) operate under competition rules that require unmodified EXIF for entry verification and forbid public publication of entries before judging closes.

How we configure it. Per-album scheduled visibility — Committee-only to Members to Public — so the monthly competition cycle runs without manual permission flips. EXIF stripping disabled on competition uploads so entry verifiability is preserved. Watermark plugin applied to derivatives only; originals retained for archive use.

Workflow. Member uploads competition entries via the Piwigo iOS or Android app, or via the Lightroom Publish Service plugin. Album auto-tagged with the competition month. On judging close, visibility flips.
Quantifiable: a 300-member club running four entries per member per month at eight megabytes average generates roughly 9.6 GB of new content per month; a five-year club archive typically sits at 50,000–80,000 photos.

Sports clubs publishing matchday photos of members and minors operate under data-protection right-to-erasure obligations, plus national child-protection guidance for clubs running youth sections — for example, the UK NSPCC photography guidance for sports settings, which expects rapid takedown on parental request.

How we configure it. Expiry Date plugin for time-bound publication of matchday albums. User-tag visibility restricted to logged-in members so player names are not surfaced to anonymous visitors. Tag-and-batch-delete workflow that lets an admin remove a single player's photos from an entire season's archive in one filtered Batch Manager operation.

Workflow. Club photographer uploads matchday photos via the Android app; album auto-tagged with team and matchday. Parent submits an erasure request via the contact form. Admin filters Batch Manager on the player tag, selects "Delete on server" for that subset, and confirms.
Quantifiable: a club running eight teams at 30 matches per season at ~150 photos per match accumulates roughly 36,000 photos per season.

Higher-education institutions publishing alumni archives, yearbooks, and event photography align with FERPA in the United States and the equivalent right-to-erasure framework elsewhere. Long-term retention typically follows institutional records-management policies — NARA General Records Schedule for federally funded US institutions and JISC retention guidance in the UK.

How we configure it. OAuth plugin integration with the campus identity provider — Shibboleth, ADFS, Microsoft Entra ID, or Google Workspace — so alumni log in with their existing institutional credentials. Per-cohort album access keyed to graduation-year LDAP groups. Long-term retention bucket with versioned backups; reduced-resolution derivative published publicly while archive originals stay private.

Workflow. Alumni office uploads yearbook scans tagged by graduation year and major. Cohort-specific reunion albums opened only to that graduation year for the duration of the reunion event, then closed.
Quantifiable: a digitised 30-year yearbook archive at around 2,000 photos per year sits at roughly 80–120 GB.

Public-sector tourism and culture boards publishing reusable photography align with the Open Data Directive (2019/1024) and national open-licence schemes — Etalab Licence Ouverte in France, Open Government Licence v3 in the United Kingdom, or Creative Commons attribution licences by default elsewhere.

How we configure it. Photo licence field on every upload set to the chosen open licence. Licence string exposed in the IPTC Copyright Notice for downstream attribution. Commercial-reuse-friendly downloads enabled by default. Full-resolution downloads gated to logged-in journalists or partners; public visitors get a web-resolution derivative.

Workflow. Communications team commissions a regional photo shoot. Photographer delivers via the Lightroom Publish plugin into a "Q2-campaign" album. Comms team reviews, applies the "Open Licence" tag in Batch Manager, opens the album to public.
Quantifiable: a regional tourism board typically hosts 5,000–15,000 hero images at ~5 MB average; storage is small, but download bandwidth on a popular campaign image is the operational pressure point.