Picter is a collaborative creative review tool made for visual people

If this year is proof of anything it’s that having your team aligned on which processes work for you (and which don’t) is incredibly important. When it works, getting projects over the line is seamless, with everyone working like a well-oiled machine. But when it doesn’t, team members can end up feeling frustrated, isolated or confused. This is particularly true when it comes to visual content and a big part of that confusion stems from when you’re having to share work across multiple programmes, in different files and documents.

It’s a problem the founders of Picter, who also happen to be the team behind much-loved photography magazine Der Greif were confronted with as their publication grew. By its tenth year, the mag was generating 1,000s of submissions every year, and so the team built Picter Contests to sort through those submissions. The programme then went onto become the industry standard for professional photography competitions.

This has now been followed by Picter’s new product, Picter Workspace, an innovative visual project management and creative review tool which allows creative teams to work together, in one place, with an images-first approach. Totally designed for visual work, Picter enables your team, partners and clients to organise, share, review, approve, deliver and store your visual assets within the same space. This is all housed in a simple yet versatile interface which keeps things stress free but which adapts to your team’s needs and workflow.

Within that, you can grant guest editors – like clients and partners – access to your workspace where you can collaborate and create specific sharing links that work without needing to log in – very handy for people who you just need quick feedback from. Built-in tools, like starting and resolving discussions, markup for drawing on files, and frame-accurate video annotations enable everyone to give clear and precise feedback. That feedback then lives right next to the work and is visual. Finally, when you’re ready to get work signed off, Picter allows you to establish a review and approve process unique to each project, meaning you can decide when work is ready to go without long email threads.

It’s clear that it’s a tool which has been built by those with real industry experience, aiming to remedy what they found clunky or frustrating about existing tools. And it’s for this reason that many creatives have adopted the software, like London-based photographer Laura Pannack. A social documentary photographer, Laura’s projects are often long-term, stretching months or even years and, in general, she’s someone who wants to print things and hold them as she’s somewhat of a tech sceptic. Despite that, she’s been using Picter for the past few years, convinced by it because of how images-led and simple it is.

“It’s a visual tool made for visuals,” she said in an interview with Simon Lovermann, co-founder of Picter. Enticed by how quickly everything worked, as well as this point, the main draw for Laura is how easy collaboration is across the platform. “The funny thing is: Usually when forming a final edit, you’d either all have to be clustered around one screen or have endless calls and frustrating back and forth of emails,” she continued. “Now I can go down to the café. My producer makes her edit, I come back do mine, someone else can do theirs in the morning. And then with just a click I immediately see what matches. And voilá – we’ve got a final edit! Which is just so much easier than all the bloody calls and all the emails and the being in one room at once. So that’s the main thing: Picter makes collaboration so easy and smooth.”

Another fan of Picter, Nate Nichols is the creative director of commercial creative agency Palette Group, and co-founder of Allyship & Action, a platform that holds agencies accountable by collecting their diversity data and assessing their growth towards equality. Safe to say Nate is a busy guy, he’s been using Picter with his team at Palette Group, using it to keep a lid on projects where they’re having to sometimes deliver hundreds of assets. Having such a high number of deliverables obviously presents myriad problems, particularly when it comes to streamlining feedback. “Picter means that we, as the middleman between the client and these creatives, can present content in a way that's streamlined, that’s very clear and allows the client to provide feedback to everyone involved,” he recently told Simon. Nate continues: “We work with photographers, editors, creative directors, art directors, designers, and they’re all the folks that use our Picter account. And then on the client-side, it’s producers and all the other folk that need to see it, like the brand team that is providing feedback on the aesthetics and what they need to deploy the assets.”

It’s not just individuals and creative teams that use the tool though, but since it’s great for visual feedback, many universities have been coming on board as well. For example, revered institution Parsons School of Design has been using it on its MFA photography programme. After the class was introduced to it during a workshop with Picter, it’s become a vital tool for teachers and students, particularly since learning has moved online due to Covid-19. On Picter, the conversations which once happened in crits and studios in now happening online, without losing the organic discourse which has always been so vital to arts education.

Like similar tools with loyal user bases who are happy to spread a helpful word to a friend or colleague, you can now earn credit on your Picter account. By using a personalised referral code which you can find under the new “earn credit” tab on your Picter sidebar, you’ll get €25 credit and the referred person receives 50 per cent off their subscription fee for the first three months. Plus, there’s no limit on the number of people you can refer.

If this sounds like a tool you've been look for to organise and collaborate with your visual work find out more about Picter here.