IDA for string instruments currently offers 38 configured photo categories. Any number of photos can be assigned to each instrument in these or other user-defined categories. Usually one photo per category is sufficient. Of course, categories can also remain unused.

IDA does not load the mostly large photo files as a copy into its database, but saves relative and absolute paths to the original files on the various data carriers (internal, external, network drive) together with a thumbnail view. The image formats BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG and TIFF are supported. If the image size regularly exceeds 100 MB, IDA's memory requirements will naturally increase the first time the image is opened to create a thumbnail.

On the part of the software, however, nothing stands in the way of processing any number of high-resolution photo data. At present, all photo files of an instrument must be stored together in one folder, so that IDA can easily keep track when new photos appear there or already linked ones are updated.

Using the photos thus assigned to a category, comparative views between instruments can be created in IDA. These are all the more useful the more the respective photograph of an instrument in a certain category also corresponds in distance, angle, quality, exposure, post-processing etc. to the photograph of another instrument. That is why we have described in detail how we took many thousands of photographs of hundreds of instruments. This creates an ideal photo library with a common standard in the overall IDA database. With IDA you get an import / export module to exchange / sell IDA data to other interested parties.