Recently in General information Category

Article written by Matthew Gonnering on Ecommerce Times

In the midst of a digital asset management breakdown, you may wonder why you went to a DAM system in the first place. Stop wondering. DAM systems are the one of the best ways for large creative operations to compete in the digital age. The key to doing more good than harm is to find a DAM solution that provides the levels of granular control your organization needs.

I found this fascinating quote today:

"Need" is different than "Why" - and yet, most folks don't dive deep enough to move from the former to the latter. Let's take the instance of someone who is seeking a DAM solution (Digital Asset Management).digitalassetmanagement.org.uk, Digital Asset Management, Jan 2010

You should read the whole article.

I found this great definition of DAM today:

You can't afford to ignore the issue of Digital Asset Management, or DAM. It's more than a fun acronym. Solid DAM can make your business more efficient. Poor DAM can result in waste, confusion and many lost opportunities.digitalassetmanagement.org.uk, Digital Asset Management, Jan 2010

You should read the whole article.

I found this fascinating quote today:

Digital Asset Management is a great way to get digital documents organized so that you can find exactly what you are looking for when you need it. That sounds easy enough, but where do you begin? This session will take you through the ins and out of D.A.M. and give you some valuable insight on how to get started and how to implement a solution to fit your needs. We will also unravel the mysteries of metadata, and use applications such as Adobe Bridge and Extensis Portfolio to build a basic D.A.M. workflow.digitalassetmanagement.org.uk, Digital Asset Management, Jan 2010

You should read the whole article.

Article written by Henrik de Gyor on Digitalassetmanagement.org.uk

Before I mention DAM jobs descriptions themselves, many of these positions require experience, but what are the levels of experience in Digital Asset Management? How do you qualify the experience or even rank experience with DAM?

There are several levels of DAM experience from basic (1) to increasing in complexity (7). These levels include:

1. Simple DAM user (this is often the majority of DAM users)

• Searching
• Collaborating
• Downloading

2. Power user (aka Super user)

• Applying metadata to assets
• Uploading (Import)
• Downloading (Export)

3. Practitioner in DAM Operations

• Establishing and evolving workflow
• Training
• Create documentation to be openly shared
• Support

4. DAM Administrator

• Possibly network maintenance
• Possibly maintaining servers
• Maintaining database(s)
• Working with  API
• Running reports from DAM

From ReadWriteWeb by Jolie O'Dell

Virgin Media, one of the UK's leading providers of television / broadband / mobile / phone services, has announced plans to use deep packet inspection technology to track illegal file-sharing activity among around 40 percent of its UK users. Users whose activities are being monitored will not be informed of this fact.

The tech comes from Detica, a company better known for working with government data and intelligence agencies than media files and P2P networks. Their CView product is designed to help put an end to illegal filesharing, and with ISPs showing interest, it's unlikely that Virgin's deal will be the last we hear about.

By REUVEN COHEN from Elastic Vapor

Lately there seems to be a minor debate among the clouderati about the semantic differences between the term "the cloud" versus the use of "cloud computing". So I thought I'd jump into the fray.

As someone who spends his days eating, breathing and sometimes drinking cloud computing, it's fun to see how the debate has recently devolved into a debate purely focused upon the finer semantic nuances of the various terminologies. The debate seems to generally focus on the varied usages within the companies that are attempting to "cloud-ify" themselves & their products/services. This cloudification seems to be the trend du'jour within the technology industry, an attempt to augment marketing materials and or product positioning to include cloud related buzz words, whether they make sense or not.

By Henrik de Gyor from Another DAM blog

A Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution can be used for preliminary research even before considering other external sources/vendors to acquire new assets or before creating new assets. You may already have what you need internally, so it may be worth looking inside your organization first. A DAM should  able to provide users with "for placement only" (FPO) assets for consideration in a project. These FPO assets could be watermarked by the DAM to easily discern between a lower quality FPO asset (which can not be published as is) and the approved asset for use in a project with the proper rights cleared.  Provided you have a fair number of assets for a project with enough metadata to find what you have on hand in a DAM, searching the DAM first may yield less research time for a project.

Realistically, once you acquire and/or create new assets, you may want to add them to the DAM in a timely manner so others may find it too.  This makes it easier to reference and use these assets again whenever it fits the need of a project.

DAM user can create a DAM lightbox (or special collection) of specific assets found  in the DAM for a particular project which could can shared and collaborated over with other DAM users, regardless of geographic location. These digital lightboxes could even be created and edited before meetings to discuss the project to streamline the process.

From Browserwire.com

We have been looking into getting a digital asset management system to house, manage, and retrieve our graphical, marketing, and other files. In researching this online, we found that there wasn't a lot helpful information out there. So, to save you some time, here some some things to look for when picking an asset management system:

• Hosted (SaaS) or in-house client-side application
• Ease of use and user-friendly interface - This one was key for us as we found many solutions with complex, multi-stepped, and poor UIs.
• Disk space - default capacity and scaling up options
• Subscription and setup fees
• Number of users and admins supported and upgrading options
• Ability to brand interface
• File upload & download options - single file, batch uploads, ftp
• Basic and advanced search capabilities
• Supported file formats
• Preview mode of static versus multimedia files - being able to view a streaming file snippet within the tool is a great feature
• Ability add metadata, keywords, captioning, etc.
• Auto-rendering multiple file sizes of a single file
• Report generation and alerts
• Localization support
• Lightbox/favorites
• Third-party access - e.g. for agencies you work with, you can send them a pick-up link for a file without the need to login to access the file.
• Access rights - security and password protection capabilities.
• Customer references
  

By Marco Kramer on Smashing Magazine

A lot of designers think CMYK is the way to go when designing for print. We will, of course, always use CMYK-based ink, but this does not mean you have to work with CMYK files. You can work with RGB images to perfectly optimize your print colors and save a great deal of time in the process.

1. Use RGB Color Mode For Photoshop Images

For several of the following tips to work, you will have to create and save all of your Photoshop images and artwork in RGB color mode. If you're a veteran designer, you probably think this goes against what you've been taught, which is to use CMYK color mode. Well, technology has come a long way, and nowadays RGB color mode is better because it produces a wider range of colors and allows you to use one image for several media, including print and Web.

Think of it this way: RGB colors (red, green, and blue) are created with light. That's why your computer monitor and TV use RGB colors to produce its fantastic range of colors. CMYK colors (cyan, magenta, yellow and key, or black), on the other hand, are created by putting ink to paper. "Ink-on-paper colors" will never be as bright or saturated as the colors on your computer screen or TV, no matter how much ink you add to the paper. So, to get the widest range of colors possible, you need to save all of your Photoshop files in RGB color mode. Most of the time, you won't even have to think about it, because almost every photographer will supply you with RGB images. All you have to do is keep them in that mode.


2. Specify The Right Color Settings

To successfully use an RGB image in Adobe InDesign, you first need to specify the appropriate color settings. Fortunately, Adobe has made it really easy for you to specify the right settings and quickly apply them across its Creative Suite. This is where Adobe Bridge comes in.

To specify a color setting in Adobe Bridge, choose Edit - Creative Suite Color Settings and then select your region: either "North America Prepress 2," "Europe Prepress 2" or "Japan Prepress 2." If your region isn't displayed in the dialog box, select "Show Expanded List Of Color Settings Files" at the bottom of the dialog box. After clicking "Apply," the setting you have specified will be applied to Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat.