Digital Asset Management Software 2021

Digital Asset Management is essentially indexing of digital files with information to facilitate searching for assets that match certain criteria. Computers store files on a filesystem that gives each file a name, path and stores basic information about such as its size and last modification time. Within image files, there is more specific information called metadata. There are several types of metadata, including EXIF and IPTC. The former is initially embedded into images upon creation by the camera and possibly modified later. The latter is written by specialized software for the purpose of cataloging images. Finally there is XMP which is an XML file that stores metadata about an image.

All DAM Software read available metadata when they encounter images. This is frequently done during an Import step that gathers data prior to working with those images. Some software allow images to be opened without being imported first and progressively add their metadata. This limits there ability to index images which have not been opened yet, so most software have the explicit Import action.

Metadata built into images is fairly limited and so extra information is frequently added by users. The most generic such information are keywords. Keywords can be anything: Locations, People, Objects, Concepts, etc. Once images are associated with keywords, those can be later used to find matching images. Categorize are similar to keywords except that they can be organized into a a hierarchy. This means that one category belongs to another category, which may in turn belong to yet another.

Categories save work compared to keywords but one can be configured to emulate the other. A category which nor belongs to nor owns another is exactly like a keyword. Several keywords can be used to emulate categories. Instead of adding the Paris category which belongs to France which belongs to Europe, one would add all three as keywords. The result would make it possible to search using any location granularity.

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The whole purpose of cataloging is to efficiently retrieve files at a later date without knowing where they are. This is where the efficiency, completeness and expressiveness of DAM Software really makes a difference. Queries should be easy to create and matching image are expected to appear quickly. Having ways to refine results and automatic frequent searches provide greater efficiency.

An important aspect of searching is that one must be able to search for images which are not present while the search is being performed. Due to storage limitations, images can be off-loaded onto optical media such as DVDs or even external hard disk drives. For this to work, DAM software store locally metadata and thumbnails of off-line images. This allows one to see which images match a search without having access to the actual file.

All Digital Asset Management Software manage digital assets but do not organize them. The distinction is that DAM software are there to catalog digital assets where they are stored. On the other hand, organizing assets is choosing where to store each asset, which is a user-driven task even though some software can copy or move digital assets into their intended location.

It is crucial to plan how files are organized across disks and within them. A folder hierarchy is the only organization visible to the operating system and to backup software. Moving files offline into optical disks or external drives is much easier with a good file organization. To allow backups and off-loading to optical disks, make sure top-level folders do not exceed the maximum size for your choice of optical media, for example 4.5GB to use DVDs and 24GB to use Blu-Ray.

With the huge size of videos, it is much less practical to use optical disks for off-site storage, so now larger top-level folders can be matched with available external disks drives. Even high resolution images today easily full-up a DVD but there is nothing that compared to the longevity and durability of optical media.