Digital Asset Management for Efficient Management of Your Images

1. What exactly is a DAM system and how is it used in image management?
2. When does your company need a DAM for images?
3. That's why DAM software is sometimes not an image database
4. What software solutions exist for image and media management?
5. Which DAM software solution for image management fits your wants and needs?
6. 8 quick tips for efficient image management in your company
7. Conclusion

Image procurer Alexander Karst shows you how efficient image management with the help of a digital asset management system can simplify your work and explains how to find the right software for your needs.

What exactly is a DAM system and how is it used in image management?

In science, DAM stands for Digital Asset Management, a management solution that consists of three segments:

• Media Asset Management (also referred to as DAM in practice, including in the OMR provider list)
• Content Management
• Supportive Infrastructure

The A for Asset includes not just media such as images, videos or music, but also other files like PDFs or Office files, which add value to your company. Simple Excel or programming code files are also part of the so-called assets. Depending on the provider, all possible assets can be organized in a DAM.

A DAM stores many secret, security-relevant, internal informations that should be protected from external access (e.g. a company's patents).

Media asset management systems can do more: Especially with images, it is about formats, sizes and cutouts. Metadata must be delivered differently for different applications: as SEO-friendly named WEBP for the website or in the press area as lossless compressed JPG with all relevant metadata.

When does your company need a DAM for images?

Communication departments usually struggle with the fact that IT rightly focuses on security and isolation in data management, but the communication should communicate outward - and for that you have to go through the security barriers. Photographers and graphic artists in particular are often particularly affected: they are not allowed to send their images from internal to external at all - or only very restrictively - and their Mac is still not allowed to access the Windows network. This speaks for an external image or media management.

Often, media management is used as part of the PIM (Product Information Management) or the CMS (Content Management System): in the PIM, images are assigned to a product and treated as a content element in the CMS. Aspects such as image quality, findability or information about the image are usually not taken into account by these systems. Image and media administrations can bring in the missing competencies (easy finding, conversions, metadata, SEO-friendly file names) and can be connected to the systems via interfaces.

Where there is no DAM solution, images and other audio-visual content are spread over several servers and drives, mostly in the respective project folders. This lacks an overview and large files (videos!) in multiple versions block storage space. The pain for communicators and the IT department are different in each case, conflicts are programmed. Too often, a reasonable image or media management system is only sought when the stakeholders in both departments are already at odds.

That's why DAM software is sometimes not an image database

The individual departments of development, production, sales, marketing and especially the picture editing department have different needs and wishes for a DAM due to their own workflows. That is why many DAMs, which are part of a PIM or CMS, are simply useless for communication/picture editing. Therefore, here is the list: What are images actually?

• Logos, icons, visual elements
• Representations of a product - as packshot, product in application, product experience
• Visuals of the worlds of experience, target groups, customer communication
• Visualization of events, events, fairs, making-ofs, e.g. as documentation or advertising
• Representations of the company: Advertising or documentary, employees, from the CEO to the warehouseman, from the HR campaign to the profile photo in the intranet and the historical archive

Every DAM uses images for the purposes for which this DAM was developed. Other aspects are not taken into account. If your company manages the product images in the DAM, but the DAM cannot generate differently sized versions for page headers, small overviews and social media, you should think about a separate image management solution.

Many DAMs within a PIM can indeed feed the webshop with product data and images, but do not have a press portal for press releases or press photos. The press portal then has to be written as static content in the CMS and each new press photo, every press release has to be created manually. If you want to automate this, you can use release processes in the MAM to automatically enable PDFs and images and provide them with all necessary description texts for the website. Important here: The information about the press photo (= flannel) should not only be on the side, but also in the metadata of the image!

Info about the flannel: What used to be a sticker on the back of a printed press photo should be in the metadata of an image today: 

• Source: Who is giving me this image?
• Credit: Which photo credit do I need to write?
• Motif: What can be seen in the picture?
• Context: How and in what context should I use this picture?

What software solutions exist for image and media management?

In addition to the list here at OMR, there are many more providers. From 5 euros a month as a non-configurable subscription solution out of the box to installations, which are in the rent as well as in the individual adaptation each in the six-to seven-digit range per year, there is everything. Interesting is the history and thus the main focus of each DAM solution: Bynder was founded for the shootings in the fashion photography, FotoWare for picture editing in publishing houses, the MediaManager by Getty Images comes from picture agencies, Cavok from the prepress. Therefore, each solution has its own workflows: clean conversion of color spaces, the interaction with the product information system or the easy use of brand assets like Frontify - not to forget Google Photos or the good old Adobe Bridge.

Which DAM software solution for image management fits your wants and needs?

As many different requirements as you have, there might be as many answers to this question.

What needs do you have for an image management? Here are a few hot topics:

• Delivery of images by many photographers, videographers, designers, graphic artists, users ...
• Automated image editing: Format and look adjustment, different image sizes for your channels
• Documentation of events, press portal, corporate communication, playing out the pictures via target-group-oriented media portals
• Direct connection to PowerPoint, Photoshop, InDesign

Find independent experts who are familiar with the world of media administration. Often the system house that maintains your CMS or PIM also has a good solution, but the most important thing is a good briefing that clearly defines the differences between files and media.

8 quick tips for efficient image management in your company

• Distinguish the types of media. The DAM should be able to play and convert videos, read texts in PDF documents and search for etc.
• Images and other media have different origins, contents, relationships (to products, displayed people, authors), uses, lifecycles (use and archiving), authorization levels and areas of application. An image administration should be able to represent this and integrate it automatically into your workflows. If the model contract expires after three years, all uses of the image should be offline or the contract should be extended.
• Where should the images etc. be played out? Are interfaces programmable? Are there alternative export functions that facilitate manual or automatic import into other systems?
• Who should see the images and media and in what form download them? Besides the integration into the office and Adobe licenses of your teams, do you need different "frontends" as a press portal, for attached graphic artists - who uses your pictures?
• The topic of media management is highly complex. Everything goes. But only what you need should you do or buy. Two rules: "Keep it simple and make users happy". Not more, but not less either.
• Put value on the roll-out. If you don't know the image management, you can't use it. If you don't understand it, you'll be disappointed and store images again on the desktop.
• Observe the users. If they use it incorrectly, they need training. Where the image management is stuck, it must be corrected.
• Don't think that the purchase is done. The change in technology, media types and media consumption means regular updates for your systems and regular check-ups for your workflows.

Conclusion

The terms digital and media asset management are often confused. IT departments approach files and media fundamentally differently than communication. In the past, the image/media management was locked in a silo. Today, it should be directly connected to all systems - either via APIs or via clean ex- and import paths. It is not about storing, but about automated working with files.

So if you are considering buying an image management system, first sketch out the W-questions: Which media, which media types? What should happen with them? Where should the images and media be distributed? When and how often? What efficiency potential is there behind the project? How do you get along with the stakeholders like IT, sales, communication and shopping?

Try to take as many aspects into consideration as possible to be able to meet the needs of your image users in the simplest way possible.