Digital Asset Management continues to evolve and expand away from its roots in picture databases and can now cover a multitude of Digital Asset Management continues to evolve and expand away from its roots in picture databases and can now cover a multitude of different functions for different aspects of print.

These include brand asset management systems, used by large organizations as a way to manage and distribute standardised images, logos and styles; library asset management systems, usually for archival storage and retrieval of large amounts of infrequently changing media assets such as photo archives; and production asset management, for centralised but temporary organisation and sharing of frequently changing assets such as live print jobs in progress.

A single DAM could do all of this: for instance a new corporate job could be built from elements in a brand collection, then all the images, fonts, documents and profiles could be stored together during creation, revision and production, and after the job is completed the final documents could be sent off to the archive for long-term storage in case the job is re-run in future.

Similarly, a DAM can serve a web-to-print ordering system, where customers can search for elements on-line, such as existing jobs or editable job templates, brand elements such as logos and product photographs, then download these to assemble into new layouts.
The adoption of digital cameras in the commercial and consumer worlds has given us a new category of DAM. Loosely called file viewers, these can find and preview image files (and often other documents) anywhere on your system or local network. They let you move or copy files into new locations, launch them into editing programs and sometimes edit the metadata. Some can process raw files from digital cameras. However, they are not true databases because they can't track files on removable media such as CD-ROMs or DVDs. A true database DAM holds central records and thumbnails, so it can tell you the name and number of a removable disk if you need to retrieve the high res original.

Here we're looking at some of the ‘affordable' DAMs and file viewers that have a features list and expansion potential good enough for professional print and pre-press.

Adobe Bridge 1.0
Bridge is the file organiser and previewer that's supplied with the Adobe Creative Suite 2 bundle. It's not a database but it's really useful as a live tracker for Adobe and some third party image and document files. Searches for files by type or name can be saved and reapplied. It can also preview most raw formats and launch them singly or as batches into the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in for Photoshop. It can access Photoshop's Automation routines directly for batch processing of selected groups.
You can open and edit metadata by clicking on the File Info menu. This can be done singly or for groups of files.

Adobe Lightroom Beta 4
Adobe's answer to Apple Aperture (see below), released as a public Beta a year ago, but there's still no date for the final commercial release or any indication of price — Adobe has just released its fourth update for Mac OS X and also has a Windows Beta.
It works like a cross between the file viewing of Bridge and the Adobe Camera Raw processor with broadly similar live previewing, sorting and grouping facilities to Aperture. It supports more proprietary raw formats than Aperture and has a useful multi-step workflow sequence for choosing and processing images. It can either reference files where it finds them or move them to its own library.

Apple Aperture 1.5
Apple introduced Aperture late last year and has just updated it substantially to v.1.5. It's primarily a digital camera raw file processor with file viewer and multi-image ‘light table' sorter. Adjustment tools include colour, exposure, sharpness and other global settings, with instant live previews. It's not a true database but you can search by keyword and metadata collections, and save the results as new groups.

Editing is non-destructive, so raw files are always preserved as ‘digital masters' and you can undo or alter any changes. You can also print colour-managed images directly without converting to a standard file format first.

Aperture originally cost £297 (Rs 25,245)but is now a more reasonable £186.38  (Rs. 15842) +VAT. It requires a fairly powerful Mac, but it's fast and flexible and has proved popular with photographers.

Aperture 1.0 copied all raw image files into a new dedicated Library, which took up huge amounts of disk space. The new v.1.5 gives you option of leaving files in their original locations and simply tracking them. Apple apparently has no plans for a Windows version.

Canto Cumulus 7
Last year Canto moved upmarket and sold its low-cost single-user DAM to MediaDex. Cumulus is now available for multi-user systems only, with prices ranging from about £750 (Rs 63750) to more than £5,200 (Rs 4.42 lakhs). There are versions for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and Solaris.

The latest version is Cumulus 7, introduced in July. This features improved asset control, production speed, more efficient collaboration and improved automation for image processing. There's a new user interface too. The related assets (such as XPress layouts and their placed image files) can be recorded and saved as projects. Users can now label and rate asset records with tags for status (such as new, approved, rejected, put on hold). Web clients now have the same functions as dedicated clients.

Cumulus 7 has a direct link to Quark XPress 7 and Dynamic Document Server — in particular it can work with XPress 7's Composition Zones and XML-based Job Jackets. Cumulus' dedicated native viewer or web application can access Kodak's RealTimeProof soft proofing servers.

Extensis Portfolio 8
Extensis calls Portfolio a ‘creative asset manager,' saying that its workflow support makes it different to a standard DAM. Portfolio 8 (for Mac OS X or Windows) was introduced a year ago, since when the single-user version has come down in price by almost £50 (Rs. 4250) to £129 (Rs 10965) to . A five-user NetPublish license costs £170 (Rs 14,450). Server versions start at £1,500 (Rs. 1.27 lakh), with a SQL connection for around £3,000 (Rs. 2.55 lakh).

Portfolio 8 introduced improved workflow facilities such as faster cataloging and improvements to its abilities to make and export self-contained slideshows (which can be collections of job files as well as pics). There's more support for custom XMP and QuickTime metadata. Adobe Bridge's labels and star ratings can be preserved in Portfolio.

The Mac version will create thumbnails and previews of QuarkXPress documents. The Windows version will display thumbnails, previews, index text and metadata from MS-Word and Excel files. Most camera raw formats are supported, including Adobe's DNG.

FotoWare FotoStation
FotoWare develops high end DAMs with integrated image processing, popular with newspapers and picture libraries. However it also has entry-level versions aimed at smaller photographic and printing operations.

The £299 (Rs 25,415) entry-level FotoStation Classic 5.2 for Mac OS X (Universal Binary) or Windows doesn't include editing features, for which you need the £335 (Rs 28475) Pro version, which also has a new SmartClean noise reduction tool. Pro converts camera raw files, adjusts colour and density, crop and resample. Automated sequences can be created.

Additional modules can then be added. FotoWeb can publish assets on the Web, with customisable branding, a shopping cart, plus sales and activity reports. Color Factory 5.5 is an automated workflow system for assets, running on Windows servers, including SmartContrast2 and SmartSharp2 to enhance the appearance of images.

iView MediaPro 3.0
iView MediaPro is an attractively priced and very capable single-user DAM for Windows or Mac OS 9/X (including Intel Macs). It's popular with photographers, but its ability to handle other document types makes it suitable for small design or publishing studios. It does almost everything that a high end DAM can do, except it's single-user. Two or more networked copies can access a shared database but they can't both make alterations.

The main program costs £129 (Rs 10,965). There's also a free iView Catalog Reader that can run on other computers on a network and can also be distributed with collections on disks.

MediaPro has been around for a few years but in June its developer iView Multimedia was acquired by Microsoft. Microsoft says that it will continue to develop the Macintosh and Windows versions in parallel, and in mid-October it backed this with the introduction of v.3.1.2 for Macs and Windows.

A new bundling deal combines MediaPro 3 with PhaseOne's Capture One Pro camera raw processing software for a joint price of £299 (Rs 25,415).
Apple: www.apple.com
Adobe: www.adobe.com
Canto: www.canto.com
Extensis: www.extensis.co.uk
FotoWare: www.fotoware.co.uk
iView: www.iview-multimedia.com