Hi all!
This question isn’t strictly InDesign related, but maybe one of you will have some insight:
I’ve been reading InDesign Magazine Issue #109 on Digital Assets Management systems (great article!). Trying to figure out if my organization needs one. They think yes, I think maybe.
What we have is a billion-and-one photos (roughly). We need an easy way to look through them (I’m thinking previews in the Cloud with links to the high-res assets on our server). Trying to use Bridge is too time-consuming because they’re all high-res photos residing on our server, and just building the thumbnails takes about nine years (we all work remotely). I use these photos inside publications (of course), but we want to hire someone outside our organization to go through the photos and add keywords and descriptions (sounds like a fun job, eh?) so we can easily search them. So basically a catalog of photos that can be quickly searched remotely by multiple people (all of whom can add tags or keywords) and then an easy way to get to the high-res asset when it’s needed (if you’re the designer like me).
Does it sound like we need a DAM system? Or is this too basic for what most of them offer? I’m not sure we need a lot of functionality beyond that, but that would save a few thousand hours. Any suggestions? Any of you InDesign users use one to handle a similar situation? I’d love to narrow down the list of things to research. My company is willing to invest (and I did read in the article that they’re pricy) if a DAM system would help. I’m just afraid that most of them would be far more than what we need.
Thanks for any insight,
Phyllis
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