Digital Asset Management (DAM) has been around for a while. But a lot of people still seem to fail to understand the full potential of the technology. Let's give an overview of some of the uses.
What is it?
Digital Asset Management or DAM basically describes applications or solutions which store images on a server, allowing them to be downloaded and used in a structured way later on. In its simplest form, it's a server with a logical directory structure. But of course that has a lot of limitations. So typically, images are stored on a server and presented to the users through a web interface which provides more advanced digital asset management features.
Database Publishing
Once the image bank is filled with the digital assets, they are often used in database publishing workflows. They can be attached to products in a PIMS module, or used as ambiance images in publications. And of course overviews can be given of the use of all images.
Web-to-print
Similarly, users can employ the images in smaller web-to-print applications. In this way, they are usually also able to fill part of the digital asset management system with their own assets. In this type of prepress workflow, it is very usual that certain metadata or properties of the assets are used to prevent their use in certain situations. For example: portrait images can only be selected for certain templates.
Download Center
In a lot of cases, the output and the use of the images are not part of the online environment. Rather, the users are given access to a download center for the images. Here they can browse or search for the correct image, and download it at the moment they need it. Everyone has access to the latest assets, and everyone sees only what they're allowed to see.
Single Source Image Bank
Regardless of the use, it is usually also possible to use the Digital Asset Management system for single source imaging purposes. Upload a high resolution RGB image to the Digital Asset Management system, and allow end users (manually or through other choices) to get the image in the resolution and color space they need it in.
Searching and metadata
And of course all images can have the appropriate metadata attached for easy retrievel later on. In reality, this is usually limited to product information or a simple categorization of the images. Advance metadata is rarely put into practice because of the costs of the maintenance of the metadata in a digital asset management system. But even a minimum of information can provide users with a lot of functionalities.