This is the third post in a set of four which outline the nature of images, formats and applications. As the complexity of digital images has grown, new formats have appeared to enable these capabilities. In fact, formats have always largely been purpose-driven. They are created as standardized containers that facilitate saving particular types of
In photomechanical imaging, the characteristics of the image are self-evident: it includes the tonal and color information, along with a grain or dot structure. This corresponds to the most basic digital images, which were originally just a rectangle full of colored dots representing tone, color and resolution. As technology evolved, digital images have become
This week we’re going to examine the relationship between images, formats and applications. (Note that in this four-part series of posts we use the terms “image” and “photography” in a very expansive sense. It can include both still and moving images, 3-D, and computational imaging.) It’s essential to separate your understanding of an image from
Image: Town Hall Square, Vilnius, Lithuania ©Peter Krogh 2019 It’s common for a master library application to have some ability to distribute files—and some distribution tools can also function as a library—so why should you use different tools? There are several good reasons, but they all fall under the heading of “it’s very difficult to
It’s very intuitive to think of your media collection as being “in” a piece of DAM software, but I think it’s important to understand it a different way. The software that you use to view and organize your collection is really pointing to a set of files and hosting some information about the media. While
Regardless of the exact details of your system, there are some best practices that everyone should strive for in collection management. Standardize As you create and adjust workflow, it’s important to standardize as much of it as possible. Having standard practices helps to prevent mistakes, and also helps you to recognize and recover from mistakes
Any project to implement good asset management will begin with consolidating the material as much as possible. This means you’ll want to create central storage, and bring as much of the relevant material together as possible. Benefits of consolidation Consolidating the media is the first step to creating a secure, resilient archive of the media.
In 1943, Abraham Maslow published a hierarchy of human needs, starting with basic survival and moving all the way up to self-actualization. This is a pretty useful metaphor for the way you can approach collection management. In building your DAM ecosystem, I propose an alternate hierarchy of needs – one that starts with the security
In the next two weeks, our blog posts will focus on the nature and structure of media libraries. This broader context will help inform the choice of the right tool for any particular task. Integration and connectivity are becoming central opportunities and challenges of the modern media ecosystem. The integration of mobile devices and connected
In 1984, Apple unveiled the Macintosh computer, which unleashed a desktop-publishing (DTP) and word-processing revolution. Tools that had previously been used only by a small number of trained professionals were suddenly in the hands of nearly everyone, and soon became essential to many jobs, and to the general functioning in society. Mobile phones are doing