Repurposing of Content Workflow


Organizing, Managing, Retrieving, and ArchivingThe Asset Workflow

Now let's discuss software applications for your various repositories. Let's start with the organization, management, retrieval, and archiving of your assets. We'll then discuss the assets themselves, the hardware they sit on, and the software you might use to manage them.

Digital Assets

What is a digital asset? A digital asset is an electronic resource, such as a scanned picture, a video or audio clip, a web page, a text document, and so on. These assets represent a significant financial investment, which is why they are termed a digital asset and not a liability. Losing them would impose significant hardship on your company. So, when grappling with this asset, let's look to timesavers by examining digital asset management options. See Figure D.4 for file examples.

Figure D.4. All sorts of file formats can be digital assets.


All sorts of assets can be managed, including text documents (memos, press releases, and copy), slides (PowerPoint, Keynote, or Acrobat), printed marketing (such as the examples in this book), eDocs (PDFs), email, graphic files (illustrations, images, or a combination of the two), video files, animation, audio clips, and so on.

Let's look at the quantity and nature of these assets. Do you keep multiple versions of a project? Indefinitely? Is this a problem? Do you keep multiple versions of image files? Perhaps in different color spaces or resolutions? Do you edit images for a specific publication thereby creating a different version of the image? The question becomes whether you have to store all this. And, how you can make sure you're using the right one.

I like to qualify assets into two categories: current production and some type of library or archive set. Current production is what it implies: all assets that are currently in production. These assets are checked out or copied from your asset archive. Within current production, you need to have a designation for assets that are being used for that production. Those assets, once produced, will be thrown away unless they're modified from the original in some way and merit archiving. See Figure D.5 for a graphical example of current production versus a library or archive.

Figure D.5. The difference between current production and archive.


Let's drill down, specifically to images and talk about color space. All workflows, with the exception of print, are RGB. You acquire images (via a scanner or digital camera) in RGB and display images on projectors, televisions, and websites in RGB. Heck, even your eyeballs are RGB receptors. This color space describes a gamut of approximately 16 million colors. The only workflow that requires a CMYK color space is print. This color space is approximately 5,000 colors with spot color inks extending that gamut somewhat further.

Some of my clients prefer to store their image assets in the largest color space possible, at the highest resolution possible, knowing that they can convert to other spaces and resample the resolution down in a controllable fashion. After those images are produced, they are thrown away. They always have the original image in the broadest gamut with the most information stored in their library. There is a great deal to be said for the efficiency of this organizational structure.

One concern is where the color conversion takes place. Does it occur at the local desktop(s)? Do you leave that to your print vendor instead? What if you have more than one? Or what if you use different printing technologiessometimes offset and sometimes digital? The answers to these questions might prohibit an all-RGB workflow. Generally, the tighter control you have over your output (using a single vendor for all output, as an example), the greater the consistency in your color output. If this isn't achievable, you might have to deal with duplicate assets, such as an original RGB version and a converted CMYK version. As long as the resolution is high enough to account for your highest-quality print jobs and largest production sizes (do you frequently produce posters?), you can always downsample for any distribution requirement.

Asset Management Hardware

Assuming everyone in your workgroup shares a common repository, and even if you are a one-person Swiss army knife, there is still some logic to separating your digital assets from your local drive. Your local drive houses your applications and current production. CDs, DVDs, or an external storage device can warehouse assets you do not use on a daily basis, thereby keeping your internal drive as efficient as possible. The tool(s) you are currently using to organize this data should be examined.

The capacity of your repository and the nature of that repository fall into three categories: online storage (which is on the internal hard drives of the server itself), near-line storage (which is stored on an external device attached to your server, such as an external RAID or DVD jukebox), or offline storage (CDs or DVDs burned and organized in a rack).

Each choice brings consequences both positive and negative. Your first two choices are automated, in which retrieving assets can be done directly from your desktop. Online storage is the fastest solution and the easiest to secure with a backup. However, your ability to grow your storage will likely be limited and expensive. Near-line storage is a tad slower because there is an external device attached to your server resulting in a slight lag time in retrieving assets. However, your storage capacity is limitless. Finally, offline storage represents the least-expensive option with limitless storage capacity, but it's the slowest approach. The process is a manual one, so when you look up an image in a catalogue, you must get up and physically locate and mount the disk to retrieve the image.

Asset Management Software

How do you currently look up assets? If the answer to this inventory question is a simple folder structure and the operating system's "Find" command, you are most likely experiencing frustration. As your assets grow, the time it takes to locate something lengthens. Everyone contributing to this repository might have their own way of naming and organizing projects, which can increase your search time. Versions of assets might be starting to take over, and costly mistakes might be leading to incorrect content being distributed.

With the Creative Suite comes some built-in assistance: Adobe's Version Cue and Bridge, which provides navigational control and functions like a creative hub. These products are designed to create a common workspace for you to organize your projects with your Adobe assets. Version Cue manages different versions of a file and notifies users, like a librarian, whether the asset is checked out by someone. Bridge, as the name implies, is the bridge between all applications. It's a common area where your projects can be viewed, much like Photoshop's previous feature File Browserexcept it's accessible by all of Adobe's Creative Suite applications.

Looking beyond these built-in solutions, we can turn our attention to a software product class or category known as digital asset management (or just asset management).

These products use metadata to make cataloging, searching, retrieving, and archiving much easier. Metadata is information about the content, quality, condition, and other characteristics of datain this case your accumulated resource files used for content distribution. Certain metadata, such as the date the file was created, is appended to a file upon creation. This simple metadata is something you've been working with all along. But what if you wanted to be able to search by a description or keywords, brand, SKU, or barcode?

Digital asset management (DAM) software allows you to create your own search criteria, add metadata specific to your requirements for searching, store this information in the form of catalogues, retrieve your asset, and deliver it right to your desktop. Think beyond imagesyour PDFs, layouts, and Word documents can all be catalogued and retrieved. See Figure D.6 for a catalogue example.

Figure D.6. Your catalogue with thumbnail and metadata that is linked to the resource file, anywhere you would like it to reside.


How do you select the appropriate application? You first define your requirements for the solution. You must ensure that whatever you select will accommodate your file formats, the quantity of assets you currently possess, and (projecting out approximately 3 years) how many more you think you'll create. The solution must support the color spaces you typically store and allow for customization of search criteria. You might want to give access to your image catalogues to others, either inside or outside your organization. You also might want to control how others access those cataloguesfor example, whether you want to give them highresolution images or low-resolution PDFs. Controlling distribution might not be an immediate need, but in a few years, you might regret not choosing an application that enables you to control access and distribution.

If your assets exceed your local drive or you find yourself spending a lot of unnecessary time searching through CDs, it's probably time to step up to some type of DAM application. The simplest configuration is a local workstation with catalogues containing thumbnails and attached metadata by which you can search and locate images. After the image you want is located, your DAM application knows where to find the actual file and the name and location of the disk it resides on. From this simple configuration, a solution can grow to a client/server relationship. Software clients can access catalogues on the server, which can return the requested image. Those images can be warehoused online, near-line, or offline. Examples of products to look at include Extensis Portfolio and Canto Cumulus.

Another capacity consideration is the quantity of files. Depending on the quantity of assets, you might need a database to drive the DAM interface. If you already have a database standard, such as SQL, this can factor into your decision. Of course, this will also increase the cost of the solution.

The benefits of a strong, easy-to-use DAM solution are many. You can quickly access your library and find the correct imageno more costly exercises in searching through drives and CDs looking for a file, not knowing its name or whether it's the correct asset. You can make better use of your assets if you can get to them. You can give access to others so more people can benefit from this resource, which should cut down on duplications of assets throughout the company. Greater control can be exercised over these assets as well. You can use this solution to organize and quantify your assets. This is a valuable exercise for both company valuation and insurance purposes.

From a simple search and placement for the graphic arts function (think images), to easy access of common documents within the organization (think HR forms or contracts), to company marketing pieces (think access to the repository for your remote sales force), the possibilities are endless with a strong DAM solution.



Adobe InDesign CS2 @work. Projects You Can Use on the Job
Adobe InDesign CS2 @work: Projects You Can Use on the Job
ISBN: 067232802X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 148

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