ExpertExperience - Digital Asset Management Community

Is there software available that can "obliterate" or watermark an image once the usage rights has expired?

A Question from a Visitor:
Is there software available that can track and "obliterate" or watermark an image once the usage rights has expired on that image?
If so, I would imagine it depends on where that image "lives" once it has been distributed.
Does something like this exist?

Overwhelmed with your project? Start with an asset inventory

A reader recently asked: "My company has not had a digital asset management system.  We are overwhelmed with the thought of a transition to such a system.  We have assets on file servers throughout the organization, our agencies have many of our assets, as do our printers.  How do we begin a plan for corralling our assets and building an organizational structure for them?"

It's easy to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of a project at the start when things look so fragmented and chaotic.  How to get started?  Begin by surveying your content.  Where is it, what kind of shape is it in, who owns it, is it up to date, does it contain metadata, is it redundant?

Best Practices for Building Metadata and Taxonomy

A recent question was posted: "I am involved in creating a DAM solution for my company. The asset ranges from video, arts, images and photographs etc. I can say that the assets would be similar to what CORBIS, Getty Images have in place today. I would like to know is there any best practices for building Metadata and Taxonomy; What kind of architecture that I should follow etc. Please provide me some links and resources."

Seth Earley's Answer:  Here are a couple of links to start with:

Taxonomy Community of Practice: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxoCoP/

Metadata Harvesting Tool

A question was recently posted: "I am looking for metadata harvesting and data mining services to gather and organize metadata from years of spreadsheet data plus information from external image vendors' WebPages to input into a DAM with legacy assets. Can you recommend some resources for these service providers?"

Seth Earley's Answer:  Interesting that you ask.  About two years ago, I had asked one of my consultants to go through a web site and harvest terms from the pages.  I was interested in metadata on pages themselves but also in extracting the terms from various kinds of files for inclusion in a taxonomy. We poked around on the web and found some shareware but it did not exactly meet our needs.  So, like any good developer, he rolled his own.

OPI and DAM - Friend or Foe

One question that often comes up in projects centered around creative collaboration in graphic design is where OPI (Open Prepress Interface) and DAM can play together. (More info on OPI)
A not dissimilar issue arises in video where low res editing is becoming an option and web based rough cuts become the norm.

Role Descriptions and Governance for DAM

In my prior posts I had spoken about the need to look beyond technology in defining strategies for successful larger DAM implementations. One such area of focus should be the team that implements and ultimately maintains and manages the DAM application and system. In large systems a model of governances should be defined just as in other areas of business.

Consolidating Existing Archives into a Unified DAM

Following up on the last post "Introduction to my Blog" that took a high level look at DAM as an archive of reusable assets this post will take a more detailed look of what companies can do to consolidate existing digital content repositories and allow users a single view of all available digital content.

I want to share some technology architecture approaches that have made it easier to achieve such a consolidated view and also point to some process changes that have proven essential to the success of a larger interconnected content management infrastructure.

Got Questions?

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