Catalog Production Services

With the season of “lists” upon us, here are the top ten Widen Premedia blog posts of 2009 in the Widen prepress services world of digital photography, color retouching, digital sampling, catalog production, color management, and wide format printing.


1. RAW Presets for Photoshop CS4 & Lightroom: Canon 5D Mark II Nikon D3 Nikon D300 Nikon D700 Nikon D3X, posted on Tuesday, April 14, 2009 by Matt Anderson (Industrial Retouch and Color)

2. Call Me Mr. Biv, posted on Friday, October 24, 2008 by Mark Pajari (The Color Space)

3. Digital Asset Solutions: Adding Micro Contrast and Detail to Digital Images by Matt Anderson, posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 by Matt Anderson  (Industrial Retouch and Color)

4. Smart Objects Part Déux, posted on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 by Matt Anderson (Industrial Retouch and Color)

5. A technical observation of post processing styles, posted on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 by Matt Anderson (Industrial Retouch and Color)

6. Edward Cullen Sparkle... For All You Twilight Fans, posted on Monday, July 27, 2009 by Joy Hamel (Premedia Arts)

7. Assigning, tagging, converting, and embedding ICC profiles in Photoshop, posted on Tuesday, March 24, 2009 by Mark Pajari (The Color Space)

8. Hair Mask Quick Tip for Color Retouching, posted on Wednesday, April 8, 2009 by Joy Hamel  (Premedia Arts)

9. Into the Light, posted on Tuesday, April 7, 2009 by Joy Hamel (Premedia Arts)

10. Wide Format Digital Printing at Widen, posted on Monday, May 11, 2009 by Joy Hamel (Premedia Arts)

Do you want all the latest and greatest news and updates about Widen digital asset management programs and premedia services?  Become a Fan of Widen on Facebook.

The Widen Facebook fan page provides a central location for everything “Widen” with links to all of the latest articles, news, blogs, videos, photos and more.

Become a fan of Widen on Facebook and join in on the conversations.



Introduction to the main features of the Widen Facebook Fan Page:

The Wall – View a log of the latest article placements, mentions in trade publications, press releases, blogs and member commentary.  Some of the more notable recent postings include links to Widen articles in Adotas, ebizQ, DM News, Corporate Media News, Multichannel Merchant and the American Marketing Association’s Marketing Power.com. You can also find Widen quotes and client successes in recent trade publications including KMWorld, Processor.com and Big Picture Magazine. 

Info – Catch a glimpse of Widen with a short company overview, mission and product snapshot.

A sample of the Widen Product snapshot:

Widen Media Collective - A web-based digital asset management software application for creating, managing and distributing photos, videos, marketing materials and other digital media.

Premedia Services - photography, color retouching, digital sampling, catalog production, color management and wide format printing.

Photos – Check out Widen photo albums including Widen magazine covers from the premedia open house, Widen company kickball, black and white historical images of Widen Engraving Co., and portfolios of Widen Digital Sampling, Color Markups and Color Retouching.

Videos – Watch Widen’s latest photoshop magic premedia viral videos and get 1-on-1 with Widen’s CEO and other subject matter experts.

Other areas of interest on the Widen Facebook page include RSS feeds of all the latest blogs covering  Widen’s areas of expertise, links to other industry resources, and favorite pages linking to the fan pages of Widen Customers.

To learn more, become a Fan of Widen on Facebook.

• DAM Library of Photo Archive
• Basic Brand Management
• Multi-Lingual Brand Management
• Marketing Asset Production & Distribution
• Ad Production

• Periodicals Production & Distribution
• Multi-Channel Publishing
• Catalog Production
• Rights-Managed Syndication & Distribution

• E-Learning
• Video Ad Review & Approval
• Short Form Video Production
• Broadcast Video Production

This new economy forces marketing and creative operations to take a closer look at opportunities to squeeze more value from their digital assets.  Moreover, it is more important to lower the cost of bringing your products to market through digital production.

By helping clients create and manipulate images and streamline creative processes, Widen aims to help clients lower their production costs and shorten time to market while maintaining high quality and consistency of brand assets. 

Widen Premedia Services

Digital Photography - Experienced photographers capture your products at competitive prices in a state of the art digital photography studio.

Color Retouching - From photocomposition to color manipulation and image preparation - no job is too large or complex for us to handle.

Digital Sampling - Dramatically reduce time/cost of bring products to market by creating multiple color specific, detailed versions from one master generic image.

Catalog Production - Leverage automated processes to efficiently manage catalog and multi-channel marketing workflows.

From images, to audio and video, Widen DAM SaaS applications provide the tools to help clients successfully manage and distribute their digital assets.  For the majority of our clients, there are select individuals that become the champions of their digital asset management implementation.  These are the people that hold the most responsibility in administering the applications and are the key decision makers into what the system manages and how to manage the system.

One of the great capabilities with a DAM System is that Administrators have the ability to run reports on all activity.  These reports include determining who is logging in to the platform, which assets are ordered the most or even determining how many assets you have for a particular product. 

Reporting is key to gathering market insights, determining product popularity, and understanding how/where to allocate marketing resources.  Moreover, reporting is extremely important when it comes to managing rights and knowing exactly how, where and by whom your brand assets are being used.  Reporting and tracking tools are vital to leveraging digital asset management programs as a true resource to marketing operations driving brand consistency and revenues.
 

Here’s a brief overview of a few standard reporting options for Widen Administrators:

Site Overview – Dashboard showing number of users, number of assets, total size (GB/TB), top users by number of logins, top assets ordered, and top asset quick searches.

Trend Graphs – Standard list of out-of-the-box reports showing trend graphs and data tables over time for Assets Orders, Assets, Versions, Asset Groups and Users

User Reports – Custom reports on user demographic info, roles, and activity such as logins

Registration Reports – Custom reports to control / monitor system access

Asset Reports – Custom reports on all asset metadata and security / release dates

Asset Order Reports – Custom reports with sender and recipient data

Asset Upload Reports – Custom reports on all assets entering the DAM system

Other Reports – Photo Routing (for Backdrop), Projects (for Collaboration), Templates (for Media Building) and Catalog Production

DAM = Digital Alligator Management

Let's say you build a big red barn. It's huge. Like the size of the Superdome. And instead of cows, you fill that barn up with alligators. Big ones. With big teeth. They are all over the place, just running free. Now, it is your job to maintain that barn. In addition to knowing the ins and outs of barn maintenance, don't you think you should know something about how to handle all those alligators inside so you don't lose a limb each time you go inside? You should know how to organize them in cages, how to feed them, care for them if they get sick, and how to handle them with the proper equipment. You need to know how to speak their language. Hey, alligators just need a little love.

That scenario is a little like some digital asset management companies that want to sell you some off the shelf software (the barn), but they really don't have any experience with the assets (the alligators) that are contained in their systems.

UPS says "What can BROWN do for you?" To play off that theme, I'll ask, "What can RED do for you?" (Widen's logo is red. But you knew that already.) So what can Widen do for you? Well, to put it simply... We know all about alligators. We've been raising alligators for over 60 years. Okay, enough about alligators already.
 

                                             
What can RED do for you?

What should your digital asset management provider know? They should know about your digital assets. They should be experts in digital photography and photo composition. They should be intimate with color management and color conversion methods. They should know how to construct a solution that is built with assets that can be repurposed for different media. They should live with Photoshop jockeys that know all about color retouching and image manipulation. They should have intimate knowledge of rich media and video asset management. They should possess a broad range of prepress and premedia services. They should breathe digital asset optimization. They should live digital asset workflow management. They should be all about catalog production services. Your digital asset management solutions provider should know how you work with those digital assets because they have been doing just that since the Truman administration!  (Well, okay the assets were analog back then, not digital. But you get the idea.)

So it's not just DAM software as a service that Widen knows. Or brand management. We know that very well. But we also know content creation, production, photography illumination, manipulation, alteration, rasterization, conversion, color reproduction, composition, pagination, resolution and optimization. We understand how important your digital assets are to you because we live with them everyday.

Okay, I have to take off my sales and marketing hat and put on my Alligator wrestling boots and big kevlar gloves. it's time to feed the little digital assets. They grow up so fast, don't they?  

Mark

You may have noticed that we just launched a new widen.com in the last few days.  You may miss the voice of Matthew Gonnering and his body double pointing out specific areas of interest on the old site so I want to take this opportunity to point out specific areas of the new site.

The Home Page – We’re proud to be working with a wide range of companies that are doing some tremendous things in the marketplace and applying our solutions and services in different ways, so we wanted to showcase our customer wall.  Be sure to check out the stories or watch the videos (look for the video camera icon in the top right of select images for InSinkErator, Motorola, ZDO, St. Mary’s and Sub-Zero and Wolf). 

Using Digital Asset Management – Digital Asset Management can be looked at as both a practice and a technology.  It is most effective if you deploy the right strategies as a practice and the right technologies as a solution fit for your organization.  The sub-sections to our Using DAM section highlight our seven different products under the Widen family of digital asset management solutions for marketing and creative people. 

• Find Digital Media – Core Digital Asset Management
• Access Assets On-Site – Widen Appliance client site extension
• Manage Videos – Video Asset Management
• Approve Photos – Backdrop Photography Approval System
• Route Projects – Project Collaboration
• Create Promotions – Dynamic Media Building
• Publish Catalogs – Catalog Publishing 

The Widen Media Collective is our suite of web based DAM solutions and the Widen Appliance is our on-site client extension.  Altogether, Widen brings you 100% DAM SaaS – the Software as a Service delivery model and software with service, as in Customer Service and Technical Support.  One of our most popular features that we’re highlighting and using on the new site is our Digital Asset Embed Links. 

Premedia Services - Next, we have an all new Premedia Services section that covers our premedia / prepress services offering.  If you’re confused about the meaning of “Premedia Services,” it’s likely because you’re used to the term “Pre-Press.”  However, “Premedia” (although it may be our own term vs. an industry term) truly represents the work we do here from photography to color retouching in preparing files to go to press or for the web and other electronic media channels.  Be sure to check out the portfolios of our sample work for digital photography, color retouching, digital sampling and catalog production.
 

The Widen Advantage - The third major addition to widen.com is an all new section on The Widen Advantage, which features Customer Interviews, Customer Service and Software as a Service sections.  What is the Widen Advantage?  As hard as it is to articulate on a website or blog, it comes down to a few main points related to serving the creative and marketing functions of creating, managing and distributing digital media: 

1. A foundation built upon 60 years of serving our customers in over 120 countries
2. A strong commitment to technology and innovation to achieve the goals of our customers
3. Software development resources and technology to  automate premedia processes,  providing quality work with fast turnarounds and competitive rates
4. Software as a Service with technology solutions proven over 16 years of internal testing and evolution as a result of customer feedback

Last, if you’re looking for a place with all  the right digital asset management resources in one place, our Resource Center has videos, whitepapers, analyst commentary, free trials, implementation info and key links to the WidenCollective.com product site and DigitalAssetManagement.com industry resource site.

Please be sure to check back soon to see our new sections on Industry Solutions, Solutions by Function, and Widen solutions for the Salesforce.com Appexchange – Digital Media Organizer and Marketing Template Creation.

Co-authors of the CMS Watch Digital & Media Asset Management Report, Theresa Regli and Kas Thomas, recently provided a great article to AIIM (The Enterprise Content Management Association) Infonomics, which helps technology professionals and business leaders alike understand the main differences between digital asset management (DAM) and web content management (WCM) systems. Additionally, the article defines several use cases for needing a DAM system. 

Here’s a summary of the article. 

Some confusion between DAM / WCM stems from WCM and enterprise content management (ECM) vendors promoting their products as DAM tools.  The truth is that most WCM vendors only offer a generic repository for binary files.  For those dealing with large amounts of rich media (images, audio/video, etc.), DAM tools are much more specialized to fit. 

In DAM, a piece of content becomes an asset when it’s been classified, indexed, versioned, secured, stored, reformatted, etc.  Digital assets are only valuable if they can be found and reused.  The key to search-ability is metadata.  Metadata is either automatically extracted (XMP, for example) or manually associated to assets. 

Established DAM vendors tend to be older than most WCM vendors.  Plus, DAM vendors have a broader understanding of the demands for scalability, storage and bandwidth in managing content.  DAM systems store files in a file system and the associated metadata is stored in a relational database.  Most WCM solutions (and light weight ECM tools, like SharePoint) store all content in a database, which generally doesn’t work for large rich media files.  According to the CMS Watch findings, metadata matters most in DAM more than any other content management technology.  Another unique feature offered by digital asset solutions not found in WCM solutions includes transforming and transcoding.  For example, converting a Windows Media File to a QuickTime or Flash Video file on the fly.  (The same goes for images.)  Other key features to DAM solutions include versioning, access controls via roles and permissions, navigation/search, review/collaboration and defining relationships between assets. 

Adopters of DAM systems include companies in manufacturing, retail, hospitality, consumer products, national/global brands, ad agencies and broadcasting. 

A few of the DAM system use cases listed in the article include:

• DAM Library or Photo Archive
• Brand Management
• Marketing Asset Production and Distribution
• Ad Production
• Catalog Production
• Short Form Video Production
• Broadcast Video Production

A complete list of common scenarios can be found in the CMS Watch Digital & Media Asset Management Report

Before anyone deals with video asset management systems, or plans strategies for adding video to digital asset management systems, standing at the edge of Lake Itasca in Minnesota where the Mississippi river begins, stands a person with a video camera ... the beginning of the video stream. When he/she presses record on the camera, he/she is creating the first asset of many that will become part of the video river. As the video flows south, tributaries start to feed the mighty river. The Wisconsin River joins in by adding a project file from video editing software, like Final Cut Pro and Avid. Later on down stream in Iowa, the Iowa River brings in graphic files, or still photos. The Illinois River brings in audio files like narration tracks, and music beds. As more tributaries bring in more files, the stream grows not only in size, but in the number of people viewing or working with the files.

By the time the Missouri River starts to feed the beast, we now have a finished high resolution video, with all of its parts. Draw a line in the sand. The main focus so far had been the creation of the video. Above this line, video asset management has very different needs than what is going to come next. Below the line, viewing, access, and distribution are key. This is where our digital asset management service comes into play. Although, stay tuned for future enhancements to our system that will venture into the upper Mississippi.

Then we hit the Mississippi Delta, which has many distributaries. You guessed it. A distributary is the opposite of a tributary. Instead of feeding the river, a distributary flows away from it. In its lifespan, the high resolution video file will feed many different work flows. From it, mpeg2 will be created for DVD production. Quicktime and WMV versions will be made for download and local playback. FLV files will be made for embedding into websites.

As you can see, an overall media asset management strategy has a lot of ground to cover. From little old Lake Itasca in Minnesota, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico ... from a person with a video camera, to millions of views of a web video. Most marketing departments are like the Mississippi Delta. Web based DAM is an indispensable tool.

Video files are large. There is no way around it. But Widen can help determine where in the delta your work flow starts. My preceding blog discusses mezzanine formats as a way to help reduce overall storage size. Determining where you are at on the Mississippi River will help determine what kind of Mezzanine format will work best for you.

Backed by decades of color management and prepress services expertise, multi-channel marketers can:

• Enjoy a full line traditional prepress facility.
• Have a personal team specializing in “hi-end” color, outlines, shadows etc.
• Shift the burden of catalog production (outsource overflow, complete production capabilities).

Find out how you can address more “what ifs” at www.widen.com/whatif.

Widen’s automated catalog publishing is one of the digital asset solutions for catalogers helping in the following ways:

• Start later to allow more time up front for merchandising and finish sooner with catalog production cycles.
• Centrally manage and publish copy, specs, pricing, and images to print and web channels.
• Make it easier on the whole team to "put the catalog to bed" more efficiently.

Find out how you can address more “what ifs” at www.widen.com/whatif.

Every night when I get home the news blares for over an hour before I get frustrated about hearing the same leads and stories over and over again on all of the different channels.  It’s not that I don’t care about what’s going on in the world; I just can’t take the repetition, even if there is more information with this particular report.  Marketing works the same way, and making sure that your messaging and workflows aren’t repetitious is just as important as the message you’re trying to communicate.

Software as a Service (SaaS) has revolutionized marketing communications for years now, helping ease the burden of complicated workflows involving images, audio and video.  By storing all of your marketing assets in one location and regulating entry to the collection, time is eliminated that you would typically spend searching for images and then making sure they’re in the right format.  While the time saving is nice for you, media outlets and bloggers greatly appreciate this freedom to locate their own materials.

While these individuals may be working with you now through bulky emails and excessive disc burning, SaaS allows them immediate access to images, audio and video that can all be used in a more timely fashion to help them meet deadlines.  These individuals outside of your company that want to discuss your products or services are vital to the health of your marketing department. 

In this new Web 2.0 world timeliness is fundamental, along with a simple user experience that will leave these outside individuals always wanting more.  One of our clients, Nikki Beach Publishing, has started using our DAM system for just such a purpose.  Nikki Beach is using the central repository of images and marketing materials to feed the creation of launch kits for hotel openings, collateral material creation and overall brand management of this rapidly growing company.

Widen’s digital asset management has allowed the media to get brand approved pictures of new venues, while also allowing creative and marketing internal access for a more searchable and overall usable system where the catalog virtually every piece of marketing collateral.  And all of this without waiting on one cd to burn, or getting burned out on repetitive messaging or tasks.