Photo Approval Application

Almost everyone nowadays has a digital camera, even if it's just on their mobile phone. This means that data and images are no longer stored in file folders and photo albums, but on hard drives and memory cards. While this technology is superb for working with images, it is not without risks. Storage devices can get damaged or stolen and then your precious memories are lost.

Transition that into the business world where there is more digital media and more users requiring access on a daily basis. A memory is to an individual like a brand is to an organization. What does is stand for? How is it perceived? What do people think of when they see a brand’s assets? To consistently market a brand in today’s multichannel environments, digital media and brand assets must be protected and delivered using the most reliable solution.

What options are available to help protect digital media and brand assets?

Many people make multiple back-ups of their computer systems and storage devices. This is great for a while but eventually you end up with back-ups of back-ups with loads of duplicated data. Alternatively, you run the risk of deleting files that you think you have backed up only to discover that you did not. An online Digital Asset Management (DAM) system is therefore something worth considering. It has multiple functionalities, is quite simple to use, cost-effective to purchase, and can help manage all of your digital media very effectively. 

How does a Digital Asset Management system work?

A DAM system is made up of various software functionalities to assist in the creation, management and distribution of digital media. If your organization has multiple internal and external stakeholders, there may be additional applications helpful on both ends of the spectrum—creation and distribution. Here's a brief overview of the various applications that fit the digital asset life cycle.

At the core, a digital asset repository helps you to centralize photos, logos, creative files and other digital media. DAM makes it easy to search for specific media files, convert and distribute them using a web-based platform. You can access your files easily and conveniently—even if the files are very large. A video asset management system is similar in that it allows you to preview, transcode and send video and audio files across the web without much effort. This is particularly useful when working with tight deadlines and you need a convenient delivery method.

If you frequently have to select photographs from portfolios for various creative and advertising projects, then a collaboration application would serve as a versatile feature of a DAM system. Working upstream in the creative workflow from the general DAM repository, web-based workflow and collaboration tools allow photography and creative teams to review and approve the photos that you wish to use. Additionally, when working on specific creative or marketing projects, project owners can coordinate reviews, track comments and approvals on modified versions and keep design teams on track for a streamlined workflow.

Downstream from the general digital asset repository, partners and sales channels can create custom marketing and sales collateral with a dynamic media building tool. Using predefined templates and content options, non-technical or non-creative users can create localized ads, brochures, direct mail and signage. This feature allows sales channels and affiliates to produce brand-approved collateral for campaigns, product launches, events or special promotions at a local level.

What are the benefits of using a Digital Asset Management system?

A big plus of any DAM system is that it helps you manage and search for files in a centralized system for all types of digital media. No more searching for the CD with the photos from last year’s campaign; simply view, organize and retrieve assets online. Web-based DAM systems are designed to be simple and easy to use, and users do not need to be technical experts to get what they need.

An equally important benefit is that a DAM system offers a safe storage facility for your files. Hard drives may fail from time to time, and CDs can get lost or damaged. In that case, you may not be able to retrieve your precious brand assets. A web-based DAM system has necessary back-ups, ensuring that you will always be able to access your photos and videos even if you change your computer hardware.

DAM is a critical technology for organizations with collaborative workflows needing a single storage and access point. Collaboration is particularly useful for staff in the media industry and corporate marketing environments. DAM systems make life much easier in being able to review, approve, search, share and download files that are typically too large for more limiting means of collaboration. The system effectively becomes the virtual meeting point for everyone across different geographic locations, which is both convenient and cost-effective.

Lastly, one of the most critical issues that a DAM system helps to solve is safeguarding an organization’s brand by ensuring only the most current assets are used. An online DAM system provides the easiest access point to approved brand assets. Being able to easily retrieve assets helps to ensure internal and external users turn to the DAM system first as opposed to other unattended sources. Governance features such as roles and permissions help administrators regulate who can see what assets. Assets for future or past due uses can be on hold or archived so the general user doesn’t have access.

Digital Asset Management helps organizations be more efficient, effective and in greater control over the vast amounts of digital media and brand assets at every critical stage of the digital asset life cycle.

Watch the interview with Brian Becker, VP of Client Development for Widen Enterprises, as he talks about the prepress production processes performed for a large apparel marketer. Part I focuses on Widen's digital photography and photography workflow management capabilities in the life cycle of a digital asset.

Intro
Widen recently helped a large apparel company improve quality and streamline creative production processes by utilizing a blend of Widen premedia services and digital asset management technologies. Widen helped the client make the move from showcasing garments currently shot on mannequins to garments shot on live models for a new women's sports licensed apparel campaign. In meeting the goal of going live inside 30 days, Widen created over 500 images with 20-25% of their shots featuring garments on live models versus mannequins.

This is a case of having a DAM customer, in which Widen provides the technology and service to manage thousands of images, take advantage of Widen’s expertise in premedia services to create their digital assets for this particular campaign.


Models and Apparel – Connecting one DAM Customer with another DAM Customer
Since this apparel customer wanted to use live models for the photo shoot at Widen, we were able to help because we have another DAM software customer that is a model and talent agency. In essence, we were able to connect one DAM client with another DAM client to complete the photo shoot. To get started, the apparel company was able to browse model shots by viewing assets from the Rock Agency online image management system and select the talent for the shoot.


Digital Photography, Review and Approval
When it came time for the shoot in Widen's photo studio, we brought in the models, photographer, and did all the make-up and styling so that we could capture a single garment before it was off to our digital sampling and color retouching departments to create all of the products and get them ready for the customer’s campaign.  (Learn more about Widen digital sampling and color retouching services in Part II.)

Leveraging Widen's online photo approval application, Widen could post the best shots for client approval before the models had even left the studio. Widen’s photo approval system allowed for same-day sign-off by the client who was over a thousand miles away.


Color Retouching, Image Management and Distribution
Once the preferred shots were selected, Widen’s Digital Sampling department created the other variations of the garments by applying logos, team names, numbers and names, etc. supplied in the client’s technical specs with Illustrator files. Widen's Color Retouching department also created the one-of-a-kind pieces by taking a photo of the garment on the mannequin and applying color retouching techniques to create quality digital apparel samples optimized for e-commerce websites. All of the final images were organized and managed in Widen’s online photo asset management system where the client could select the best shots for executing the campaign.


The end result helped the client achieve superior image quality and color consistency for the product images on the web to best represent the real-life garment.


Check out the Widen Premedia Workflow Study Part II - Digital Sampling and Color Retouching.

Guest Blog Post from Tim Vial, Widen Sales Representative

It’s a word we can’t escape, and it won’t be going away for awhile.  Recession.  Our budgets have become tighter, and yes I will admit that I have converted into a coupon cutter…

In these times you need to push harder in your marketing efforts to reach the same result. Now is not the time to cut marketing, but to increase it and rather be more effective. Whether in times like these or a booming economy, having the tools to be the most efficient are evident but right now it’s painfully clear, you need Digital Asset Management.

Now the task begins of deciding which way to go.  Having a decreased budget is yet another reason to run away from the installed software realm into the stable arms of a Software as a Service (Saas) provider.  Let’s just focus on cost right now.  An installed provider will charge you and average of $90,000 just to set you up.  We will leave all the costly upgrades, training, and maintenance out of the mix for now and just take that number.  With a hosted solution from Widen Enterprises, $90,000 would get you an average of 3-5 years of digital asset management services.  Again, I will leave out that with a hosted solution all the training, upgrades, and maintenance are included.  Think of all the upgrades you have missed in 5 years!

Marketing has seen the digital shift.  In an online survey of 400 senior marketing and media executives, 67% identified online video as a primary focus of their 2009 digital marketing campaigns, with 52% planning the launch of an online video project by the second quarter. Manage it with the Widen Media Collective complete with tools like Embed Links, video asset management, project collaboration, and image approval applications.  Reallocate that budget now and propel your marketing in 2010!

DEAR DR. DAM:  My team calls me Kramer and I’m with a marketing agency providing communications and branding services to B2B companies.  We’re in search of a digital media and brand asset management software solution to help manage clients’ photos, logos, videos, flash objects and other brand assets.  We prefer to have an on-demand/hosted DAM solution because it is not a core competency for us and would rather leave it up to the experts to manage all the hardware, implementation and support.  Also, I envision that we’ll pass most of the cost onto our clients for their asset downloads.  It’s something that will help us be more organized internally and automate a number of processes for fulfilling client requests.  I’m sure it will help us improve client communication and collaboration on projects.  We’re also interested in a collateral customization tool that would allow our clients to customize the marketing materials we create for them such as ads and brochures.  This would allow us to provide our client’s sales channels with the ability to personalize marketing pieces with simple modifications while we can control the messaging.  We work well with the marketing departments of our clients to get the master templates ready to go, but by the time they need to provide these branded materials to their sales channels, they almost always go off and create their own pieces that are more relevant and timely for their sales calls although the brand consistency element is usually NOT left in tact.  Our clients’ sales channels need to be able to upload their logos and add contact information to localize the promotional collateral for their market for simple co-branding controlled by our agency and client marketing administrators.  Please help us keep this simple and within reach.  With the difficult times and all, we got to do something to help our agency and clients save money.  Its the holiday shopping season and my daughters need new snow boots.

DEAR CREATIVE SOFTWARE KRAMER:  I can empathize with your situation.  You’re not alone; however I applaud you for wanting to be a hero for your agency and for your clients by trying to do something now.  You’ll be delighted to hear about Widen’s flexible agency billing options for digital asset management solutions.  Plus, with their rapid implementation schedule, you can still be up and running before the New Year.  The multiple branded user interface options will accommodate multiple clients with what looks like their own branded portal and “customer-ized” URL.  Plus, Widen will provide all the user and administrator training and ongoing help desk support.  No doubt, more efficient creative software technology will help you secure existing client relationships.  A smart DAM software implementation and internal automation will be a difference-maker for your agency in difficult economic times because your people will be able to concentrate on more creative and mission critical tasks.  As for the dynamic media building application, Widen's Communications team will provide you with training on how to create and administer the promotional templates.  Your staff won’t be bugged by repetitive, miniscule changes and you’ll still be able to empower your clients with brand approved marketing content.  The media builder allows for unlimited printable template options, so you have more opportunity for creative projects.  Hence, your team has more opportunity for larger billable projects.  The marketing software will help add value in addition to serving as an automated billing platform to giving clients the web-based access they’re already demanding of their assets.  The low total cost of ownership with a Widen DAM SaaS solution without any capital expenditures and an easy-to-budget for low monthly fee will keep you warm and cheery through the holiday season.  Cheers!

DEAR DR. DAM:  I’m Marcia, the Creative Director for an advertising / media agency.  I’m in search of a digital asset management system that can help us manage a rapid influx of photography and videos to be produced in the very near future.  I need something that can go live in 30 days.  Can you recommend a DAM system with strong video handling capabilities?  We have about 20,000 images that we’re currently storing locally with a file folder and tagging convention, but we basically have little organization.  We’re anticipating a rapid increase in photo and video production and need a globally accessible media management solution to match our clients growing needs as they currently have no way to manage the growth.  Our requirements include: global access via web browser, robust security, functionally fit (easy to use), simple uploads, Mac and PC compatible, and strong collaboration engine. 

DEAR MARCIA-MARCIA-MARCIA:  No sweat, the Widen system has you covered.  Because it’s SaaS, your client will have no problem with the scalability demands.  That will save you the need for more capital expenditures on hardware internally and you will only pay for what you use when you need it.  Photography and video handling is Widen’s forte.  Widen’s project collaboration application will allow you to route project media for comment and approval tracking before releasing to the digital asset library.  If you’re working with PDF documents, you can take advantage of the Adobe Acrobat Pro Shared Review and markup tools.  If your client is in need of a more robust photography workflow management application, Backdrop is a photography routing and approval application that has the ability to configure the automated routing actions and notifications according to custom workflows.  As for video handling, the Widen VAM system will allow you to ingest your highest definition video files, offer you full file previewing and then transcode to any desired format on-the-fly.  Your client may take interest in the newly released digital asset embed links for publishing videos and photography to online channels.  Embed links offers several repurposing benefits without chewing up bandwidth for downloads.  Nonetheless, Widen will have you up and running with a fully functional DAM system in less than 30 days that will help with the video management needs.

Day one is done with the Photo Plus Expo, the leading event in photography.   Kristina Lee – Backdrop Product Manager, Chris Norris – Lead Developer and I are in New York representing Widen at booth #1848 showcasing Backdrop.

What’s in the name Backdrop?  I can’t tell you how many times today people came up to us and asked “Do you sell Backdrops?”  If we did and that’s what people were looking for, we all would have left the show thinking we sold gold.  Also, no we don’t digitally superimpose you on top of 30 Rock, getting chased by a Rhinoceros on an African Safari or of your children sitting on Santa’s lap at the mall.  (We could… we do have the premedia services expertise to do so.)  That’s not the purpose of Backdrop.  Backdrop by Widen is “behind the scenes” for photography workflow management just as Widen’s other solutions are considered “back office” marketing and creative software.  (Much of the software for content management and structure of digital content is categorized as “back office.”  We’ll accept that.) 

What is meant by “behind the scenes"…you ask?  Basically, we like to think of it like this:  Photographers take photographs, creative people design – and everything in between should be held to minimal duty by automating many of the manual tasks and communication procedures.  The automated workflow takes place courtesy of Backdrop by Widen - a photography approval system working “behind the scenes.”  We understand that everyone has a different workflow and photographers have different ways of doing things with different clients.  That’s why Backdrop is both intelligent and flexible.  The configurable Photoscript is designed to follow your workflow (photographers and commercial clients) all while making things more efficient.  We don’t aim to add any steps to your photography review cycles, but we do help to remove more than a few and make other steps faster. 

So what is Backdrop?  Here’s a few of our rehearsed elevator pitches… Backdrop is a web-based photography routing and approval system… photo asset management and collaboration software… but not software as in “Oh no, I can’t buy anymore software.”  It’s SaaS – which means no installs, no licensing fees, no complicated functionality to learn, no upgrades and nobody gets left out or left alone.  Backdrop allows clients to review photo shoots online.  Can’t make it to the shoot?  Need to review and approve photos in real time?  Backdrop by Widen is there.  Trying to eliminate unnecessary travel?  Backdrop will have you at the shoot without physically being at the shoot. 

Lastly, there’s much to be said about accountability.  Backdrop is intended to let people see and interact with only the files they are supposed to see.  All comments, approvals, requests for reshoots, denials and every other major action is automatically stamped with who did it and when. 

So there’s a little ditty on Backdrop by Widen.  If you’re in the Javits Center area in New York City this Friday or Saturday, feel free to stop by Widen’s booth #1848 for a closer look at Backdrop. 

DEAR DR. DAM:  I’m Pam, the photography manager for a university and I’m in the early stages of understanding digital asset management systems and what’s out there.  My number one pain is not having an effective archiving and retrieval system in place.  All of our photographs are stored on hard drives with back up on CDs/DVDs and some offsite tape.  We have over a terabyte of data and have limited tagging of our photographs.  The university marketing and news departments need access to our photos on a regular basis.  Can you help me choose a photo asset management software solution?  We need something that allows us to collaborate effectively and is secure and scalable.

DEAR PHOTO ASSET MANAGEMENT PAM:  I like the initiative you’re taking to investigate better ways of managing the photographs for your university.  May I suggest something that is both a photography workflow management application and digital asset management software?  Widen’s Backdrop – photography routing and approval application – will help your different departments collaborate on photos before they are to be used.  Backdrop integrates with Adobe Lightroom and Widen’s web based DAM, which of course is secure and scalable.

A couple weeks ago I met with a kitchen equipment and accessories manufacturer that was interested in improving their creative workflow.  They were struggling with image management internally – images were being lost, reworked, and the overall workflow was being hampered by extreme inefficiencies.  Art directors didn’t know which photos were approved or not, which photos had moved to premedia services, and frustration was high.  One of the art directors is friends with an Account Executive at Widen – and called him one day to ask if Widen had any type of photography organizational software.  The AE laughed because as the Art Director described what she needed – it was as if she was reading a product guide for Backdrop! 

Backdrop by Widen is a photography workflow management application that allows many tasks to be automated in the creative workflow process when dealing with photographers and images.  Photographers select a profile (or workflow) – upload images using a drag and drop applet which triggers emails to the reviewers (often times Art Directors) in that particular workflow.  This photography approval system organizes images, allows for approvals and reshoot requests, and provides for as much metadata information as needed – including EXIF and IPTC info.  All actions associated with an image (approval, reshoot, comments, discard) are time and date stamped along with WHO did that action to that particular image.

All of these features thrilled this manufacturer as they shoot with multiple photographers in several locations (Backdrop is web-based so people can use it from anywhere there is internet service).  In addition, the ability to comment directly on images in Backdrop meant that they didn’t have to try and describe comments via email.  Team members loved the accountability feature with time/date stamping and were excited about being able to associate metadata with images prior to them being released into their digital asset management application.  Overall, they realized that Backdrop would help them get organized and improve the efficiency of their workflow – which makes us at Widen so happy we could help!

DEAR DR. DAM:  My names Ashley and I’m the marketing manager for several brand-name hotel and resort chains.  I’m a current DAM customer, but I’m looking for solutions that offer more flexibility and integrates well with others.  We have multiple systems that I would like integrated with our digital asset library.

We do a lot with video and we have a team that spends a lot of time burning a large volume of DVDs.  I’m looking for some automation that can help.  Automation for image conversions and video transcoding would be huge.  We’re looking at digital asset solutions that offer robust version control capabilities.  As for collaboration, an automated photography approval application would be incredible.  About 80% of assets are photos and we have shooters all over the world.  Right now we use CDs and FTP sites to get the images back to the corporate office, where we tag all of the metadata and manually upload to our corporate image library.  I’m hearing some buzz about digital asset management solutions using embed links to provide a single control point for image and video delivery to online sources.  What’s that all about?
 
DEAR INTEGRATION NEEDS ASHLEY:  You do have a very “robust” need for your workflow.  I think you’ll enjoy the single-source-ness you’ll find with Widen, plus the flexibility to integrate multiple systems, both Widen’s and 3rd-party solutions.   From asset capture to delivery you’ll love the end-to-end solutions from Backdrop photography routing and approval to the digital media management system.  Widen’s video asset management with on-demand transcoding and DVD authoring will automate much of the manual tasks.  Plus, you’ll really enjoy having to maintain only one master library while being able to repurpose images and video files to multiple online mediums with the embed links.

In preparation of Widen Enterprises attending the PhotoPlus trade show in NYC, we had a photo shoot for our booth graphics yesterday.  We are promoting our photography management application - Backdrop™ at this show and were trying to come up with something that not only catches the attention of attendees, but also provides some visual representation of this application.  As I mentioned in a million other posts, Backdrop is used by creative teams and photographers for reviewing, commenting, and approving images.  Anyway, we shot the images (thanks Brett!  thanks Bryon!) and upon completion, uploaded them to our digital asset management application – Widen Media Collective.

Instead of messing around with burning them to disk or putting them in some file folder –where no one can find them – we uploaded them to a place where they can actually be FOUND and USED!  Unbelievable!  It sounds so simple – and it is – yet thousands of businesses struggle each day with organizing their images, finding images from last years photo shoot, and getting them in the hands (in the correct format) to those who need to use them.  By having a web-based DAM application, I can send these images to our retoucher, our designer … or better yet – I can give them permissions to log into site and select the image(s) they need and order them in the format they need (eps, tiff, jpeg – no problem!).  Anything our designer needs for putting together promotional materials for PhotoPlus is easily accessible!

Widen’s latest version of Backdrop™ is here with our Summer Release!  What’s new?  Well, first and foremost is its plug-in integration with Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom™2. The new Backdrop feature enables users of Lightroom 2 to upload images to Backdrop directly from the Lightroom digital photo management application. The export plug-in provides users with the ability to login to the Backdrop site, choose an upload profile, and specify the desired size and quality of the images to be uploaded.

In addition to this, we’ve added to ability to print images along with comments (which also lists author of the comment(s)) individually or in batch.  Reporting functionality has been enhanced with reporting for uploads and orders.  Need a certain layout for contact sheets?  Now you can create dynamic contact sheets – you pick how many images (columns and rows) you want per page.
 

Need to search on a specific date range for uploaded photos?  Backdrop now has the ability to search photos by upload date.  We’ve also added the ability to rate photos using a star system (hey, nice shot – I’ll give that 4 stars) – and users can search by the rating (I ONLY want to look at images with 5 stars).

Backdrop is a web-based image management application for creative professionals that provides photographers with the ability to route images to reviewers for comments and approval. Its configurable workflows eliminate time-consuming tasks and provide a high degree of workflow flexibility, as well as seamlessly connect with the Widen Media Collective® digital asset management system.

Backdrop™ by Widen is heading for New York City to attend the PhotoPlus Expo October 23-25, 2008.  This is THE most important event in photography and we’ll be there debuting our photography workflow management application (booth 1848 for those marking your calendar) and other digital media management tools.  According to Exhibitor Magazine, the 2007 PhotoPlus Expo was one of the top trade shows of the year and 2008 will be bigger and better!

We’re kicking around some tag lines for our booth concept (which thanks to ZDO in Shevegas – I mean Sheboygan, Wisconsin – are fantastic) and thought we’d throw one out there for you to think about.  Since Widen does SaaS (software as a service for those not usually tortured by technical acronyms), one super cool thing about Backdrop is the ability to be ANYWHERE in the world and view, review, and comment on photo shoot images via the web-based photography approval system.

So, how’s this tag, “Wherever you are – Backdrop – brings the shoot to you.”  I know – it loses something when you don’t see it on a cool storyboard – but it definitely brings the point home that – no matter where you might be – and no matter where your shoot might be – your reviewers can login, view and approve!  Viola! 

Seriously, I know many creative departments are being asked to cut, cut, cut expenses from their budgets.  And taking an entourage to each and every photo shoot can be pricey.  With Backdrop, ROI is virtually immediate.  For organizations that shoot with multiple photographers across the USA, they can’t afford NOT to have a web-based photography routing and approval system in place – and Backdrop makes their photography workflow more efficient than they ever thought possible.

I’m sure after reading my headline, you are wondering what IrishFest, Kilts, and photography approval have in common.  This week Widen took part in the first annual Creative Transitions Conference in Milwaukee, WI.  Widen was both a sponsor and exhibitor at this event – and Jake and I talked to many participants and organizers about Backdrop™ (our photography approval system) and digital asset management. 
 
What conversation stuck in my mind?  The first day of the conference I spoke with a woman who was part of the photography workflow management team at one of the nation’s largest retailers.  This specialty department store does much of its photography (for catalogs, mailers, and web) in-house.  At first glance, you might think if so much of the workflow is in-house – what type of problems could they really have with workflow?  Plenty!  Even with photographers and creatives working in close proximity, there were still problems with lengthy turnaround time, unnecessary work and duplication of efforts.
 
When multiple photographers are shooting on multiple camera types, handling raw images and converting those raw images can be a major ordeal.  Once converted, images are tweaked slightly or processed before going to art directors for selection and approval.  Then the approved images are being sent for additional processing.  Images are going from here to there – not routed automatically – but by someone physically touching, moving, sending that file in each step of the process.  How much longer do you think that workflow is than it needs to be?
 
This is where the workflow savior enters the picture – Backdrop™ by Widen.  Nothing makes a great trade show or conference then hearing someone’s workflow problems and knowing your company’s application(s) can solve most (if not all) of their current issues.  Backdrop accepts raw files (or other file types) and any photographers using Adobe® Lightroom® can automatically upload images to the application.  Because it accomodates multiple workflows, photographers simply select the workflow (we call them ‘profiles’) for that particular photo shoot and the rest is automated.  Immediately upon upload, workflow triggers start with email notifications going to those people who need to view and approve images.  With one click of the ‘Approve’ button – that image can be automatically routed - in the format needed (eps, tiff, etc.) to the retoucher.  With another click, that finished image can automatically route to a digital asset management application, someone laying out a catalog or website, or anywhere else it needs to go!
 
So there you have it.  A great solution to a current problem.  And did I mention, IrishFest and kilts?  C2 – the company that organized this event – arranged for all participants of the conference to attend IrishFest and a special meet-and-greet party at the festival.  What can I say about hearing fantastic Irish music, socializing with creative professionals, and seeing men in kilts?

Kristina and I represented Widen at the ACCM Show in May showcasing our newest brand and product addition to the Widen Collective family – Backdrop –a photography routing and approval application.  Backdrop is a “new face to DAM” for photography and creative teams to collaborate on approvals and manage workflows.  

At the ACCM Show, we demonstrated how Backdrop helps catalogers cut cycle time with photography review workflows to allow more time for more demanding time-sensitive tasks in the creative process. Going into the show we believed we were right on the money placing all focus on Backdrop because it is a  tremendous time and cost savings mechanism for companies doing a lot of photography by allowing creative people to be a part of the photo shoot without physically being “at the shoot.”

We had several catalogers say they would use Backdrop to manage photography shoots, however, they weren’t doing a lot of their own photography – it was supplied by their vendors (among others).  When we asked “how many images do you have and where are they?” the common response was “we have tons of images and they’re everywhere.” 

The lesson here is simple:  If you need to be two places at once and one of those places is at a photo shoot – you need Backdrop.  If you have tons of images and their everywhere – seek professional help from a DAM service provider.

It has been rumored all week that Apple will be releasing their highly anticipated software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone on March 6^th.  This is a massive move in opening the previously locked iPhone platform.  It’s well known that a high percentage of iPhones are hacked and running third party applications, but this would allow for the development of applications that could be loaded to the unit without voiding any warranties or having to “unlock” the phone from its exclusive carrier contract with AT&T.

While this is a rather standard practice for mobile carriers and mobile devices, digital asset management has allowed for open integration for quite some time.  By using SOAP and Widen’s API configuration, we have been able to integrate with other internal workflow applications, CRM applications and even failing foreign digital asset management systems that aren’t able to be abandoned by some clients.

The overall openness of Widen’s applications allow for a higher level of marketing execution, creative support and sales enablement.  This capacity has led to a partnership exclusively with Salesforce.com and has enabled several clients to work with their marketing assets in a familiar environment while also allowing for brand approved materials to be distributed in a timely fashion.

The iPhone SDK may not be exciting to non-users, but it should.  Revolutionary gadgets have constantly been the engine promoting change in technology related industries.  What this means is that your standard, clamshell phone could soon be enabled to read your Outlook calendar, send emails and even work with things like spreadsheets and PDFs. 

Digital asset management is no exception to this inspiration.  Workflow management and photo approval processes are all procedures that could benefit from being accessed from a mobile platform.  With a constant development and testing cycle, Widen will be able to keep up with a rapidly changing industry and serve clients at a higher level with a cutting-edge services and applications that will allow them to venture to territories previously unexplored and possibly even unimagined.

As product manager of Backdrop™ – Widen’s new photography routing and approval application, I’m excited to see the response we are getting from our beta application of Backdrop.  Several clients have done field testing of Backdrop – and the feedback has been great.  Everyone comments on how user friendly the application is along with how great it is to be able to comment directly onto images.  No more telephone tag or trying to describe things over the telephone.

Picture this scenario.  Creative Director in Lincoln, Nebraska working with photographer in New York.  Creative Director makes phone call to photographer after receiving images via email.

Creative Director:  “Do you see that spot on the wall?  I don’t like it."

Photographer:  “What are you talking about?  I don’t see any spot on the wall.”

Creative Director:  “That spot – get rid of that spot on the wall behind the countertop.  Top left, can’t you see it?  It’s showing up on my crappy low res jpeg you emailed me.”

Photographer:  “You’re crazy.  There’s no spot on the wall.  I’m charging you overtime for this photo shoot.”  Click.

If they were using Backdrop – no calls – no trying to describe comments over the phone.  The Creative Director views the high res image online (from her Lincoln office) and is able to zoomify the entire image.  She comments directly on the image and clicks reshoot.  The photographer automatically receives an email and views the image along with the comment.  How simple is that?

It’s been a little over three months since the writer’s strike began, and the lack of new programming has left me with very little to do during my free time.  I was greatly relieved when it recently ended, then I soon found out that new programming is more than likely still five weeks out.  FIVE WEEKS!  What do they expect all of us TV addicts to do with all that time?  I know that finding something constructive to do would be more productive, but it made me think about delays that marketing departments deal with every day.

The delays of your favorite TV programming are similar to delays that many of our clients experienced before using our digital asset management (DAM) application.  File conversions and routing are always issues for marketing and photography departments.  Our newest application, Backdrop™, is specifically designed for photo routing and approval, helping photographers even more.

With all of the media requests that marketing individuals are getting on a daily basis, some sort of process needs to be in place for fulfilling these requests, whether it be for images, audio or video.  These requests not only need to be fulfilled in the most timely fashion possible, but also in the correct format.  Interaction with media is especially sensitive as feeding your press outlets bad information or the incorrect media could lead to your company, product or service not being covered appropriately.

While five weeks seems like an eternity to wait for new shows, I’m grateful that it only effects my free time and now my work.  If these delays are something that I encountered at work I would constantly be struggling just to keep my head above water, not to mention trying to keep my sanity.

Hopefully, with the time off during the strike, the writers will have a renewed sense of productivity and creativity, similar to what DAM provides to marketing departments due to time being able to be spent on more core activities rather than inefficient processes like file conversion.