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Hello to anyone working in comms and photography.
I'm at a small UK cycling brand that handles lots of important photos of its products.
We have many photos of multiple models, colours, variations, specs and sponsored riders.
At present, I feel our Dropbox filing system is creaking under the task, and doesn't make it easy to find the image you need at the right time. (Where do I find a print-quality photo of a small-sized Model X bike with Shimano components being ridden in winter conditions at Event Y by a female rider?)
I have used Digital Asset Management system long ago when I worked at a much larger company. I feel this kind of approach might help.
However, when I try to research the current options, all the "solutions" (yuk – hate that term) are either really expensive or the marketing is so cheesy I don't know if it's actually a decent tool.
So, any recommendations? Don't need fancy features. Just tagging and searching by EXIF data, keywords, etc. Easy set-up and inexpensive price tag also desirable.
Ta!
C
Sounds like Adobe Bridge could be all you need...
https://www.adobe.com/uk/products/bridge.html
And it's free!...
https://prodesigntools.com/free-adobe-bridge-cc.html
Whilst I would generally shit in my hands and clap than have anything to do with Adobe, is Lightroom not the answer here?
I miss Google Picasa.
You have to pay for Lightroom - and if all he needs is file management then Bridge is just fine.
One of my clients use Canto for media asset management.
It's fantastic and very powerful, yet remains simple to use.
It has all sorts of distribution and permission tools etc which I think is a benefit rather than hindrance - it makes it an actual asset management system rather than glorified folder structure, which it sounds like you are the the point of now needing.
From a[n external] photographer POV, they get a direct upload request link via email to input into the filesystem per folder - couldn't be easier.
I just came across digikam. Open source. Seems interesting.
currently using Lightroom classic and aiming to move away from it before year end. Private user with >100,000 files in the catalog.
I've been using digicam for a while after picasa stopped playing nicely, It was originally very slow on windows but now OK - it is regularly updated. It does have a bit of a learning curve but definitely worth a look.
Really good for date and tag sorting, and cross referring to folders. Haven't really got to terms with using its search function.
For a business though you may prefer to stick with a more mainstream product.
Flickr, using private settings.
Really good for date and tag sorting, and cross referring to folders. Haven't really got to terms with using its search function.
That’s good to know. I’ve installed it (on Mac) with its optional plugins but have yet to point it to a folder for a try out. I think I saw that its facial recognition plugin runs locally rather than cloud based. I admit I did not take note of any object recognition AI plugin it might have.