[msnowman]

Hi Guys,

I imagine this has come up before but I must not be using the right search terms to find it.

What I'm looking for is software that I can load my artwork into, associate tags (like listing the elements in a graphic), and preview the artwork without opening it. In the past I've tried things like Adobe Bridge but it won't always preview files (even illustrator or photoshop files) and I had several hours of tagging done in it and when I did an upgrade I lost all the data. Another solution I tried (I don't remember the name) was so slow it was unbearable to use. Can anyone offer any suggestions? I read that some use microsoft sharepoint but there has got to be something better out there.

 

[ProSeparatorNJ]

Adobe Bridge is it.

Anothe thing worth investigating is Mystic thumbs. With that I can see many many thumbs directly in Windows Explorer. So I open Bridge far less than I might have. It lets you view a ton of formats directly in Windows. Learn the key commands for viewing thumbs at different sizes and it makes for a relatively smooth workflow for finding and previewing graphic elements.

Also, can't you do acertain amount of tagging directly in Windows Explorer? I don't take the time to tag anything ever. Just way too time consuming. But I remember areas where info could be entered about files. And with all the ways of organizing files in Windows you may be able to view them according ti tag info. I'm gonna look into that when I get back to my PC.

 

[NoXid]

I've been looking into that myself this week as my digital photos and scans are fast becoming too many needles in a big stack of needles.

Many of the photo editors, such as Lightroom, have built-in Digital Asset Management (DAM), and the one in Lightroom is miles ahead of Bridge. However, most of the photo-oriented programs have very limited (if any) support for common graphics formats that we would be likely to use in T-shirt designs, and such.

I'm currently playing around with Daminion. It is a commercial product but the single-user version is free for non-commercial use or just to try out. It works with lots of graphics formats, as well as video and sound files.

I like it so far, but it won't let me put the metadata database on my file server--so I would have to setup some sort of backup routine to protect that file (I keep all of my data on a UNIX ZFS file server). If not for that one thing, I would have quit looking for other options by now.

You'll find more options if you google "digital asset management" and "photo management".