DAM -Which to choose

[Syyd]

Of the Digital Asset Management programs which to choose.
We're a small publisher with a five person workgroup.
Running Win XP, CS3.

Looking for:
good browser ablities.
custom printing options (contact sheets)
cataloging
search and find
batch converting (low res proofs)


Considering:
Lightroom
Protfolio
ACDSee

Recomendations anyone?

[Len Zigante]

We've used Extensis Portfolio for years and to be honest, I've appreciated many of its database features when it comes to organizing & producing contact sheets. However our company's photographer really hates Portfolio & finds it tedious & cumbersome, instead opting to use ACDSee (he doesnt have to do much for database tracking etc.). To each their own I guess.

I think your best bet is to simply spend a few weeks testing each product to see if it meets your specific needs. Portfolio can be overkill, ACDSee can be insufficient (at least in my eyes)... really it depends on what you need.

Hope this helps.

[Syyd]

With Portfolio, would we purchase the single user (or a couple) or would it be nessecary to buy the expensive Portfolio Server?

[Len Zigante]

With Portfolio, would we purchase the single user (or a couple) or would it be nessecary to buy the expensive Portfolio Server?

ah, now that depends on how you are going to use Portfolio. We originally bought 5 licenses with the server version (albeit many years ago) and it turned out to be a complete waste as only a couple of us actually made big use of it.

Guess you have to ask yourself how many of your staff will be using the product, how frequently and simultaneously, and what their purpose for using it will be. If only a few will be using the product then you can probably get away with just a single user license or two. If you have a huge company & people will be accessing the images from all over the place in various departments & possibly from the web then the server version makes more sense, especially if you want to control who can access what and/or make changes.

If we had to do it all over again I think we would have just bought a couple single user licenses & if the need arose, then upgrade to the server version. Again tho, this is specific to how your company operates & what it's intentions are for it's images.

Lastly and VERY importantly, Extensis changed how its Portfolio product worked over several different versions. Each version was backwards compatible only to the previous version & required you load each Portfolio catalog & update it. When we initially bought the product we didn't bother to upgrade for a couple of versions. When we finally did upgrade we discovered we could not import our old catalogs because we didn't upgrade each time. This was a serious flaw with the product as far as I was concerned. However I can't say I know if Extensis still does this as after that fiasco we hired the photographer who prefers ACDSee so we still use version 8 and have had no further need to upgrade. (ACDSee also views the images in a directory immediately while Portfolio creates thumbnails of them all & requires some time to do so)

Hope this helps.

[The Repro Kid]

Portfolio Server is quite a different beast from Portfolio and has a price tag that illustrates the difference. If you are part of a large networked workgroup that uses common assets and job files, then Portfolio Server version is a must, but it large price reflects the fact that it is intended for seriously large operations, and really is not for small workgroups.

But you know, about the photographer who called portfolio cumbersome, I've always felt that when people use the word cumbersome to describe software, it usually a tip off that said person is not up to the task of simply reading the manual. IMO, portfolio is so easy to use, anyone who would find it cumbersome probably has very little experience with any type of computer use whatsoever.

[Syyd]

Thanks to both of you for your thoughts.

Right, we are just a five person workgroup so we could problably just go with
Portfolio on a couple computers.

The interface seems straight forward on the demos I viewed
Does it work well with all the CS3 programs? As well as Lightroom might.


Thanks.

[The Repro Kid]

It works just fine with Adobe CS3 and earlier versions, however...

Portfolio has no problem building thumbnails of photoshop, Illustrator, PDF, EPS, JPG, TIFF etc, and these thumbnails are what you view in your catalog. But sometimes it has trouble building thumbs for Layout programs. It is supposed to be able to build thumbnails of Layout files, Quark, Indesign, etc., but in reality, depending on what versions of the layout program you are using, more often then not, portfolio can't build a thumbnail and preview of layout files. But I have a very simple workaround. With all the jobs I do, I always create a "Lo-Res PDF Proof" file, these are usually used to distribute to marketeers and sales people because they cannot open InD, Quark files, and Illustrator files. So when cataloging my job files in portfolio, I catalog the PDF Proof file rather then the actual layout file. This way I always get a thumbnail and a preview of the job for my catalog, and it references the correct job folder.

What makes the Server version critical for large workgroups is that one person does the cataloging on a catalog that resides on the server, and all the users in the workgroup are "Served Up" this one catalog. This way all users see one common catalog that updated in real time across the network.

[Paul C]

I might be totally ignorant but isn't this what Bridge and Version Cue are supposed to accomplish?

I know that photographers absolutely love Bridge for managing their files.

My asset management has always been accomplished with file and folder management so I don't really know to be honest…

pbc

[The Repro Kid]

I might be totally ignorant but isn't this what Bridge and Version Cue are supposed to accomplish? ...
No sir, it is not.

Portfolio is a full fledged, mature offering. It is currently at version 8 and I've been using it here, there and everywhere for years. It is the de-facto asset management software for Mac Art Professionals.

Everything else is just catch-up.

[The Repro Kid]

I guess I should expound.

Actually Paul, Portfolio catalogs are Database files. They are Database catalogs that include visuals. Bridge does not create database files the way portfolio does. With portfolio I can give a database catalog of my files to some other person on another machine, and as long as they have portfolio, they can search my catalog of my files. Which is useful, say, if I had a number of ads on my machine and you'd like to pick one out to run in a publication. You could search my database catalog of files and pick one out, without ever having any of the files on your computer.

Bridge can catalog Job files but I don't think it has near the database capabilities that portfolio has. With portfolio you can drop a file into a catalog, and the program loads all words in the file name and all words in the files containing folders into a list of keywords for that file. You can build entire keyworded searchable catalogs without ever having to type in a keyword yourself. And that is just scratching the surface. You can also do things like publish a catalog to web, where Portfolio will build and upload entire keyworded, searchable catalogs to the web as long as you have somewhere to upload it.

If anything, Bridge is more of a replacement for the Finder, than it is an asset manager, although it is used to manage assets.