Since the last 20 years I spent a lot of time working with some of the best photographers to capture fashion week show or life still images for luxury brands. I have always been passionate to deploy this photography workflow to improve the #DAM usage and I constantly asked to consult on everything from creative concepts, to building out studios.
It is a real challenge for most of #DAM systems to provide a whole solution from content creation to syndication with some key features like :
- Capture One connector the professional's choice in photo editing software
- The support of very large TIFF and Raw files with any type of metadata (IPTC saved into the files). On my side I'd rather use Fotostation from FotoWare just because works since the last 25 years when I managing the photo library of Hachette and today very fast and cost nothing.
- To be able to inherit the #metadata from the ERP populated into the DAM collections
- Business process mapping (BPM), we are talking about real workflow and not custom metadata to say yes or no, take care !!. This one is from DALIM SOFTWARE a strong leader in this field but Nuxeo has also a very good and easy to use.
- Softproof high definition viewer and annotations so teams can see every detail and be able to compare revisions . This one is from DALIM SOFTWARE maybe one of the best one regarding the cost but new vendors like Ziflow have also a good one.
- Transformation of the assets. the 2 next screenshots are from Cloudinary and to be honest the best one, very powerful...
- Syndication in all e-commerce channels
The biggest target for #DAM : the photographic process . . .Most Photo Studios by Brands have hundreds of samples in and out of the studio. For each combination of samples, there may be 20-50 frames shot of different poses, with as many as 50 items being shot, in a single set. Multiply that by 5 or 6 sets a day, and the daily shot count can be 20,000 frames per client, per day. So there is a huge amount of digital photo to manage.
Clients don’t want to have to worry about the technicalities of what happens in a shoot, or where those images go, they just want to be assured that their images will be delivered from post production, in time to their CDN, so the web team can deliver their web launch, on time. The ability to use file system access, as well as web-based uploads, as ways to ingest files this is the big picture and the challenge to figure out.
Photography requires a number of exposures, to insure the final image has the color depth, and range, to accurately portray the product. This means each product has a number of shots that need to go to post production, but not all of them need retouching, just the image selected.
Performance is of the key of the DAM system. You have to edit big projects in a snap with intelligent organization, real-time slider adjustments and fast import and export. You can customize the interface to suit clients needs. And never lose track of RAW files, edits metadata (IPTC and custom) and exports (wide range of formats today ) with easy file management digital output.
Most product photography studios have built innovative automated photographic techniques for creating professional quality product images in-house, fast and efficiently. The way a brand presents its products to potential buyers says a lot about the company.
Most of shoppers want to touch, hold and taste the product reason why you need provide the best quality picture but also to be able to display the right colors in your #DAM system. In order to provide a very attractive product it is interesting to present a couple of shots, 12,24,36…with a virtual 360 representation. It is more and more a commun expectation today to get these spins especially for a website in order to interact with the product.
The last stage inside the organisation is to provide a consistent #workflow to ensure that your images will follow always the same processes between the stakeholders. It is important for fashion brands to approve the right content at the right time.
A #DAM system for fashion and luxury can reduce the duplication of assets and stages and distribute the digital content in all multi-channel sales.
Any #RFP for fashion or luxury is different from the others even if we always have the fondamentals but it is important to check that you can support very large file with a workflow management tool and any high definition viewer with annotations is more than welcome.
Do not forget the #UI so much important today because we are talking about #brands and engagement. UI has to be driven by React JS, Angular web framework, you have to be able to do drag and drop and has to be responsive otherwise don't buy the system....sorry.
I shared with you some of them between Phraseanet an open source solution, yes it works :) Cloudinary and Nuxeo. So as you can see to get the best and of course I missed some of them you need maybe to get a couple of DAM systems....at the end of the day you know now the tools you need to manage your photography workflow.
Stamp your vendor !! or I can help you with my experience.
Let's contact me if you want for such #DAM projects with fashion and luxury brands.
