The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers (O'Reilly Digital Studio) (Paperback)

by Peter Krogh (Author)
Key Phrases: ratings pyramid, bulk metadata, private metadata, Camera Raw, Peter Krogh, Image Processor (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Can you find your digital photographs when you need them, or do you spend more time rifling through your hard drive and file cabinets than you'd like? Do you have a system for assigning and tracking content data on your photos? If you make a living as a photographer, do your images bear your copyright and contact information, or do they circulate in the marketplace unprotected?

As professional photographer and author Peter Krogh sees it, "your DAM system is fundamental to the way your images are known, both to you and to everyone else." DAM, or Digital Asset Management, in the world of digital photography refers to every part of the process that follows the taking of the picture, through final output and permanent storage. Anyone who shoots, scans or stores digital photographs, is practicing some form of digital asset management. Unfortunately, most of us don't yet know how to manage our files (and our time) very systematically, or efficiently.

In The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers, Krogh brings clarity to the often overwhelming task of managing digital photographs, with a solid plan and practical advice for fellow photographers on how to file, find, protect and re-use photographs. Following a thorough overview of the DAM system and de-mystifications of metadata and digital archiving, Krogh focuses on best practices for digital photographers using Adobe Photoshop CS2. He explains how to use Adobe Bridge, the new CS2 navigational software that replaces the File Browser introduced in Photoshop 7, with full details on integrating Bridge, Camera Raw and Digital Asset Management software.

Compellingly presented in four-color format, The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers brings Krogh's award-winning creative approach to a subject that could have been technically intimidating. Instead, Krogh's twenty years of experience and instructive visual storytelling make this material not only accessible, but compulsory reading for serious digital photographers.

About the Author
Peter Krogh is a commercial photographer in the Washington DC area. He is an Alpha Tester for Adobe, helping with the development of workflow and asset management tools for Photoshop and Adobe Bridge. He is on the board of directors of ASMP, the American Society of Media Photographers, and speaks frequently on Digital Asset Management to photographers' groups and other computer users. You can see his photography work on his website, www.peterkrogh.com, and some of his work promoting digital standards at www.digitalphotographystandards.com

Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.; illustrated edition edition (May 11, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596100183
• ISBN-13: 978-0596100186
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #192,731 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Escape from the Shoebox, December 14, 2005

By	Conrad J. Obregon (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

When I first became a serious photographer back in the days of film, I stored my negatives and pictures in a shoebox. As my collection grew, I switched to contact sheets and coded negative files. Afterwards I filled a closet with special filing boxes of negatives and prints. But it was hard for me to find an older picture. I tried cross-filing but it never really worked. Then came digital.

By word of mouth, postings in on-line forums and an occasional magazine article I figured out that I'd better back up my photo files to non-erasable media and that I could more easily find old files by cataloging them with cataloging software. But I can't say that I developed a comprehensive system.

The DAM Book does that. (I wish they had taken a different title; the pun soon becomes boring.) Krough presents a system for sorting, archiving and finding photographs using Adobe Bridge and cataloging software. After defining digital asset management (DAM) and metadata, he talks about creating the digital archive both as an information structure and as a hardware configuration. Because he presumes that serious photographers will be using Photoshop, he discusses the use of Adobe Bridge as an asset management tool and describes a DAM workflow. He then discusses cataloging software, what he calls derivative files (which are generally files derived from a master copy) and strategies for file migration, including computer upgrades, software changes and even film migration.

The author's own system seems beyond the needs of most photographers. (He claims to catalog 135,000 pictures a year.) But even though his own system includes rack-mounted servers, raid configuration and multiple back-ups, he also suggests simpler systems that include a single computer, an external drive and DVD backups. But what is most important is not the description of systems but the presentation of concepts that most digital photographers can apply. For example, even though I could see the difference between browsers and cataloging software, articulating the distinction between the two makes it easier to analyze my own requirements. And understanding that for a digital cataloging system, that uses keywords, the title of a picture is not essential to finding it makes it easier to use titles that are system related rather then content related.

Krough describes useful software that supplements Bridge that can be downloaded for free and will make DAM easier. (Unfortunately he hasn't found a way to make Bridge run any faster, but he does suggest time-saving procedures.) He also suggests procedures that some photographers will not need, like embedding a rating in every photograph, and other procedures that might be a little premature, like converting every file to Adobe's DNG format to better preserve metadata. On the other hand, before I even finished the book, I had made several changes in my own DAM system. For example, although he uses iView MediaPro as an example of cataloging software, he made me wonder if my cataloging software had the same capabilities that I had never used. A little time with my software manual and I now have a place to store external metadata that are not embedded in a picture file, but are associated with particular pictures.

There are other books that discuss DAM but this is the first I've encountered aimed at photographers. I consider it essential reading for serious digital photographers.

76 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Once good, now seriously outdated and needlessly complex, March 1, 2007

By	GJ "GJ" (Wisconsin) - See all my reviews

The DAM Book was probably much needed when it was first published - its publication coincided with a realization by many professional and serious amateur photographers that handling the quickly growing digital photo collections required a sound organizing approach and dedicated software tools. The book aptly points out that dealing with digital image workflow and the resulting file archives is in many significant ways different than dealing with film-based archives. Based on this initial premise, the book offers recommendations on how to organize digital photo studio workflow and filing / archive system.

Alas, the author chose to tie VERY CLOSELY his mostly sensible conceptual framework (i.e., HOW to organize) with very specific software and hardware. Often, more general advice is difficult or impossible to separate from his step-by-step, software-specific recipes. So, unless you use exactly the same software and hardware configuration as the author, much, if not most of this information will be of little use.

Since the book was first published, new, DAM- and photographic workflow-oriented software has become available (Adobe CS3, including the new Bridge is now in public beta nearing its release; and Apple Aperture 1.5 and Adobe PS Ligtroom 1.0 are the new, more workflow-focused tools), and more up-to-date (although dispersed) discussion of problems in question can be found in numerous articles on the web. This makes large portions of the book obsolete, as new tools enable different workflows that may be better suited to many photographers' preferences.

The book has other issues.

First, the author LOVES using technical jargon. While technical vocabulary is appropriate in discussing technical issues, creating new terms and elaborate taxonomies for everything is an overkill. The author's misguided argument for using "controlled vocabularies" (a common term, which he uses in his own, very peculiar way - p. 47) is a good case in point. As Eric Abrahamson (Columbia Business School) aptly points out in his excellent book "A Perfect Mess," organizing is always good in principle, but OVER ORGANIZING by creating systems more complex than it is necessary to get the job done, comes at a very steep price in time and resources needed to maintain the system. Enough said.

Secondly, since this is a workflow book (not a coffee-table book), the full color print is totally unnecessary, and the price point is consequently too high. This should have been one of those $9.95 O'Reilly quick-guide booklets. Most photos reproduced in the book are simply decorative, or used as examples for things that are obvious (e.g. an example of a "group shot" - duh!; or a photo of wine barrels in a cellar as a metaphor for file storage system). Photos are not interesting on their own merit; screen captures and simple diagrams would be just as effective in greyscale.

In summary, you may want to flip through the pages of the book at a local library or bookstore - what's really useful and noteworthy here, can be easily grasped in less than 15 minutes; otherwise, your money may be better spent on a good book focused on the actual software tools YOU are committed to using.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great effort- good book. One issue, October 29, 2006

By	Andy in Washington "Andy" (Washougal, WA) - See all my reviews

I am a fairly serious photographer- with over 5000 cataloged images stored in iViewPro. I also use Photoshop CS2- so I have pretty much the same setup as Peter Krogh uses for his book. I probably shoot a couple hundred images a month, of which maybe 5% get archived and saved.

The best thing about this book is it describes, in detail, one whole methodology for setting up a reasonable system for storing, naming, cataloging, backing-up, rating, and organizing photos. I would much rather a book that describes one method, rather than trying to describe every possible methods and the tradeoffs of each. Krogh describes how he does it, why he did it that way, and what the advantages an disadvantages were. You may object to some of his choices- (I am not a fan of digital negatives), but opinions are like you know what...everybody has one.

If you use the same software that Krough uses, you will be very satisfied with his book. If you use others (Photoshop downrevs, ACDSEE, etc), I can see the book being a bit of a disappointment. However, since I use the same tools (and these probably cost close to $1000 to duplicate), the price of the book was easily made up in just a couple of the hints.

I do have one complaint. The interface between CS2 and iVIEW is clunky in that it doesn't point to the same metadata for some fields- specifically the star rankings. Krogh suggests a number of work-arounds, none of which I really liked. None of that is Krogh's fault- Microsoft and Adobe need to have a meeting. However the one thing that really annoyed me was that Krogh offered one script to address the problem, which is offered on his website for a fee- don't remember the exact amount- $20 seems to ring a bell.

If there is one thing I hate, it is laying out cash for a methodology book, only to be hit up again for downloading a script.

If stuff like that doesn't bother you- I wholeheartedly recommend the book, subject to your having the same toolset. If stuff like that bothers you- hold your nose and buy it anyway.