Monitoring metrics like the estimated deadline in comparison with the actual one determines the pace at which your project moves and should move and the creative bottlenecks that should be solved, which ultimately helps in slashing down the time for future projects. This makes measuring the creative output with key performance indicators a significant part of your creative project. When the actual budget is less than or in alignment with the estimated one, the value of creative output by your organization is also made clear. This enhances the ROI and helps secure future opportunities and profit while also gaining customer loyalty. This can only be done by enhancing your workflow process and continuously measuring creative workflow output. But can you really measure the creative workflow output? The answer is a definite yes. Let’s take a look at how you can do it. Why Do You Need to Measure Creative Workflow Output? An effective creative workflow includes these primary phases: Conception of the project, definition, execution, review and approval, and the final project distribution. Several processes are implemented for these particular phases based on the type of content you produce, which differs from company to company.  Standardizing work intake is important to effectively measure your output. Here’s how having a standard work intake process and a measure of creative output help the entire process to flow smoothly: Clarity Enhanced and Improved Efficiency If your team members have a better understanding of how project proposals are brought forward, their participation will be higher and more effective. A standardized work intake enhances clarity, which in turn increases efficiency that helps speed up the process of creating and approving proposals. Higher Quality Standardizing work intake helps to clarify the exact information that is required in the proposal and also the clear reason behind it. This leads to higher quality work while also decreasing the approval time.  Unsurpassable Consistency  A standard work intake process includes a single source implemented by employees to forego chaos and confusion that follows if you use numerous tools and software for a specific purpose, breaking the chain of consistency. The utilization of common tools and templates will help maintain consistency in proposals.   How to Measure Your Creative Workflow Output Prioritization of projects and tasks is important in a creative workflow to determine whether something is a value-add. Let’s take a look at the basis on which the workflow output should be measured for maximum efficiency: Identify Urgency Urgency is the stipulated timeline within which clients want their deliverables. It is the timeline within which the tasks have to be completed for the next process to begin quickly and efficiently while also retaining the quality. Identifying urgency is important to work on the immediate important projects.  The scales used to measure and define urgency are critical, major, medium, and minor, critical being the most urgent. Calculate Priority Priority is a term that is dependent upon the impact and urgency of a project. Anything with a high impact and high urgency gets a higher priority whereas a low impact and low urgency gets a lower priority. You can measure the impact based on the following aspects:  Business impact Customer experience impact Brand awareness impact New market impact Deadline A high business impact, customer experience impact, brand awareness impact, and new market impact have the highest priority with deadlines being rigid and urgent.  A low business impact (less than targeted potential), customer experience impact (low value), brand awareness impact (rebrands), and new market impact (minimal) weigh the lowest and have a deadline that is made flexible.   Assign Schedule  For the workflow process to operate within the stipulated time and various tasks to be completed in the process, it calls for a fixed schedule. Adhering to this schedule can help deliver the project on time or even faster. With the help of assigning and monitoring the schedule, you can also determine creative processes that take longer to finish and why while working on the same.  Communicate Schedule  Once you have determined the schedule, communicating it to the team members who are responsible for delivering the work, is a necessity. Clear communication and cooperation make the process much more efficient leading to a high-quality output that has been envisioned by your team.   How to Increase Your Creative Workflow Output to Get Better Results There are certain steps that you should follow from the get-go to have a clear idea of the output at the end: Clarification of project scope for a clear-cut vision about the client’s product statement and perception. Having a systematic approach often saves the team from missing out on important details. Use a creative brief template to monitor each phase of growth and provide a better framework that eases the communication process. Assign roles and responsibilities according to every team member’s skillset, thus facilitating healthy team management. Chalk out your creative workflow for a better understanding of the end product. A blueprint streamlines the process making it a smoother ground for communication within the team and with the client as well. Keeping track of creative workflow output right from updating metrics to reviewing creatives will ensure a step-by-step review and documentation of the entire creative workflow. Measuring creative workflow output is a necessity in the digitally expanding world wherein the creative processes are getting much more refined and streamlined in accordance with the requirements. Consistency is key and in order to deliver consistently good work output, it is important to periodically assess, compare and work on areas to see how far you have and can go.  

Creative projects are best executed when they’re divided into phases and task orientedThe reason lies in the simplification and optimization that these phases provide. Else, the creative workflow becomes chaotic, confusing and inefficient quickly.  According to a globaledit analysis, 50% of their enterprise and mid-market clients are interested in optimizing and simplifying their workflows to focus more on the critical objectives. That’s exactly what creating phases does—simplify and optimize.  Here are six phases that’ll streamline your creative workflow and increase its efficiency.  Phase 1 — Project Intake  Traditionally, project intake involves the creation of a brief that identifies the goal and requirements of the project, timeline, budget, and other primary information.  You can optimize this phase by creating brief templates and getting all the key information at the onset of the project. This helps save time in potential sessions where several meetings have to be held while also waiting for the client to agree with the given input. This phase is the most crucial step as it lays the foundation of the workflow. Based on the clarity of the requirements, automating downstream tasks becomes easier and streamlined. From assigning and scheduling tasks to tracking progress, project intake remains the foundation of the following steps.  Automation streamlines the process of gathering feedback and creating briefs. Depending upon the requirements of the requester, dynamic intake forms with flexible fields can be generated. Automated reminders and feedback are directed to a central hub to kickstart projects immediately. Phase 2 — Discovery Discovery sets up the foundation of the project. It involves everything from researching on competitors for product differentiation to identifying the risk areas, mitigating them and setting goals for different phases of the project.  This helps in optimizing the creative workflow process while also enabling the client to know what to expect during each phase of the project.   Phase 3 — Concepting The stage of concepting is not homogenous. Clear-cut objectives for a project do not always lead to the same ideas by two different creatives. It involves a lot of brain-racking, sharing of ideas, sometimes a combination of these ideas that finally lead to the concept that has to be implemented.  With the number of ideas communicated in this phase, a creative workflow management tool like globaledit makes collaboration simpler and easier. It brings all the project materials and creative assets into one place making accessibility and locating these files easier than ever. Being able to comment on drafts also makes it easier for all the stakeholders to be aware of the progress of this phase. Phase 4 — Implementation After conception of the project, the implementation phase begins. But before that, tasks and resources have to be assigned to team members, which is one of the defining factors of project efficiency. How do you accurately set your team structures and responsibilities without any delay?  Again, a creative workflow management software will be your savior here. Project assignment and tracking are not difficult when a central dashboard keeps it organized for you. These solutions also allow you to share content and collaborate on each project layer with granular control, updates, comments, and feedback.  Phase 5 — Production If you’ve optimized the previous four phases, production won’t be too chaotic. You can also leverage creative management tools to make this phase much smoother, faster, and efficient. For example, having metadata assigned to your assets automatically will make the post-production, searchability, and distribution seamless.  From set up and uploading assets to editing and retouching, all the steps of production of assets need to be optimized for maximized ROI.  Phase 6 — Close-out Close-out includes getting feedback from the client and key stakeholders, making the required changes, and handing out the final piece. This phase includes the most grueling part of the workflow: review and approval. How do you ensure that you gather accurate feedback from the client or stakeholders?  There are various tools and creative workflow management software like globaledit that involve a single platform where clients and coworkers can collaboratively comment, vote, and provide feedback on various assets. They can illustrate the changes required with Markup Editor where annotation can be added to one or many assets.  Once the project is completed, you can have an overview of project metrics like time taken for overall approvals and edits, the number of versions of assets per project, and the overall length of the project cycle for future predictions regarding similar projects.  Globaledit helps you in every stage of your creative workflow by serving your unique business needs. Request a demo to find out how.

The value of the digital asset management market in 2020 was estimated to be USD 2,962.2 million. Digital Asset Management or DAM software creates a centralized space where organizations can access their digital assets.  Creative DAM solutions help teams and keep exclusive materials relevant by centrally storing large amounts of digital and branding content which leads to enhanced security, organization, and searchability of these assets. It empowers employees to be equipped with data that truly matters! How Does a DAM Deliver ROI Investment in DAM solutions, just like any other business investment, should reap some profit for your organization. This is assessed by the return on investment (ROI). Getting a higher ROI is based on sharp decisions. The proper implementation of a planned DAM solution delivers a guaranteed ROI. Here are three ways the implementation of a creative DAM solution helps increase the ROI of your business: 1. Reusability of Assets  With the volume of assets produced in companies, it’s common for creatives to face difficulty in finding an asset at a particular time. How do you find the exact file where the model was wearing a red shirt against a white background? Not being able to find the required assets ultimately leads to the unnecessary reproduction of similar assets. So, there are two kinds of losses incurred: expenses of reproduction and the expense of earlier production. DAM solutions help save time and cut the cost to reproduce assets. This also reduces the wastage of already existing assets.  By tracking the usage of digital assets and analyzing them according to the measurements of a campaign helps deduce the true value of an asset. 2. Optimized Search Having your highly paid creatives search for assets manually through the archives is not the best use of their paid time and puts a strain on finances. DAM makes it easier to find digital assets with the help of keywords and metadata which significantly reduces time spent looking for specific files. DAM also helps bring efficiency to the approval process. 3. Compliances and Commercial Rights There are usage terms, intellectual property(IP) rights, and legal regulations for every set of original and unique data. Complying with these usage terms, verifying the usage information, tracking information regarding the usage of your assets are all within the purview of a DAM solution.  It is crucial for a company to invest in DAM solutions that ensure compliance through rights management as it helps in detecting mistakes that can become a heavy dent in the budget and can also land in legal battles. Additional Benefits Of DAM Every penny that goes into business matters. So does any third-party agency cost that can be reduced with the implementation of a creative DAM solution. They help in eliminating or minimizing the cost that goes into the transfer and management of content. It also increases the transparency within an organization.  How to Select a DAM software for the Best ROI? The following factors will help you while finding the perfect creative DAM solutions that work for your organization: The DAM system should be flexible and versatile to achieve effectiveness in enhancing business goals. Diverse metadata can help the searchability of an asset to enhance reusability purposes. Choosing a user-friendly DAM with simple navigation systems and a simple user-friendly interface makes it easier to grasp the tools by employees and improve operational effectiveness. For example, globaledit provides an intuitive user interface that your team members can get accustomed with easily. Your organization can measure the ROI with the reduced admin work and time saved, while you as the leader of your team or your organization can measure the ROI with the reduced frustration and the happiness of your creatives in finding information easily. Increasing your ROI requires keeping up with evolving DAM trends. It is important to work in close coordination with your DAM provider to tailor solutions according to your organizational needs to reap maximum benefits.  Talk to us to find out how DAM solutions can help your unique needs.

Be it for an ecommerce store or a company’s social media, the importance and demand of visual content are increasing exponentially. In 2020, the majority of content marketers said that more than 90% of their content included visuals. This is no surprise since visuals like images and videos play an integral role in driving sales and capturing attention.  However, the increasing demand creates equal challenges like efficiently producing a high volume of assets at a low cost. This is where workflow automation comes in. Automation solutions for photography studios optimize every aspect of production and make it scalable, cost-efficient, and streamlined. You can save up to 30% of yearly revenue with an efficient workflow. Importance of Workflow Automation for Photography Studios Instead of spending days perfecting a shoot, automation can help you wrap it up in minutes. This turnaround time is significant when you’re dealing with a large volume of assets. The faster you create photos, the faster it can hit the market, which means you are making the asset profitable sooner. As a result, photography studios are shifting towards creative workflow management to handle their everyday projects. Here are some important benefits of automating your workflow: Keep a Track of Clients  It can get overwhelming to manage the records of multiple projects with various clients at the same time. A creative workflow management software can relieve you from this pressing issue by taking care of the admin tasks. Most DAM solutions will have a dashboard that shows the active jobs and the progress of the work for all your clients at one glance.  You can pace up your projects in accordance with the deadlines. For example, you can create workspaces and collections per client in a DAM solution like globaledit. This ensures you have all the assets in one place without the risk of losing an important file.  Organize Information  Creative workflow management software and enriched metadata allow you to find assets exactly when you need them. Sorting can be automated based on rules of metadata and other tags.  You can easily organize files by the date of their creation, edited date, asset information, and the like. This allows you to retrieve the information you want just when you need it. Create Consistency Automation provides the opportunity to create repeatable templates. From angles and lighting to camera settings and edits, you can store templates for different types of shoot. This eliminates human error, ensuring consistency in shoots of a certain type.  Not only this, by having a bird’s eye view of all the assets and visual language, you can maintain brand consistency. For example, Amazon has set standards for product images where product photographs must have a white background with 85% of the product appearing in the image. On the other hand, eBay allows a light grey background.  Similarly, image requirements can vary from client to client, and having a depository to maintain the records will make the task much easier. Manage Revisions  and Approvals One of the key issues faced by photo studios is being able to manage edits. How do you avoid confusion and know exactly what to change?  This is where a creative workflow management software significantly helps you. For example,  Markup Editor allows you to add annotations directly on your assets. You can use the brush tool to highlight a section and include comments to minimize any potential confusion.  Automation solutions like file Versioning significantly ease the post-production tasks. You can maintain a record of iterations of an asset, allowing you to compare different versions side-by-side with their own comments, ratings, and markups. Once you have a set of assets reviewed and edited, “Image Approval Gallery makes it easier to “kill” or “approve” assets and stay in constant touch with your creatives. Create Rich Content  With increasing competition, high-quality images are non-negotiables to drive sales. But you can take it up a notch by including rich content like 360-degree images, which show a boost in conversions by nearly 47%.  But the creation of such images is costly and time-consuming with traditional photography. With automation solutions like camera integration with motorized rigs, the output time can be as low as three minutes, making the production faster than ever.  Promote Creativity  Research shows employees spend up to 16 hours per week on admin tasks that could be automated. That’s two full working days.  As the repetitive admin tasks get automated, extra time and energy can be channeled towards exploring creativity. This includes more A/B tests or trying out different methods for the shoot. For example, you save a lot of time with the help of features like Sync that lets you upload assets during the production, as you create them. Not only that, you can customize file extensions as you import them—think about all the time saved in separating raw files from the processed ones.  Above all, workflow automation makes operations simpler and easier to access for all. It helps meet deadlines by cutting production time and creating consistent results. Ready to automate your workflow and make your production more efficient? Request a demo with us to learn how we can help.

Over 90% of marketers say that the majority of their projects don’t move along efficiently during the content creation process. This data proves the need for an efficient creative workflow in organizations.  Meeting deadlines with quality and creativity intact is only possible in a robust and streamlined system. That’s exactly what creative workflow management solutions help in creating. From role assignment to review and approval—a creative project management system keeps creative workflows on track. It sets up responsibilities and steers the work in a direction that helps save time and money.  How Is Creative Workflow Being Adopted? The workflow automation industry is expected to reach $18.45 billion by 2023, which points to the rapid adoption of the system. Creative workflow management solutions are being implemented across various industries. Few examples include: Branding and advertising agencies Digital creative agencies Graphic designing firms Enterprise in-house agencies App development companies According to a report, 66% of project managers have expressed their intentions of using workflow management tools extensively given adequate support from their organizations.  Benefits of Creative Workflow Management Solutions Creative workflow management solutions help project management and creativity to coexist.  Implement in the Entire Creative Process  Do you have to use a different tool to track time and another for review and approval? Creative workflow management solutions are built specifically for the creative process and help throughout the lifecycle of a creative asset. Here’s how:  Definition and ideation: According to a report by Project Management Institute, 37% of projects fail due to the lack of clearly defined objectives. Creative asset management solutions help set initial goals clearly, which in turn, helps in assigning responsibilities and tracking progress. Creation: During the creation process, creative project management tools promote collaboration. From managing files to tracking time, these tools offer a 360-degree approach. Review and approval: This can be the most time-consuming step of the creative workflow without a system in place. With review and approval tools and the ability to comment, you get to receive feedback in an organized manner and respond accordingly.  Reduces Cost  Workflows with defined goals and assigned responsibilities boost productivity, which reduces additional costs by sticking to the stipulated budget and avoiding budget overruns. With a creative project management tool, 43% more projects are completed within budget. Project planning becomes a smooth sail as workflow management software can help predict deadlines with the help of AI, including constraints like cost, schedule, and scope. Establishes an Effective Communication System Poor communication not only hampers the quality of work and the time taken to meet deadlines, but it also costs businesses a tremendous amount of money. According to a study, companies with over 100,000 employees have faced losses of over $62 million due to poor communication.  With an efficient management solution, you facilitate effective communication among the team that helps maintain transparency, keeps team members organized, and boosts productivity. It ensures that everything “flows” smoothly, thus avoiding confusion and chaos while working. Encourages Feedback A management tool not only invites feedback from the team but also allows your clients to input their requests directly into the project database themselves. This leaves no room for confusion as the requests are recorded exactly as envisioned. Creative operations can benefit to a great extent from creative workflow management solutions. The tools facilitate success while narrowing your goals and focus, hence improving the rate of success as observed by major companies who adopted these tools.  Request a demo to accelerate your creative workflow with us.

Consistent branding builds trust and authenticity. With inconsistency, your customers get confused and lose trust in your brand. 18.6% of companies say that inconsistent branding damages brand credibility. This becomes significant when up to 80% of customers find authenticity to be an important factor when trusting the brand.  Not only that, but organizations also expect a 33% increase in revenue with consistent branding.  However, with multiple teams creating assets for your company, you run the risk of losing consistent branding. Employees might develop alternate logos, colors, photography treatments, or tone of voice that contributes to the loss of consistency over time.  How to Maintain Branding During a Creative Production? Messy creative workflows can easily make branding inconsistent. Here are five ways to take control of your branding: 1. Create Brand Guidelines A brand style guide, or brand guidelines, is a document that outlines rules regarding your branding elements. It contains your strategies, brand mission, value proposition, tone of voice, logo, color palette, fonts, photography treatment, media formatting, photography and graphic styles.  But only creating a brand guide is not enough. 95% of organizations have brand guidelines, but only one-fourth of them enforce them consistently. Make sure you distribute the brand guidelines throughout the organization and train employees to use them properly.  Another benefit of a brand guide is the ability to share it with third-party vendors, freelancers, or consultants who create assets for your brands. As a result, you receive content aligned with your brand. 2. Create Templates Creating every asset from scratch wastes an excessive amount of time. Plus, it exposes your brand to the risk of having altered branding.  Templates can make content creation as easy as drag-and-drop for your team and keep branding consistent. For example, you can use templates for your social media graphics or business cards.  In addition, using templates allows you to create and publish content faster, boosting the productivity of your creative workflow. Creating recurring content becomes a breeze instead of a hassle. 3. Have a Centralized Storage Location Inconsistent branding is created overnight. It’s the result of several loose threads.  Imagine a team member unable to find brand collateral because it’s buried under hundreds of files. They would have to create another from scratch. And such instances keep altering the branding slightly.  Even when you’ve created templates and guidelines, storing them properly in a central location where employees can access them is crucial. You can use a digital asset management system (DAM) for this purpose. DAM solutions make it easy and quicker for teams to store and find creative assets. You can also distribute updated guidelines and templates throughout the teams with a DAM. This avoids miscommunication and keeps everyone on the same page—a simple way to help the production team stay brand compliant. 4. Set up an Approval Process An approval process is important to ensure your assets have the needed branding. But approval time can be one of the major bottlenecks of creative production. Only 8% of marketers say the majority of their projects move along efficiently.  To avoid that, set up an approval process where everyone can collaborate easily which saves everyone’s time. An efficient approval process will avoid delays and help publish content faster, while also ensuring the branding is in place.  A creative asset management system like globaledit can come in handy here. It makes the approval process easier for creative teams by allowing convenient commenting and ratings on assets. 5. Audit Your Brand Regularly Use your brand guidelines to audit your branded assets like webpage, social media posts, brochures, letterheads, business cards regularly. Every brand touchpoint should be examined from time to time to make sure things are on the right track. This can’t be ignored since 60% of millennials expect a consistent brand experience. Having branding in control during creative production ensures a consistent branding of your organization. This, in turn, maintains customer trust and facilitates the internal teams, as well. Employees have clarity on the type of assets they need to create which saves time in approval. Request a demo with us to help you take control of your branding.

A Product Information Management system or PIM system is a process of gathering and distributing the specifications, descriptions, and other information of a product needed to sell and market them. The platform assists brands in preparing product listings across a range of distribution channels, including e-commerce sites like Amazon and eBay, as well as local stores and dealers. Metadata tagging improves the PIM system by supporting your creative asset management. Access to Product Information helps improve metadata tagging because it leads to smarter assets. Leveraging product information metadata such as SKU, style number and unique ids allow you to standardize file naming and eliminate human error. When you tag your assets or standardize filenames the result is more searchability and accessibility. This can happen within your Creative Workflow System, DAM or Marketing Tools. Why Do You Need to Integrate Metadata with PIM System Today? Following the pandemic, online retail sales increased by over 32% in 2020. Earlier, buyers used to rely on physical product catalogs and in-shop purchases. Today, as the world is shifting online, buyers gain the same product information online. Therefore, there’s an increased competition for attention, leading to the production of a massive chunk of digital content. Moreover, according to a Google Consumer Survey, 53% of online shoppers are inspired by images to make a purchase. Hence, your creative assets like images, videos, and social media content should be taken extra care of as they shape your brand identity. With creative DAM solutions, you’ll be able to manage your creative asset needs better. Here are some bottlenecks of a PIM system that metadata solves:   No Human Error  The most accurate information about a product image is available during the production stage. Product characteristics and attributes like color, model number, and size can be stored with metadata instead of getting lost in the further process. Each product has many product SKUs having unique attributes and metadata. This ensures that the information received is highly detailed and specific.  On the other hand, if the images are manually tagged post-production, human errors, such as mistagging, duplicate tagging, typing errors, are common. Several organizations manage the product information on spreadsheets or platforms made for technical staff, which often doesn’t sit well with the marketing systems.  That is mainly due to the people implementing manual tagging lacking the level of detail and the production team’s expertise. According to Professor Raymond R. Panko’s research, the probability of human error in manual data entry is between 18-40%. With cutting-edge AI doing this task for you, the errors are reduced, time is utilized better, and the data is more accurate and reliable. Eliminate Wrong Information While PIM helps you organize data, it can get overwhelming when working with a number of SKUs. But with custom metadata schemas, you can quickly identify and differentiate variants. Customers are increasingly relying on digital media for their purchases. In fact, 85% of millennials make a purchase after watching a video. This makes accurate information about your digital assets like images and videos extremely valuable for your sales.  For example, on social media, if you get a customer inquiry for a specific product shown in an image, and you are not able to give the correct product information like color and size, you stand a high chance of losing a potential customer.  With metadata, you can easily retrieve such information through the product image metadata. For instance, if you are advertising an image for the dress but the buyer is interested in the shoes of the model, you can easily find that information with its metadata instead of guessing and giving wrong information. In a competitive digital marketplace, the visual assets accompanying a product listing are critical in acquiring new customers and retaining existing customers. A PIM system helps in getting your products to markets, while a DAM attaches the right product attributes to the product imagery. As more people turn to online shopping, rapidly building online sales channels aided by a PIM system integrated with a creative workflow management system like globaledit will give you a competitive advantage. Request a demo to improve your project management systems to boost your sales.

Register here! globaledit is hosting a 3-part webinar series to discuss all things Workflow Automation from the Creative Operations perspective. The second part of the series includes speaker David Iscove, Creative Technology Practice Lead at Cella and Brian Gavin, President at globaledit.  The webinar will speak to how workflow automation improves creative operation throughout a production. Session 2: Workflow Automation and Creative Operations Wednesday, August 18 – 10AM PDT / 1PM EDT / 6PM BST / 7PM CEST Bottlenecks within Creative Operations Integrated campaign management of Creative Operations Implementing technology to trigger workflow automation How integrations can fuel workflow automation Importance of including rule exceptions Speakers: David Iscove, Creative Technology Practice Lead, Cella Brian Gavin, President, globaledit

With the plethora of social media channels, brands are under pressure to produce fresh content. Top brands must have enough content to be omnipresent on all channels and mediums. The demand for more content and hyper-sensitivity of “time-to-site” has incentivized brands to utilize a variety of technology including Creative Workflow Management platforms. There are a number of ways through which globaledit’s Creative Workflow Management platform removes manual, disconnected obstacles commonly found in creative production. Get Automated  Whether creative workflow automation occurs within tasks themselves or in the way systems communicate with each other, having automations in place allows brands to have quicker production time. When creative workflows are automated, Creative teams are able to churn out content faster. Getting started with automated creative workflows requires a few simple steps: identify the business logic that needs to be automated, and which systems need to communicate with one another. From there, globaledit’s prebuilt workflow automation recipes provide step-by-step automations, or custom integrations can be used to link proprietary workflows.  Remove Redundant Tasks  Automating Creative Production minimizes redundant tasks. With automation, a creative team is able to spend more time on high-value creative work instead of routine administrative tasks. Collaboration is more efficient, with fast hand-offs and requests that contain all the context necessary for work to begin. Teams avoid the frustrating cycle of rework and revisions due to miscommunications.  Collaboration is easily facilitated within globaledit. Stakeholders can create projects to ensure each team member has the correct assignments, comments and @mentions are used for transparent communication, and globaledit SYNC automates assets into proper folder structures so that no work ever needs to be repeated.  No More Human Error With automation, creative production is standardized, streamlined, and automatically assigned to the appropriate party. No important details are miscommunicated, left out, or overlooked. Processes and policies are consistent, fewer tasks fall through the cracks, and everyone is clear on responsibilities and deadlines. According to Oracle, 31% of businesses have fully automated at least one key function that leads to time savings and increased productivity.  Request a demo to find out how to churn out quality content more efficiently.

Ahead of Independence Day and the official nod to summer here in the States, globaledit wants to recognize the amazing adaptation our creative and marketing team members have undergone over the last year. Working remotely has a whole new meaning. Not only does remote work now allow our Industry to function autonomously but this has spurred a revolution across content creators to think differently. At this point, working from home is a part of our DNA; hard-drives are mailed to home, VPN access to servers is at an all time high and garages are day rental studios. There is still more to make this entire process more efficient. As a creative or marketing team, working from home there remains challenges with efficiency due to aging or disparate technologies. Luckily, there’s a solution to collaborating while being remote (especially in the summer months when all you really want to do is enjoy the weather). Get Full Content Visibility With globaledit, the entire creative team can have access to an entire asset library in an instant. Rather than sifting through endless assets trying to find the correct one, globaledit’s metadata enrichment can find assets in seconds. Globaledit can also act as a DAM, a repository for an organizations entire asset library. This allows for a decrease in the time spent searching for assets and instead, be able to find the right assets every time. Communicate Effectively  Projects, comments, and @mentions are just a few tools globaledit offers to help creatives communicate with one another. Globaledit allows for communicate within the platform, so there is no need to toggle between email, Slack, or any other platform. There is visibility of stakeholder needs every step of the way. Communication between a creative team is made easy with globaledit because it facilitates collaboration.  Save Hours of Time  Globaledit offers integrations with an organizations entire tech stack. Integrations and creative workflow automation can shave hours of time off of creative workflow. Automating workflow reduces redundant tasks, human error, and mismanagement of time. While working remotely, allowing these integrations to take over manual tasks will make it easier to prioritize tasks that need attention.  Have Team Transparency  The looming problem about working remote is that a single team isn’t collaborating face-to-face anymore. However, that same transparency can be achieved with globaledit tools such as Markup Editor, which allows a stakeholder to leave notes on an assets for a retoucher, Projects, which create assignments for specific team members, and Approval Galleries, which allow for a full view of every assets stage in production. Globaledit makes collaboration easy and more efficient when working remotely. Book a demo today.

Register here! globaledit is launching a 3-part webinar series to discuss all things Workflow Automation. The first part of the series includes speaker Rana Dutt, Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services and Brian Gavin, President at globaledit.  The webinar aims to understand how workflow automation has revolutionized the creative industry and evolved over the years. Session 1: What is the History of Workflow Automation and How Can it Help you Scale?  Wednesday, August 4 – 10AM PDT / 1PM EDT / 6PM BST / 7PM CEST What has cloud done for workflow automation? How has workflow automation matured over the years? How are we seeing tech solve ground level challenges? How are the workflows changing with the rise of tech? Speakers: Rana Dutt, Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services Brian Gavin, President, globaledit

Visibility is vital for any brand, and getting yours in front of as many eyes as possible regularly can be the key to increased sales and brand loyalty. Social media has developed into an unrivaled marketing tool. However, with so many platforms, which require varying types of content, how do marketers find enough time to keep all their accounts ticking over while ensuring their campaigns are effective? Workflow automation can help social media marketing by taking some of the high-volume tasks out of the marketer’s hands and allow them to focus more on engagement and content production. Automation allows them to reach a larger audience, fast and more consistently. This can considerably increase ROI and free up marketers for more value-added tasks. Saving time and making money Automating social media marketing can help maintain brand visibility and regularly updated profiles will give users a positive image of your brand. It also helps to save time which can be devoted to other areas of marketing.  Automated social media can save more than six hours a week, which is nearly a whole day’s work. With that time, a marketer can work on strategy or concentrate on customer engagement. And as the old adage declares that time is money, introducing automation into your social media marketing strategy can prove profitable. Of companies that have implemented automation in social media, 75% of them report seeing an increase in ROI within a year. Go where the action is With 2.6 billion users around the world, it’s hard to underestimate the reach of Facebook. The world’s most popular social media platform is fertile ground for marketers. It is primarily helpful in raising brand awareness and advertising.  It can also be used to interact with customers and, with automation, marketers can increase this engagement. They can use social software to schedule posts and curate content, meaning they are getting their brand out there and having the time to spend engaging directly with customers. While it is the most popular platform, Facebook is not the only one, and it is vital that marketers must maintain a presence across all platforms. It is estimated that active users of Instagram in the US will exceed 120 million by 2003.  Look and listen Using automation not only allows you to schedule posts so that you don’t have to upload them to a range of different platforms manually, but it can also help you keep tabs on how you are performing. Social listening tools allow you to check mentions of your brand across various platforms. More importantly, you will understand what people are saying and how positively or negatively your brand is perceived.  Automation can help hone in on areas that require attention. Where your brand experiences negative mentions, it can allow you to engage quickly and resolve the issue. Listening tools will also help you get a handle on competitors’ performance and other brands in the same sector.  Integrating your DAM with social media marketing A digital asset management system (DAM) that stores your assets for distribution can help with seamless social media marketing automation. You can set up automation tools to send data from your DAM to your social media accounts or your content management system (CMS), informing content creation. Although a DAM does not have an engagement platform, you can use it to store versions of assets, quickly find and distribute the creative you need, and build a cadence for future distribution.  Automation for social media marketing helps boost brand awareness without the laborious task of uploading content to multiple platforms. You can get your message out quickly and effectively, leaving you with the time to spend seeing where and how it lands.  

Customers can now integrate their entire technical stack to create workflow automation recipes saving time and money on their creative workflow. Globaledit the leader in Creative Workflow Management solutions, is disrupting how creative teams produce and distribute content. Globaledit already solves the challenges in producing high quality visual assets at scale all from the cloud. In 2020 globaledit launched its cloud based Digital Asset Management platform & took big steps into solving Project Management for Creatives & Marketers focused on producing visual Assets. Now, the company is providing a way for Creative and Marketing teams to automate essential steps throughout the entire creative & marketing workflow. Globaledit is introducing its Marketplace and, Custom Integrations and Workflow Automation Recipes to optimize your workflow through the complete lifecycle of an asset, ingest to distribution. According to analysis done by globaledit on its enterprise and mid-market clients there is a need for automation to solve the pressures of today’s demand. 50% of all users have expressed interest in the ability to simplify workflows & to focus more time on critical objectives. Globaledit strives to provide clients with a Digital Asset Management platform that optimizes their creative workflow. Now, with this release, globaledit has taken the vast feature set it already offers, and has created workflow recipes and integrations to aid any organization in creating an optimized workflow. Globaledit’s Marketplace will allow organizations to choose from hundreds of the most popular apps that will natively integrate with globaledit. Organizations can choose what part of their creative or marketing process they want or need to automate and curate integrations accordingly. Integrations can be pre-built with workflow automation recipes or have custom triggers and actions. Globaledit’s team will integrate these apps for your organization so there is no extra development work on the client’s behalf. Organizations can choose from apps across the entire creative ecosystem. including project management, product such as Slack, Marketo, Adobe, Asana, MailChimp, and many more.  Globaledit will now also offer access to APIs (Application Programming Interface) that allow for proprietary programs to communicate with one another as well as with globaledit. APIs will allow developers to quickly and easily integrate with a Project Management System, a Content Management System, an Email Automation System, a Digital Asset Management system or any other system an organization needs for their creative workflow.  Globaledit’s Workflow Automation Recipes will allow users to create workflows based on their own business logic. Each step of production your creative team takes can be mapped out based on pre-written automations that will make your workflow more efficient. Our workflow automation recipes automate bottlenecks within your production processes and demonstrate how your entire technology stack can communicate with each other. Globaledit will also be releases new iteration of existing features:  Sync 2.0 The upcoming iteration of globaledit’s Sync tool will now allow users to automatically sync new versions of an asset, upload attachments, and setup the application to self update with new versions. Metadata Search This updated feature set will allow users to search for assets via metadata with expandable search terms, faster results, and asset recommendations. About globaledit Globaledit is the leading cloud-based SaaS application leveraged by brands, agencies and studios to manage high volume photo & video content creation and delivery. As a Creative Asset Management solution, globaledit solves for asset management, collaboration and workflow within one tool. Assets move from the point of capture, editing, retouching, approvals and distribution seamlessly, thereby reducing production costs and improving time to market. Learn more about our products here: Creative Workflow Management Predictions for 2021

After one of the most unpredictable years in living memory, 2021 looks to be the year when we learn many lessons from the unprecedented shifts in technology in 2020. Creative workflow management systems got stress-tested like never before in the year the Covid-19 pandemic turned the world on its head. Although the next 12 months could see a return to normality, some stitched-together solutions from 2020 could become part of the furniture this year. Work from home makes a centralized asset hub more important Few people could have predicted that for many of us our homes would become our offices at the start of 2020. Working from home wasn’t invented in 2020, and it didn’t take a global pandemic for the notion of some work-life balance to trigger a relocation to a more homey setting. However, it will be forever remembered as the year when a huge chunk of people suddenly had to get to grips with the limits of their home broadband as well as Zoom meetings, Slack chats and a host of other apps and forms of communication. Even after the virus will be banished, though, the trend towards work-from-home looks set to continue, which is why 2021 will be a big year for Digital Asset Management (DAM). Team members on any particular project could be scattered across a dozen different locations, but that won’t change the fact they will need access to the same creative assets. Creative DAM acts as a central hub for all assets required for creative production. This year will improve many DAM systems’ functionalities to take into account more permanent remote working arrangements.  Making files, dates and creative assets more accessible no matter where a team member is will be key in 2021. Using DAM for brand consistency Although the trend towards online shopping and e-commerce was very much on an upward trend before 2020, the pandemic confined most people to their homes, with a large part of their purchases being made online.  Most significantly, the uptake rate in online grocery shopping accelerated in 2020, and studies show that this could be a tipping point for e-commerce. Previous online grocery shopping skeptics have had a taste of it in 2020 and liked it, meaning 2021 looks set to be the year when those abnormal rates start to become the norm. And with increased commerce online comes the need for more digital marketing across the many different platforms that find themselves in front of consumers’ eyes daily. DAM will play a huge role in omni-channel marketing this year as brands try to grab consumers’ attention wherever they are looking. A DAM allows marketers to create different content for relevant platforms that retain consistent brand identity with a centralized source of assets such as logos and branding. Greater reliance on automation for creative workflow DAM helps you find relevant assets at the touch of a button. Still, given that creatives might need to use that asset in several different programs, it must be compatible with the various platforms it gets used on. To do this, it requires metadata and tags be added, which will allow for it to be repurposed for each particular use. Automating this process is essential to the smooth running of creative workflows, but studies show that only 6% of users of DAM systems are on board with AI. That gives enormous scope for an increase in reliance on automation in 2021. Integration for greater efficiency With an increasing number of SaaS players, it is more important than ever that whatever creative software you use, it is compatible with other platforms.  Software integration is crucial to an efficient, creative workflow. While software purchases should be carefully considered and weighed up, this year could also see companies putting significant stock in plug-ins and APIs. This will make software investment much more valuable if users know that content can be created and shared seamlessly across different programs and platforms. While 2020 may be a cautionary tale for making predictions, it seems that the many ways we were forced to adapt to new ways of working quickly have encouraged us for what’s to come next. Many of the last 12 months’ developments were already in the pipeline and had been accelerated by outside events. In 2021 comapnies should adapt trends which have made workflow management more efficient and sustainable.

You may know that old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Well, when it comes to processing, editing and sharing images using your software of choice, storing the metadata in an XMP file ensures those “thousand words” aren’t lost. If you frequently work with RAW images, you’ll know that there can be a varying amount of tweaks and retouches involved. Keeping track of all these changes is the job of the XMP file. XMP files allow you to transfer your image metadata, ratings, tags, keywords, geolocation, and other attributes about the image outside of the actual JPG, CR2, or other file. The XMP format is a standard way of recording these data so that other programs can carry all of the additional data you added to your images. An XMP file acts as a roadmap for the editing process of a RAW image. This means that when the image file is shared in another application that is different from the one it originated in, the XMP file will allow it to be read.  Often an XMP file is known as a “sidecar” file, meaning it travels alongside the RAW file to make sure that all the metadata is retained through editing and sharing.  This is especially beneficial when files are shared across different applications. For example, if a RAW file is edited in Lightroom, those changes are recorded in the XMP file. If the image is then opened with Photoshop or Bridge, the XMP file means that the original edits are not lost and the image appears as intended by the creator. Compatibility can be a major stumbling block when sharing image files, therefore, storing metadata on an XMP file is one way around this. Another benefit of using XMP files is that it allows you to store important information about an image which will follow it through a series of edits, often involving multiple applications. You can create the RAW file in your chosen application, add metadata to it such as geo-tagging and file info on who or what is in the image and assign it to a particular category. Storing that information in an XMP file will make sure that all that information follows the image file wherever it goes, making filing and organizing your images much easier. Most creative work doesn’t live in a single piece of software. You might start by capturing images in Capture One. There you might do your quick selects, add job information, and other relevant data. Next, you might organize the files using Adobe Bridge. From there, you might pass the RAWs off to a retoucher and get back a finished TIFF file. When you to import this into your DAM – the TIFF file may no longer contain the job information, photographer, talent, or the other metadata you meticulously added earlier. This is where XMP files save the day — when you import them into your DAM, your software can read the metadata and append all of the missing information to the asset.

You can’t rush the creative process, we’re often told. Whether it’s crafting content, finessing a photo or imagining the right image, time needs to be taken.  However, while quality is key in any creative project, it’s equally vital to keep on top of all aspects of the process to complete it on time and on budget. Sure, the creative process can’t be rushed, but that doesn’t mean missing deadlines due to poor project management. The best way to do this is with a reliable project management system. This will allow you to track tasks, share creative assets and conduct real-time reviews on what’s working and what isn’t. Keep Things Flowing Effective creative workflow management is essential to the formation and completion of any project. Bringing creatives and marketers together to focus on a defined goal can be a time-consuming process. However, with a project management system,  there is a more efficient flow of resources, ideas and communication. All members of the teams can get an overview of what is happening, from inception to delivery. Creative workflow management means everyone can contribute ideas and review progress as the project is going on. It cuts out the need for various proofs to be sent back and forth for approval and sign-off. That whole process can take place in real-time, with revisions able to be completed much quicker. Creative workflow management can allow you to set deadlines for projects and individual tasks within those projects. You can assign tasks to team members and track their progress to make sure everything is on schedule. Closer Collaboration The collaborative aspect of a project management system is one of its most significant selling points. Not only does it allow multiple inputs into a project, but it also allows for creative assets to be shared and accessed more easily.  Digital asset management (DAM) allows for a centralized store of assets, such as images, artwork, graphic files and video footage, or just about anything which can be used in a creative project. An innovative digital asset management solution will allow that library of assets to be made available to all creatives on a team, whether working remotely or in an office setting.   Creative asset management allows for closer collaboration and sharing of ideas. Increased Integration From a purely practical point of view, having countless different applications from a range of various providers can lead to a bumpy ride for your project.  Downloading individual apps can be expensive for a start, and there’s no guarantee that they will work smoothly together. Given that the creative projects involve a range of different apps such as photography software, illustration and design platforms and video editing suites, it’s essential to have a project management system that will allow them all to seamlessly integrate. Increased Revenue   A steady workflow, greater collaboration and increased integration can contribute to the quicker completion of a project. However, because creative project managers can constantly review a project, increased speed does not mean decreased quality. A project management system allows for a significant volume of projects to be completed and approved by stakeholders. Real-time reviews and revisions mean you can get feedback from stakeholders along the way to make sure you are delivering to the brief. This not only saves on time but means you can deliver the project on budget and to the required specifications. That allows you to take on more projects, safe in the knowledge you can provide and generate more revenue. 

If 2020 has taught us anything it is that we should be wary of making predictions. However, just as everyone’s plans went south, new living spaces were etched out online thanks to a global pandemic. While grounded at home, reaching out online became one of the many things that got branded with the label ‘the new normal.’ To call last year unpredictable may have been an understatement, but it did map out some paths for what to expect in the journey ahead. We relied more than ever on technology, and work was no exception. So what do the next 12 months hold for creative management? Let’s discuss. Normalization of Creative Workflow While Working Remotely Working remotely in 2020 required a lot of learning on the job for people from all walks of life, and many of the solutions which were stumbled upon were merely a Band-Aid.  Even though digital technology played a huge role in more centrally-based integrated creative environments, the move to remote working still required new solutions to be found, and tweaking of creative asset management tools helped keep maintain creative workflows.  Collaborative creative workflows that took root in 2020 will need to blossom in 2021 as working remotely became more normalized, even post-pandemic. Cloud-based Solutions Will Be Key Remote collaboration has strengthened the need for creative DAM solutions, which has elevated the importance of cloud-based solutions. Having members of the same teams spread out int different locations needn’t be a spoke in the creative wheel.  Cloud-based DAM can give everyone the same access to the resources required for any given project, ensuring that projects run smoothly despite the distance. Creative Management Will Be Grounded In Technology  Technology will arguably play an even greater role in creative management in 2021. Many creative PMs have relied heavily on digital management platforms in the past, and there will be a rush to seek out more reliable tools this year. One-stop-shops like Adobe Creative Suite will be increasingly important as the need to integrate various aspects of the creative process becomes stronger. PMs will be looking for digital asset management and collaboration tools that can help streamline projects. Tools that can integrate with photography software and DAM systems will be in demand. Creative Processes Will Become Mainly Digital  2020 was the year of the virtual tour. When galleries were closed to the public, new ways were found to bring the experience to them. Visitors could immerse themselves in creativity from the safety of their own homes. This year, creative processes themselves will become predominantly digital. From preparation and incubation right through to evaluation, creative management platforms mean every stage in the creative process can be digitized. Platforms with built-in reporting tools can give users insight and real-time reports on creative projects, giving them a greater understanding of what’s going on and what tweaks need to be made. Creative Marketing Will Be Driving Revenue  Marketing is increasingly being seen as part of the creative process, and the best revenue can be derived from a creative approach to digital marketing. Marketing teams are increasingly looking at ways to develop creative content to be aimed at consumers whenever they spend time online. This has led many digital marketers to rely on automation to help scale up creative content and develop greater reach. With the pandemic, many more people are ‘living’ online these days so, becoming more creative with digital marketing will be even more important. What are your priorities for 2021 and how is technology going to empower your processes? Learn more about our products here: How to Make the Most of Your Creative Workflow or Globaledit Introduces Creative Workflow Features Focused on Automation

What is a PIM? PIM stands for Product Information Management, a system that manages your content for marketing and selling purposes. PIM systems are typically used for e-commerce businesses, and for good reason. A PIM can store all the data of your e-commerce company from SKUs, to product images, and descriptions of items.  The e-commerce industry is growing rapidly, especially in these unprecedented times. Because shopping and retail have shifted more online, it’s imperative that businesses that want to grow to scale have a PIM to manage their daily needs.  Why is having a Product Information Management (PIM) system important? Think about what goes into selling a physical product online. If you’re buying an electronic, you’re going to want the details of the year, make, model, reviews, photos, etc. On the contrary if you’re buying clothing you’re going to want to know the material/fabric used, size, color, etc. Keeping track of all of these things to make sure the consumer is getting the best possible description of a product is difficult; nearly impossible if the product is sold in different languages, through different vendors, or in different variations.  That’s where a PIM system comes in. A PIM can help with sales organization, up your revenue, and make sure the right products are being shown to the right potential customers. A PIM can even go as far as cross-selling and up-selling products when a customer is already interested in something. It’s the ideal way to keep track of products and increase conversion.  Does a PIM help with efficiency? The traditional way an e-commerce business keeps track of their inventory/product is through spreadsheets. Numerous spreadsheets spread across departments show how much a specific item sells, the details of the item, even the previous conversions. Unfortunately, this takes endless hours and manpower to keep track of these spreadsheets.  With a PIM system in place, a company can organize sales information and have classification of products. The PIM system will internalize all of the information and give your business a workable solution for understanding your inventory and sales. It also helps when working with creative assets to help sell your products.  How does a PIM system work with a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system? When you consider everything that goes into an e-commerce company, the most important thing is the creative assets. No product sells without images. Hence, you need a DAM to be able to support your creative asset needs. For example, if you have a PIM system and join that with a DAM system like globaledit you will be able to facilitate a workflow that is coherent and multifaceted. Using globaledit as a DAM will enable you to store creative assets that feed into your PIM (and vice versa), you’ll be able to easily search for images via custom metadata schemas, edit, comment, and share on images, and even create versions of the best images that will lead to conversions. Having a DAM system is essential when using a PIM system because they work together to create an efficient and effective workflow. Learn more about our products here: Creative operations process makes perfect or New Webinar! Ramping Up your eCommerce Production Workflow

Cloud Asset Management, in its simplest form, is managing what’s stored in the cloud as it pertains to your business. For example, if your company has a creative sector (marketers, retouchers, digital asset managers, etc.) they can store assets within globaledit. In this case, since globaledit runs on cloud governance, your Cloud Asset Management (CAM) system for your creative assets would be globaledit. Having Cloud Asset Management for your business ensures that processes run smoothly and securely within the cloud infrastructure. Is there value in a Cloud Asset Management system? In short, yes. Having Cloud Asset Management ensures that you have visibility and control over all of your assets. Let’s say your creative assets were stored within globaledit, you would be able to use the integrations of the software to control your assets from ingestion to distribution. This provides you with unparalleled control over what those assets are being used for. What are the benefits? The first thing to consider when looking at Cloud Asset Management is automation. The process of asset discovery and inventory of assets is automated because there is one source of truth for all of those assets. With Cloud Asset Management, you will no longer have to spend endless hours looking through data. Instead, your business is becoming self-serving in a sense because you’re feeding the data you need into the system. Another important part of Cloud Asset Management is accuracy. If we’re talking about creative assets, you’re essentially removing human error when searching for, editing, commenting, or rating a visual. The key here is that there’s visibility across the system. Asset accuracy ensures the optimization of your business by taking the guesswork out of data. Lastly, a Cloud Asset Management system ensures your assets security. Cloud Asset Management systems allow your business to see potential risks to your cloud infrastructure. That way, you can act before the threat occurs, make sure your company’s assets are always safe.

Omni-Channel Marketing. It’s a term we’ve all heard over and over again. But really, what is omni-channel marketing? How will it help your brand? How do you put omni-channel marketing to use properly?  Those are all questions we’ll be answering here to help you understand how to grow your business.  What is Omni-Channel Marketing? We’re connected to our devices: phones, tablets, laptops, etc. Why? Because the internet is a place where things are constantly changing, evolving, and growing in order to help user experience. Bottom line is, the more convenient something is for the user, the more likely they are to come back. Hence, omni-channel marketing. Make the user experience so seamless from point A to point B that they can help but come back to experience it over and over again.  Omni-Channel Marketing is a solution that looks at the entirety of your brand rather than just mobile, desktop, and tablet experiences. It looks at the transition between platforms and how a user moves from one place to the next. More than Omni-Channel Marketing, we’re looking to create an Omni-Channel experience.  How can you create an Omni-Channel Marketing Experience? Essentially an Omni-Channel Marketing Experience is how you market, sell, and help customers. It’s an integrated experience, meaning no matter where the customer is, the experience is the same. So, when your marketing, the messaging, imagery, and branding need to be the same across the board. When engaging in an Omni-Channel Marketing Experience, your social media, website, all allow for interaction with the company.  For example, let’s say a potential customer sees a social media post that peeks their interest. That customer should be able to be routing directly onto the website where the experience would be the same. They would receive the same messaging, same visual branding that engaged them in the first place, same goals and objectives. The channels all work together to hook the customer.  To build a truly successful Omni-Channel Marketing Experience you need to connect your product, marketing, and customer success.  Omni-Channel Marketing Strategy: Content “Content is King.” We’ve heard that time and time again. But, it’s true. Content is the first thing a potential customer sees. You want your audience to understand your message first and foremost. What does your company do? How can they help? How can your company create a good experience for them? These are all important points that content marketers want to tell their audience.  Customer Most importantly, you have to have a deep understanding of your audience. If you’re trying your hand at Omni-Channel Marketing, you have to know who you’re marketing to. Learn everything there is to know about your potential customer. What do they search for? What do they like? What do they buy? Once you know your customer, you can gear your content specifically towards them.  Integration As mentioned, all Omni-Channel Marketing needs to work together. You need to make sure all of your systems work together to give the customer a seamless experience. Making sure your technology stack works together is key.

globaledit, the leader in Creative Asset Management solutions, is introducing the next generation of its Digital Asset Management platform, a new iteration aimed to solve the challenges in producing high-quality visual assets at scale all from the cloud. The launch of globaledit’s new software includes new capabilities added to the platform that further enable creative teams to collaborate, communicate and execute while minimizing production timelines and maximizing output. globaledit strives to provide enterprise clients with a Digital Asset Management platform that optimizes their creative workflow. Now, with this release, globaledit can take a product that has already been successful for these clients and make it even better. “This is why globaledit exists. We build software that makes it easy for any creative to manage and navigate the production and distribution complexities,” said Brian Gavin, President of globaledit. As enterprise companies identify the need to scale creative, asset management and marketing functions, globaledit is pivoting with the times to advance necessary technologies. This next-generation release allows organizations to innovate their workflow with a tool that’s dynamic & immediately customizable. globaledit is currently utilized by the world’s top-tier companies in media, entertainment, retail, eCommerce and many others in order to have one source of truth for all of their creative assets. “It is ideal for team communication and collaboration both in office and remotely,” globaledit’s Vice President of Product, Mansoor Basha, said. “In the fast-evolving, new dynamic of creative production, where a lot of remote work is done, the new release allows for techs, creative directors, art directors, talents and agents to collaboratively work effectively and efficiently.” globaledit promotes through its feature functionality the ability to import every creative asset, from all stages, streamlining how users communicate with their teams through ratings, comments, permissions, markups using the built-in markup editor, comparing different versions of a single asset, and searching for assets using metadata that makes assets readily available. All of the existing features live on the backbone of secure cloud-based governance that ensures your assets are safe, always. Now, globaledit is aiming to take the existing platform that allows enterprise organizations to thrive and doubling down by making it even more intuitive and collaborative. How globaledit’s new release will help organizations across industries: Watermarks: globaledit customers now have a vastly improved watermarking process which permits additions of watermarks to all of their creative assets based on specific customizations such as size, opacity, logos, usernames, and even patterns of the watermarks. Once set up it can be assigned based on collection or folder requirements as well. Approvals: Approval Galleries are a required step for Media and Entertainment (M+E) industry workflows. Our approval gallery setup will allow talent and their agents to “Approve” or “Kill” assets based on their contractual obligations in a very user-friendly manner. In addition to that, the studio officials can monitor and manage a report of all the galleries in progress and edit as and when appropriate. Contact Sheet: globaledit’s patented contact sheets now come with expanded functionality. In this release, you can expect contact sheets to function as a PDF of your folder/collection/search results. Users like Producers, Marketers, Retail Display Managers and more will be able to quickly create a PDF without using any external tools that fit the assets into a page format. This is a great way to take notes and make approvals by hand if needed. Collections: Users can now organize and manage their collections based on which are active, expired or archived. In addition, they can group their collections based on needs and expiration dates. Lastly, users can now invite others to a newly made collection thereby eliminating the need for setting up library access and building more collaboration into the platform with other users. Metadata: globaledit has made it incredibly easy for users to update and export metadata in and out of the application in bulk. This is particularly useful when data is coming in and out from third parties and want to ensure the latest information is captured in globaledit, including small variations in the CSV and XMP creation. It is an exifTool-friendly format, a standard tool in the photography workflow. About globaledit: globaledit is the leading cloud-based saas application leveraged by brands, agencies and studios to manage high volume photo & video content creation and delivery. As a Creative Asset Management solution, globaledit solves for asset management, collaboration and workflow within one tool. Assets move from the point of capture, editing, retouching, approvals and distribution seamlessly, thereby reducing production costs and improving time to market. Learn more about our products here: Top Reasons to Consider Digital Asset Management and CAM

Organizations are churning out marketing materials more than ever. No matter what industry you’re in, creating visual assets is essential to a successful business. However, keeping track of all of your assets and organizing them properly can be difficult. Digital asset management systems (DAMs) are the center of operation for these organizations.  Choosing the right DAM comes down to ease of use and efficiency. You have to choose a DAM that allows you and your team to produce marketing assets, both photo and video, quickly and seamlessly. Rather than using multiple different softwares to achieve one goal, a DAM can centralize your work and cut your production time in half.  When choosing a DAM, it’s important to take into account the needs of your organization. Globaledit was built by creatives, so we know the difficulties you’re facing and we’re here to help.  For Your Work In Progress (WIP) Globaledit offers streamlined ingestion of your assets, automatically appends metadata allowing for advanced search where you can build collections of your favorite assets and then streamlines sharing or download. Having a bird’s eye view to all of your assets is important. When you upload or download (in bulk) take advantage of custom metadata to append any special tags you care about. Metadata becomes a key part of how your assets are easily searched, filtered and saved for later use. This will slash the time you spend searching and working on visuals because we understand having the right photo or video at your fingertips is essential. To shorten your creative workflow, you can add a new collection based on your search results and filters, then choose to share or download. Once team members have eyes on the right photos or videos, leverage globaledit’s voting and rating system. This allows you and your team to simultaneously choose assets, find what’s best based upon team consensus or that one special approval and move on.  Scalability Security and enterprise solutions are at the forefront of globaledit. When choosing a DAM for your organization, one of the most important things to consider is the security of your assets. Globaledit has top-tier security to ensure your assets are always safe. With globaledit’s asset rights, you can set expiration dates, grant or deny access requests, track usage, watermark, and more. Prevent the use of unauthorized, expired, or inappropriate media.  Customization If you’re working with globaledit, the interface provides you with an incredibly easy way to use the markup editor. While in the interface, you simply press the pen icon to enter the Markup Editor. Once activated, you can swipe through your team’s imported images and see current markups. You can then make your own markups in the editor by using the brush tool, comment section, or text. You can create versions of your visuals to see what is most up to date, and archive for later use.  Customer Service Globaledit prides itself on becoming part of your organizational needs. Once you choose us to become your DAM we are there with you every step of the way. From recreating a more functional creative workflow, to hours of customer support and onboarding, we want to make sure your organization has all the support you need.

Globaledit combines traditional digital asset management capabilities with work in progress scale & functionalities found in creative asset management. What does that mean for a company that utilizes globaledit? The software will be at the heart of your workflow ecosystem. It will allow you to simplify your creative workflow and streamline your team.  The benefits of having creative assets management are limitless. You’ll be able to easily meet content demand and work at maximum because you will no longer need tools like Google Drive or Dropbox. Instead, everything is in one place. Globaledit’s Creative Asset Management is with you throughout the entire asset lifecycle, creating a quicker turnaround for your content, without compromising quality. From the moment you upload all of your images, globaledit makes it seamless to select your desired images, share them securely with your team, rate and vote on the images, and markup the images; no mistakes, no hassle. What can you expect from a creative asset management system? Collections: All of your assets are visible to you at a glance. You can organize your asset collections to streamline work, get asset rights, permissions, and expiration of content to ensure the correct content is sent to the right person safely. Collections make scalability easy because your content is right there when you need it.  Library: Your entire team can organize, rate/edit, and review assets faster in a modern, secure, and seamless workflow. With creative asset management you and your team can see all versions of the asset, essentially creating shorter production cycles and reduced time-to-market for high-impact visual assets.  Metadata: Send less time searching for your assets. Globaledit’s creative asset management tool lets you focus on the right content by automating tasks from cataloging assets to transformations for specific applications allowing for increased productivity.  With image identification and metadata you can search for an asset at each stage of the life cycle.  Advanced Search: Enhanced asset information and asset history provides the capability of quickly searching and finding your most desired asset. To shorten the creation process, you can add a new collection based on your searches and needs.  Asset Rights: The most important feature of Globaledit’s creative asset management system is unparalleled security. Giving asset access to the wrong person through an unreliable medium is harmful to your business. Globaledit’s asset rights ensure the asset goes to the right person. You can set expiration dates, grant or deny access requests, track usage, add watermarks, and more. 

At globaledit, we understand creatives. We understand the process of a creative workflow. Most importantly, we want to empower your workflow with the ability to build smart collections and automated tagging to slash your production timelines. Globaledit is a tool built by creatives, for creatives. How does globaledit make your creative workflow better? Your Assets When You Need ThemWe know you need to produce quality content on tight deadlines. That’s why we centralize all your assets in one organized platform. No longer waste time consulting multiple systems. Your Assets Where You Want ThemQuickly find the right assets among thousands of assets with globaledit’s advanced metadata & automated tagging. Locate the correct creative and produce quickly, without compromising quality. Be in the Know of What is ImportantAchieve unparalleled transparency to all assets. Access all versions of the asset and account for all the stages of the asset’s life cycle. Obtain Key InsightsEmpower and align teams with a single platform. One source of communication—from capture to delivery of production—allows everyone to gain the insights they need. What do our creative workflow features look like? DashboardGlobaledit’s dashboard helps you keep your curated content sets organized. Project phase and user selection plays a role in organizing your content how you want it. AutomationGlobaledit’s collections allow your assets to live in a virtual folder where you can sort assets based on rules such as ratings, retouching, dates, metadata, comments, and more. CollaborationShare content with targeted custom permissions quickly and securely. With globaledit, every member can comment directly on the asset. Collaborate on each layer of the asset with status updates and give granular feedback for a faster turnaround. Globaledit allows multiple members to approve the creative simultaneously. Metadata Using metadata you can easily structure your creative workflow with Product Information Management systems, ERP. Metadata makes your assets discoverable quickly and makes working with these assets seamless. Controlled vocabulary and autocorrect reduces mistakes with tagging; catching errors before they happen. You can also update metadata and tags in bulk (up to 1,000 images at a time) cutting your creative workflow in half. Learn more about our products here: Creative Workflow Management Predictions for 2021

Having a markup editor is essential for creatives. Without it, a photo editor, retoucher, or another creative on your team doesn’t have the ability to collaborate with their colleagues seamlessly. A markup editor takes a task that’s often tedious and time consuming and creates an opportunity for a simple, easy workflow. Why is the markup editor important? A markup editor allows you to add annotation, comments, and call-out text annotations. With globaledit, the markup editor can be easily used on both web and mobile including  iOS & Android platforms. This way, you can be in sync with your creative team at the touch of a button. How to use the markup editor: If you’re working with globaledit, the interface provides you with an incredibly easy way to use the markup editor. While in the interface, you simply press the pen icon to enter the markup editor. Once activated, you can swipe through your team’s imported images and see current markups. You can then make your own markups in the editor by using the brush tool, comment section, or text. Once you’re finished with your work, or approved the work of others on your team, you’re done. Yes, the markup editor really is that simple to use. How to use a markup editor as part of a team: Whether you’re in marketing, advertising, e-commerce, or any other creative field, one thing rings true: creative work is collaborative work. Being able to access visuals from anywhere, all in one place, is something that is invaluable to a team. Within a tool like a markup editor, your team members will see your work instantly and vice versa. You can collaborate on visual projects so seamlessly that it will tremendously improve your time and efficiency. The functionality of a markup editor: If you’re utilizing globaledit to markup visuals, all of your markup layers can consist of multiple comments and annotations. A Text Box appears when an initial mark is made to instantly apply a comment. That comment will then apply to all marks on that layer allowing a single instruction to be delegated to multiple annotations. Comments can be changed in the text box on the image. To change a comment on a different layer, tap the layer from the markup layers pop-up window. Once a layer is chosen, a comment can be changed in the text box on the image. The pen tool allows you to freehand your marks, while shapes (circles and squares) provide increased marking precision. For example, use a square to define a desired crop or an ellipse to quickly highlight blemishes.

Early data suggests some verticals are thriving in the time of social distancing and an increasing reliance on eCommerce.  See the full report here.

Macy’s is set to reopen 68 stores next week in advance of a full reopen in six weeks’ time. Read about their plan here.

Philip Lim is keeping busy during his work-from-home time. Check out how he merged his passion for fashion with charity via his new cookbook here.

Glossier is making waves with its new hand cream release.  While hand sanitizer might be a hotter product right now, Glossier is doing a social good by donating its first 10,000 units to healthcare workers whose hands are likely pretty dry due to constant washing.  Read about it here.

Read Maria Luisa Frisa’s predictions about our marketplace, trends, and possible future in her insightful and wide-ranging Vogue interview here.

As we’re all getting up to speed and getting efficient in our remote setup, it’s good to breathe for a moment and reflect. Check out this article to see different strategies to make sure your e-commerce empire keeps expanding with the turbulent times.

Incumbent cloud asset management solutions have a mixed reputation–slow upload speeds, sluggish searches, volume limitations. Globaledit, however, scales out and scales up as you need. Early this year we processed an average of nine million assets per month. Since the majority of our clients went remote, our downloads have tripled with no outages or slowdowns. Want to learn about how Globaledit can manage your assets at any volume? Click our new asset management page here.

The weekend beckons!  Want to fill the time and simultaneously enrich your soul? These fashionable books might inspire your next look.  Check out the list here.

By now most companies have transitioned to remote work, but some lack a platform to access and deliver creative assets quickly. Over the last month, Globaledit has seen a 300% increase in downloads.  Our clients have been able to access their assets, whether works-in-progress or finalized projects, without interruption and with all the efficiencies of the cloud. Want to hear more about how Globaledit can centralize and distribute your creative assets during the remote revolution?  Click here.

We’ve all been there: you do five or six revisions of an asset, upload the wrong one, and don’t notice until it’s too late. That’s the inspiration for Globaledit’s newest feature: Versioning. Versioning lets you track an asset through each iteration and makes sure your team knows exactly which one to use. Want to see how Versioning works? Request a Demo  

Trying to streamline your creative content collaboration and production while remote? Globaledit’s online platform has you covered from-sharing creative content securely to making approvals, ratings, and markups anywhere, at any time.  We will help you achieve remote creative collaboration and efficient creative production, for the next 3 months free of charge. Access a 90-Day Free Trial  

Just after one year, Instagram’s in-app Checkout feature has skyrocketed, with many new brands joining every week. Brands are testing the waters of the new feature, which is still in closed beta and open to any select brands at this point. The new Instagram functionality empowers customers to buy products directly through the app itself. Since customers can quickly buy products without having to leave the platform friction is reduced. Read more about this new feature here.    

Individuals confined to their homes are turning to the digital world to get a glimpse of what’s happening outside. Their 9-5 jobs, shopping, entertainment, social life, and exercise have all been transported to the digital realm. Since their customers’ lives are all happening online luxury brands must thrive in digitization in order to survive. An article “How Luxury Brands Can Win During a Crisis” claims that accelerating digitization is key. The article states, “Many brands brag about their digital capabilities, but now is the time to be honest and take measures where your brand is lacking. Only the strongest digital brands will emerge during this crisis.” Daniel Langer, the author of the article, clarifies that digitization “means sophisticated tools that measure digital marketing ROI, real-time insights, content validation and creation via Artificial Intelligence-powered tools, and highly-personalized and automated digital marketing journeys.” Globaledit’s online creative collaboration platform for leading luxury brands is a tool that can help push out content quickly for highly-personalized and automated digital marketing journeys. Contact us to create strong creative content for the digital sphere while under pressure.  

Returns make up more than $351 billion dollars in lost sales. Among the culprits for this insane dollar figure is a lack of uniformity in sizing standards across brands. This leaves people guessing as to whether they should be buying that fabulous new shoe they saw online in a size 9 or size 10. To provide greater consumer reference, brands like Good American are giving website visitors the ability to “change fit model” to see varying body dimensions and how they’re aligned to sizes. This approach has great potential to result in reduced online returns, but what’s the cost of executing this strategy? Creatives will need to shoot more variations (‘looks’) of a SKU. Learn more about how creatives can shoot more looks and manage the demand for content creation.  

A Business of Fashion article reveals that Highsnobiety, a German-based streetwear blog, media brand, and production agency launched in 2005, is turning to print magazines to engage their Generation Z audience. Employing print to attract new-age consumers, who stereotypically inhabit the digital-only realm, might seem counterintuitive. Although, recent research shows that Gen-Z consumers are a growing market for the print industry. Research shows that a Generation Z audience spends 1 hour each week reading magazines and prefer reading printed books. More brands will try to tap into print as another means to attract the Generation Z customer. With creating content for both the print and digital spaces, brands will be drowning in creative production. Learn more about how you can create an efficient creative production process today.  

The creative process and workflow do not have to be tied to a server. In the 21st century, having your creative process and workflow on the Cloud should be a priority. What if your creative team needs to access content remotely? They should not be dependent upon an office or server in order to execute time-sensitive deadlines. Take your creative workflow to the Cloud and let your team work on-the-go with Globaledit.  With our creative collaboration platform, all key team members can collaborate on content from anywhere, at any time. Our platform drives communication between all stakeholders and teams. You can now comment on all your content with key stakeholders anywhere, at any time. Notify all team members involved in the creative process throughout the asset lifecycle. Status updates are provided to the right team members to push content out quickly.  Learn more about how your creative workflow can happen anywhere, at any time.    

According to a 2020 In-House Creative Report, 72% of creatives struggle to keep up with the high volume content. The main reason for this struggle is inefficient creative production processes and the use of disparate systems. Achieve efficiency in the creative process by providing visibility, quick access, and voting ability to all stakeholders.  When all key creative team members can give thorough input and vote on the creative asset together it creates efficient, inclusive creative collaboration.  With Globaledit’s creative voting system, multiple members can vote on all layers of the creative process simultaneously for a faster turnaround.  Learn More   

A Glossy Podcast interviews jewelry brand Switch on how they drew inspiration from the fashion brand Rent the Runway for their new rental model. Switch is now renting out jewelry for $29 a month. Their rental model is also subscription-based allowing them to generate a higher engagement and retention rate from their customers. While renting out jewelry for $29 might seem to negatively impact the company’s revenue, this is not the case. According to the podcast, “In two years, to have an endless rotation of jewelry instead of just purchasing one piece — that, probably, after two years you’d be sick of — is a really good value for our customers.” The subscription and rental-based models are becoming more popular, and, thus, more competitive. A Glossy article notes the increases in the number of players in the rental fashion world and reveals that “Rent the Runway is tinkering with its available subscription plans by adding a third option in between the lavish Unlimited subscription and the more bare-bones Update or 1 Swap, subscription.” The article further highlights that Rent the Runway launched “the new 2 Swap plan” on Tuesday. This plan “will let customers swap out their four rented items twice per month for a monthly fee of $135, instead of once as the $89 1 Swap plan allows.” The article closes with the 2 Swap plan “is one way that Rent the Runway, the largest but certainly not the only major player in the rental space, is standing out from competitors.” While subscription and rent models may be attractive for fashion brands, they must come up with a unique strategy for the models to be lucrative.

The digital space has re-envisioned traditional storytelling. A report “Digital Storytelling for Luxury Brands: 5 Trends To Succeed” discusses the core measures of storytelling have stayed the same, yet the digital realm is transforming the manner in which these stories are delivered. The report unpacks how digital is re-defining storytelling and offers 5 key tactics that top luxury brands are using to engage affluent consumers digitally. The top 5 successful trends for digital storytelling are the following: 1.) Content snacking: storytelling in micro-moments 2.) Mobile videos: go vertical and go live 3.) Ephemeral stories: 24 hours then gone 4.) Social media and UGC: The audience as storytellers 5.) Big data helps craft more personalized stories and understands which stories will resonate Read more here.

Renown luxury magazines that have been around for years must undergo a transformation to the digital space. Print luxury magazines still hold a certain appeal with a particular audience and have an intimate, tangible experience that a website cannot emulate. Yet, a digital presence is a must. Luxury magazines are being coerced to gain digital real estate in order to survive. An article “Transforming Luxury Magazines for Digital with Michael von Schlippe” unpacks how Michael von Schlippe is “rewriting the story of luxury publishing” to fit the digital space.” Michael von Schlippe is the founder and co-owner of Indochine Media Ventures (IMV). IMV’s portfolio of brands includes Robb Report, Esquire, Luxury Guide, and Buro 24/7. Michael von Schlippe explained, “Luxury advertising budgets were being cut across TV, print, cinema, and outdoor for all industries. The only area that was seeing an increase was digital. The increase in digital luxury advertising budget did not equal the reduction in print, but it was the only media buying growth that we saw.” The transition from print to digital calls for more content creation designed for the digital realm. Unlike stagnant visuals created for print, digital assets must be refreshed constantly under a tight timeframe. Globaledit’s web-based creative platform streamlines the production process of digital assets. With Globaledit, leading luxury brands push out high-quality content to their digital site and channels, while slashing production time. To request a demo of globaledit, click here.    

Brands are continually trying to understanding how to stand out from the enormous, ever-growing crowd of “cool” brands. Generation Z customers are captivated by brands offering a fresh new look and embodying a strong, authentic identity. Customers are now seeing beyond the facade of brands’ that deploy marketing campaigns for a quick sell. Instead, individuals are demanding more from brands and want to see a transparent and consistent brand message. Arriving at an empowering brand image and identity is not a simple task. It may take multiple attempts and various approaches. There is not a single model or a one-size-fits-all formula. An exclusive BOF article provides 6 steps to make your brand “cool” and to find your true identity. These steps are open-ended and high-level. BOF advises brands to: 1.) Figure Out Your Purpose 2.) Be Open to Moving Fast and Experimenting 3.) Use Your Budget to Work With New Creatives 4.) Give Your Collaborators Creative Freedom 5.) Empower Experimental Projects Within the Organisation 6.) Remember that the Product Has to Live Up to the Hype To read the entire article, click here.      

Luxe Digital released its 2020 report on luxury industry trends. Among the top trends for luxury was personalization at scale and new social media platforms. The report stated, “luxury brands will dive deeper into unstructured data coming from various digital and social platforms to deliver personalization at a larger scale.” In addition to producing personalized content, luxury brands must venture out into the uncharted territories of niche social media platforms. Brands must create content “that fosters meaningful, life-enhancing connections with like-minded peers and brands.” They will benefit from harnessing “the power of alternative social platforms to answer consumers’ desire for a more authentic, unfiltered look behind the scenes.” With the growing trends of personalization, additional social platforms, and the need for more creative content, the importance and structure of creative operations continue to grow. Creative operations must be able to produce more visual assets for custom campaigns and multiple social channels seamlessly and deliver them in a timely manner. The need to improve workflows for efficiency and acceleration is vital to generating vast amounts of creative content showcasing personalization. Learn more about how your brand can stay competitive with personalization and the efficient production of visual assets.    

The recent trend of personalization at scale has retail brands deploying this strategy across all marketing campaigns. However, the rise of personalization in marketing, as well as sales and customer service, is not without challenges. Personalization requires gleaning more private information from prospects and consumers. Digital gains of extracting key data on targets and customers must come with a clear approach on how to keep personal data secure and private. A McKinsey & Company article “Consumer-data privacy and personalization at scale” states, “As the enterprise risk of collecting, holding, and using consumer data to personalize offerings grows, so do the business-impairing consequences for those who fail to get it right.” Based upon a McKinsey & Company survey, senior marketing leaders are not concern about compliance with privacy in personalization campaigns. If marketing leaders considered consumers’ fears their perspective towards personalization and privacy would change. Recent surveys reveal that more than”90 percent of consumers are concern about their online privacy, and nearly 50 percent have limited their online activity because of privacy concerns. Ignoring security and privacy of personalization can come with dire consequences including slower time-to-market, constraints on remarketing and consumer-data collection along with devasting fines and injury to a brand’s reputation. If companies abide by security and privacy measures in their personalization campaigns, they can witness boosts in customer-satisfaction, reduced time-to-market, and slimmer chances of regulatory fines. McKinsey & Company advocate the below six steps to embrace security and privacy: establishing and enforcing standards on security and privacy for creative agencies using best practices for data protection in their day-to-day work tokenizing consumer data ensuring consent compliance sanitizing data before using them in outbound communications and remarketing being accountable for incidents when they occur You can read the full McKinsey & Company article here.

According to a Smartly.io study, more than half of retailers plan to increase their social media advertising budget across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.  Additionally, 50% of retailers will spend more than half of their total advertising budget through these three channels as platforms offer more e-commerce integration directly on the apps. While ad spending is increasing significantly, 48% of retail CEOs said their performance marketing and creative departments don’t collaborate effectively through the creative production and ad delivery process, resulting in time-consuming inefficient manual labor. As a result, brands can benefit from investing in tools to better align their creative and marketing teams, ensuring that content for all channels is effectively produced, communicated, and delivered. Contact us to learn more about how Globaledit can help bring your teams together while producing more content faster than ever.

TikTok is making a splash into the fashion industry, and brands are using the new social platform to drive sales. Glossy article “How Gen Z-brand Adika is Using TikTok influencers to drive sales” takes a close look at how Adika successfully increased purchases with the power of the new social media platform. Dedy Schwartzberg, the founder of Adika, realized that “after seeing the flood of sales from one TikTok post” the company soon started to shape a marketing strategy and a healthy budget for the platform. Schwartzberg commented while though still heavily interested and invested in Instagram that TikTok provides a fresh new marketing tool to their arsenal. In comparison to Instagram, TikTok is known for being more organic, raw, and up-close. The focus is less on the background and more on the clothes and dancing. The brand has partnered with 30 to 50 Gen-Z influencers for TikTok alone. The introduction of yet another platform into fashion brands’ already large repertoire of social media platforms means more creative content for more channels. Deploying the right creative content to the correct social channel calls for an intuitive creative workflow platform. A workflow platform, such as globaledit, utilizes robust metadata and quickly locate the right visual assets created for specific social media channels. Learn more about how globaledit can help you prepare for succeeding in adopting next-gen social platform of TikTok.

Meeting the demands of Gen Z consumers might be difficult for fashion brands embracing sustainability practices. NYTimes article “What do Gen Z Shoppers Want? A Cute, Cheap Outfit that Looks Great on Instagram” postulates that Generation Z prefers to buy inexpensive clothing from ultra-fast-fashion brands. The article surmises that Gen Z consumers gain instant gratification from a seamless transaction of a cheap outfit on their smartphone. The purchase on an outfit is not a one-time occurrence, rather for the typical Gen Z shopper, this is a daily practice. Fast production and consumption of inexpensive, single-use clothing are dramatically at odds with sustainable practices. Meanwhile, many fashion and beauty brands are allocating funds to enact sustainable measures. A Glossy article notes, “As the fashion industry begins to reconcile its impact on the global climate crisis, some brands are putting their money where their mouth is.” According to the article, Allbirds, a leading shoe brand, is undergoing a self-imposed carbon tax. The carbon tax would mean that “if the average shoe produces 10 kilograms of carbon and it would require $0.10 per product to offset that amount.” Fashion and beauty brands that want to have a social impact may have to increase their spend on production and subsequently increase their product prices. A more expensive, yet ethical piece of clothing might not prove favorable with the Gen Z consumer.        

The 2020 “In-House Creative Management Report” pinpoints that creative teams are weighed down by operational challenges. The main challenges of 2020 all revolve around operational processes and antiquated practices. According to the report, the top challenges for creative teams in 2020 are: 72% of creatives struggle to keep up with the high volume of content.  73% of in-house creative teams report being challenged by the speed at which they are expected to complete work.  63% of creative teams are not able to focus on being a strategic contributor to the business because they are busy keeping up with demands for volume and speed of work.  47% of creatives spend a full day each week on admin tasks  Globaledit’s cloud-based platform can shave days off of the time-to-market for creative production. Globaledit is a leading creative workflow solution that streamlines your creative process for faster, easier production, and gives organizations worldwide control over content from capture to distribution. Contact us today about how you can improve the production process of creative visual assets.  

A Glossy article reports that Beautycounter, a leading cosmetics brand in clean beauty, has implemented a new set of manufacturing standards called Blueprint for Clean. According to the article, the “Blueprint for Clean includes 12 for transparency, including requiring manufacturing partners to be cruelty-free through Leaping Bunny certification and increasing its forbidden-ingredient list from 1,500 to 1,800 ingredients.” Corresponding with Beautycounter’s debut of the Blueprint for Clean is a 12-minute documentary showcased on their website about mica mining. The short video has a powerful call-to-action of asking “viewers to share the video, to purchase from brands that do not exploit child labor and to ask government leaders to act.” Beautycounter has a large following and a high engagement rate with an average of 336 postings about the brand and its strides in clean beauty. The #betterbeauty hashtag often used by the brand has become ubiquitous within the industry. Beautycounter’s marketing strategy is focused more on advocacy and values of clean beauty rather than its products. Beautycounter’s salient presence in clean beauty and its urging for clean practices in the industry places pressure on cosmetic brands. Consumers will start demanding #betterbeauty from all beauty brands.

Omnichannel personalization is reputably the largest 2020 marketing win. Securing this win calls for more creative content and accelerated marketing collaboration. McKinsey & Company’s article “The end of shopping boundaries: Omnichannel personalization” notes that “Personalization across physical and digital channels is the next big marketing opportunity.” Personalized content should not be secluded to the digital realm. Instead, brands must expand customized content to their brick & mortar stores. Brands that can source and deploy curated content for both the digital and physical realms will be leaders of personalization. The article recognizes “companies that are able to personalize the customer experience across physical and digital channels-omnichannel personalization-can achieve a 5 to 15 percent revenue increase across the full customer base.” To drive revenue through customized content, brands must create a dialog between the physical and digital worlds. Companies must have their digital marketing campaigns and storefront displays work in tandem. The article advises, “Companies should focus on five touchpoints where this convergence happens: mobile app, digital displays, interactive screens, tech-enabled associates, and point of sale.” Marketing teams will need to work collaboratively to push out creative content for each of these diverse touchpoints. While these distinct channels call for specific creative, the channels must produce creative that creates a consistent conversation. Globaledit’s creative asset management platform helps creatives deploy high-quality content for specific channels quickly. With globaledit, marketing teams can achieve enhanced collaboration. Our platform provides visibility into all versions of the creative—from the original to the retouched—creating one source of truth. Learn More 

Creative operations teams are still bogged down by manual tasks in the 21st century. Reports show creative operations teams are consumed with manual, mundane jobs throughout their day. While the speed of final approval on creative content has improved, time spent on manual work has remained stagnant from 2019. In the age of AI, creatives should not be living an age of antiquated manual practices. There are larger business implications when a creative must devote his or her entire day to administrative work. A faster approval process does not necessarily mean a quicker production time when creatives are stuck with manual tasks. To truly accelerate the production of creative content, companies must automate all manual processes. Globaledit, the leader in asset management, reduces time spent on manual tasks with robust metadata. Transform manual jobs into a seamless process and shorten the entire production process with globaledit. Learn More.      

Fashion brands know they have to take environmental responsibility seriously. Yet, consumers and reports are noticing that brands tend to opt for eco-consciousness campaigns, instead of employing action in production. BOF’s The State of Fashion 2020 reports, “Despite some modest progress, fashion hasn’t yet taken its environmental responsibilities seriously enough.” Next year, fashion players need to swap platitudes and promotional noise for meaningful action and regulatory compliance while facing up to consumer demand for transformational change.” The reputable fashion news source of BOF is not alone in recognizing and calling out fashion brands’ inability to create a wave in sustainability.  A recent article from Glossy points out, “Sustainability has become a trend to sell clothes, and that is not what it should be about.” Instead of exploiting sustainability as a buzz word to attract customers, brands need to make real strides in creating a positive impact on the environment. Taking real, quantifiable action will, in the end, allow brands to win over high priority key accounts. Although, securing consumer trust through successfully creating sustainable measures is not easy. DespiSurvey respondents stated sustainability will be one of fashion’s largest challenges in 2020. The article “Is Your Fashion Brand Ethical” offers three ostensibly easy steps to achieving sustainability: “explore new business models”, “respect your business partners”, “pay fair”. A new business model inevitably calls for transformation and upheaval of a tried and true model of the past. There is a forewarning in the article that “Brands that want to have a positive social impact may have to sacrifice some sales and profit.” Although, sacrifices, changes, and risk will not outweigh the reward of gaining consumers’ trust and having a true environmental impact.        

Fashion brands are aware they must embrace sustainability in their 2020 marketing and production strategies, but they are struggling with how to conceptualize and execute. The proliferation of articles, reports, and blogs on sustainability pressures brands into incorporating sustainability as a buzz word in their brand message. However, many fashion companies are lacking knowledge of how to become a sustainable brand or create an impactful sustainable campaign. There is no doubt the topic is prevalent within the industry and growing in power, placing even more demand on brands to embody sustainability. Forbes article “Sustainable Fashion Reigned Supreme at the Oscars, Led by Rivals Louis Vuitton and Gucci” glorifies designers who created pieces from re-purposed or sustainably sourced material. Designers who failed to opt for eco-friendly material or go vintage did not make the list. Reputable news sources, such as Forbes, are continually praising fashion brands who strive to make sustainable efforts. Brands who fail to incorporate sustainability will remain unmentioned and unnoticed by consumers. Our next micro-blog will unpack strategies on how to succeed with sustainability.  

The latest news on BOF highlights news on how AI is not only a means of innovation for luxury brands but also is a means of survival. The article points out, “A.I.-driven cyber- luxury” is the game-changer for luxury brands. Why? For one luxury car brand, 80-90 percent of its digital communications had no relevance at all to its consumers.”  The piece dives into how luxury brands have been notorious for not adopting advanced AI social listening tools in the past. However, luxury brands must now harness adequate machine-learning technology to truly understand their digital audience. The article forwarns, “A decade from now, brands that can’t adapt to using sophisticated digital analytics tools while connecting them to actionable insights won’t survive.” Luxury brands must think of innovative technology throughout the entire creative content production process from the pre-production to post-production analysis. Globaledit, an automated creative workflow platform, uses robust AI and metadata to slash creative production timelines. Learn more about how your team can push creative out to market quickly with globaledit’s AI capabilities.  

A recent NYTimes post shows how Another Tomorrow harnesses AI and technology to provide consumer transparency on their clothing line. The article notes, “Affixed to the label of every Another Tomorrow garment is a scannable QR code that, if a shopper holds their phone camera over it, will direct them to a website explaining where the piece was made and where its materials came from, down to the exact roll of fabric used. ” The deep learning of metadata, an automated search functionality that provides data which gives information about other data, helps consumers understand what the product is made of. Metadata, in particular, product metadata, is crucial in propelling fashion companies’ AI strategies. In fact, AI strategies would not be possible without product metadata, and it is the creative teams that are the ones best suited to capture and drive the influence of this information during production and post-production. There is a ton of first-hand knowledge that only creatives have access to that,  if applied, can empower consumers with highly relevant and accurate product to provide transparency. Globaledit supports all standard metadata formats and can build custom schemas to fit your business needs. Learn more about Globaledit’s capabilities.  

A BOF article “Want to See the Future of Social Media? Look to Asia” points out brands are perplexed by the vast amount of next-generation social media platforms growing at an unfathomable rate. The article states, “Beyond the sheer number of “next-gen” social media platforms cropping up across the continent, it is the speed at which they evolve that stuns the average marketing executive.” Companies are questioning which platforms they should invest in and how to manage all the creative content needed for the new platforms. The need to jump on board the train of next-gen social platforms will have brands scrambling for content specific to each channel.  Deploying the right creative content to the correct social channel calls for an intuitive creative workflow platform. A workflow platform, such as globaledit, utilizes robust metadata and AI to quickly locate the right visual assets created for specific social media channels. Learn more about how globaledit can help you prepare for succeeding in adopting next-gen social platforms.

Loyalty programs are a great way to keep customers coming back and have been effectively building brand loyalty for decades, but research by the Harvard Business Review shows that marketing content that works for your already-loyal customer base doesn’t resonate with new prospective customers. Using social media analytics, it is possible to study which posts resonate best with which audiences so brands can cover their advertising bases, but this means brands must be producing more content to cut through the digital noise that we have become accustomed to. Globaledit can help keep photography production organized and on target so brands can produce the content they need in less time. Contact us to learn more about how we can help with your next production.  

The State of Fashion 2020: Navigating Uncertainty produced by Mckinsey & Company in partnership with Business of Fashion reports that fashion companies may face dire and difficult situations in a precarious market.  The report urges fashion brands to plan for resilience to survive slow economic growth and outlast the competition.  One of the key 2020 trends the report urges fashion brands to embrace is innovation and digitization, specifically digital recalibration and re-thinking traditional engagement models on prevalent social media platforms. The report states, “It is getting harder to stand out in established social media. Fashion players need to understand how to gain traction on newer platforms.” Not only must brands venture into the uncharted terrains of new social media platforms, but they also must develop vast volumes of high-quality content tailored to particular channels.  The report highlights, “Attention-grabbing content will be key, deployed on the right platform for each market.” Deploying the right creative content to the correct channel calls for an intuitive creative workflow platform. A workflow platform, such as globaledit, utilizes robust metadata and AI to quickly locate the right visual assets created for specific social media channels. Learn more about how globaledit can help you prepare for navigating the uncertainties in 2020.  

By Luke Schneider, Business Development at Globaledit Few imagined a decade ago that a large percentage of our transactions would take place through the phones in our pockets. As the last decade has invited opportunity for a long list of start-ups, it has fundamentally changed the way brands effectively reach customers.  Combined with ever-increasing manufacturing quality, it’s easier than ever before to purchase a high-quality product at a fair price.  It isn’t enough today simply to have a great product. The rise of direct-to-consumer brands like Glossier, Warby Parker, and Harry’s Razors have shown how important it is to create a brand voice to reach customers through more than direct advertising alone. This need for a diversified marketing plan challenges creative production to produce higher-quality content for more channels in less time. Modern Effective Advertising – A Coffee Subscription Story Think about the last time you discovered a product you didn’t know existed. Do you remember where you were first exposed to the brand? Did you see one ad and buy it immediately?  Or did you take more time, require multiple touches, and do some of your own research? If you’re like me, chances are you take more convincing; my most recent ad-driven purchase was a Trade Coffee subscription (This is not a sponsored post, but I wouldn’t turn down free coffee beans).  When I look back and study what brought me through their marketing/sales funnel, I see multiple touch-points combined with interesting and eye-catching content that made me thirsty for more.  I was first exposed to Trade Coffee through an Instagram sponsored post, likely spurred by my consistent views of high-end coffee machine pages like La Marzocco. I thought it was interesting and they certainly had beautiful content, but I had tried direct-roaster subscriptions before and wasn’t crazy about it due to the price and, frankly, getting bored of the same product over and over again, I quickly moved on.  Over the next few weeks I saw multiple ads through online search and video streaming. I then saw a Facebook ad with some more details and a call-to-action that spurred my interest. This ad got me to click-through to the brand’s website. I was now solidly within the “discovery/evaluation” stage of their pipeline. After thoroughly researching the company, I found their product offered a solution to an issue I was facing—not having consistent access to fresh, high-quality, interesting coffee beans at a reasonable price. To put the cherry on top, I was presented with a promotional offer of 30% off and free shipping for the duration of my subscription, which led me to my first Trade purchase a few weeks after the first touch.  For many brands, this would be the end of the story, but their content and customer service didn’t stop there. I received further information about the product I had ordered through beautiful visual and written content, as well as suggestions for my next coffee selection through information about their other partner roasters. Trade Coffee’s full-cycle marketing had brought me from an unaware consumer with a desire to a loyal customer who happily refers all of his coffee-loving friends to their service. Getting Competitive Keeping up in our modern direct-to-consumer, omni-channel, social- and brand-voice guided consumer marketplace requires breaking through the status quo and looking at your overall marketing plan with the future in mind. Customer stories like mine continue to show how important a cohesive brand voice is to bring in new customers and increase brand loyalty, in turn increasing the reach of your products beyond your direct marketing efforts.  In the perpetual race for market share, new and established brands alike utilize social media more than ever, but, in an unexpected turn, brands are once again tapping direct mail, billboards, and out-of-home advertising to stay at the forefront of consumers’ minds. Staying competitive requires an expanded marketing reach, necessitating more content than ever before. This has put stress on the old way of doing things when it comes to creative and marketing operations, with significant backlog build-up during the editing, retouching, design, and approval processes.  The Right Tech At the same time, it can be hard to parse the increasingly crowded marketing-technology landscape. From CMS to MRM, CRM to DAM, it’s easy to lose sight of the original goals of your solution search, often resulting in running in place.  When we look at creative operations through the past few decades, not much has changed when it comes to overall workflow. Instead of editing and passing around film, we now work from hard drives or a local server, as full-res files are still too large to send back and forth quickly without physically moving a hard drive. The current process tends to require teams to be in the same location when production wants to be decentralized. New technology can help both small in-house teams and the biggest global marketing departments stay organized and on-schedule while producing more great content. Companies leverage traditional Digital Asset Management (DAM) platforms to organize and distribute their digital files, including marketing materials. While these tools are effective long-term repositories, they quickly find their limits when confronted with the access demand required during marketing production. Here at Globaledit, though our solution has the capabilities of a DAM, we refer to our software as a “Creative Asset Management” (CAM) platform, built specifically with the work-in-progress (WIP) workflows of creative photography and visual production in mind. The Benefits of a Specialized Creative Asset Management Platform A powerful CAM platform can unlock collaboration in ways only previously possible through in-person interaction. Photographers, creative directors, art directors, clients, retouchers, graphic designers, marketing directors, producers, and project managers can all log on to the Globaledit platform from anywhere in the world through our browser- and iOS-based platform.  Globaledit can be used by creative directors to build cohesive pre-production decks to communicate the vision and direction that they have in mind. Clients and other stakeholders can easily view, comment, and annotate materials to further develop concepts into the focused direction. You can upload and store PDF decks alongside the raw assets, ensuring that teams are on the same page from pre-production through post-production.  Our platform makes it simple to keep your content secure by determining which users can move, add, delete, rate, and annotate which assets. The same user control allows you to assign groups of users to a project to ensure everyone is kept in the loop, or you can control what users access which assets, ensuring that unfinished content isn’t accidentally published.  Our rating tools leverage industry standards: 1-5 stars, color tags, and select/approve/alt/kill to narrow down your edit and designate final selections. Not to worry if you make a first-pass on set—ratings within CaptureOne, Bridge, and Lightroom will automatically transfer to Globaledit, allowing you to pick up where you left off to make your final edit simple.  Once final selects are made, use our visual markup tool to draw the changes you want retouchers and graphic designers to make.  This streamlined process eliminates the need for vague or complicated text-based descriptions of retouching call-outs. Once the edit is finalized and markups have been made, you can easily transfer large files by building a Collection within Globaledit to quickly share with your in-house or freelance creatives. Our easy approvals tool ensures that even the busiest stakeholders have a quick and simple way to sign off on finalized content. Our clients shave days off the production timeline by breaking their dependency on hard drives and printed contact sheets. Digital Asset Managers utilize our organization capabilities, tapping industry-standard metadata schemas, as well as the power to build their own custom schemas for their unique business applications. Metadata best practices ensure that organizations are able to find assets that fulfill their marketing needs instead of unnecessarily repeating the production process. With unlimited folder levels, Producers and Digital Techs can utilize the same folder hierarchy they would use on a local server to keep assets organized by project and stage within the post-production process.  Because our platform brings people to content instead of the other way around, it’s easy for marketing departments to know where to find creative content that they can shape into their next campaign. Whether it’s locating eCommerce imagery, developing seasonal lookbooks, or finding social-ready content, Globaledit makes it simple to find what you need, when you need it.  While Globaledit can be utilized as a DAM for long-term archival storage, it can also integrate with a variety of other production management, studio management, and existing DAM platforms. Globaledit was built by and for the creative department; our solution can scale-with even the largest creative departments. Contact us to learn how we can fit into and increase the yield of your creative stack today.  

As Rent The Runway has proven over the last decade that clothing-as-a-service subscriptions can help expand a brand’s reach without cannibalizing sales, more brands are working to offer rental closets of their own. Vince, Urban Outfitters, Express, Trunk Club, Le Tote, and more have jumped in the game. Clothing rental introduces logistical challenges, but yields valuable consumer data at a level never before seen. Through analyzing which items users add to their virtual closet, brands can understand more about current and future trends, and ensure that their inventories are well stocked. Globaledit utilizes robust metadata, ensuring that visual assets are tagged with descriptors that help ensure that visual content is ready for future data analysis. Learn more.

With its rapid expansion underway, the digitally native brand, Morphe, is leveraging the use of in-store studios to drive foot traffic. Currently, the 12 studios in operation are offering free services. From masterclasses and 20-minute tutorials to reserving a studio to film YouTube videos, the brand is focused on differentiating itself through these studio services. Morphe continues to expand globally while prioritizing a public space for a community to create and share content. Optimizing on the experiential marketing trend, Morphe is providing key resources to generate more digital assets while keeping the community engaged. The demand for more digital assets calls for sophisticated management of assets and workflow. Without a creative asset management system, a seamless workflow of visual assets to push out to production is almost impossible to achieve. Learn more about Globaledit, the creative asset management that allows you to employ an intensive creative content strategy.

By Luke Schneider, Business Development at Globaledit Welcome back to After The Shoot, the blog series about the modern creative post-production workflow. Last week we discussed the challenges of editing thousands of images down to a handful of final options. This week we will cover the retouching process, including markups, global outsourcing, and rounds of approval. Retouching is a vital part of the post-production process. Whether applying light color grading, background clean-up, or beauty-level skin work, every image presented through an advertising channel has been retouched in some way. This process ensures that creative assets are in-line with a brand’s image. Many studios have in-house retouchers to facilitate the back-and-forth that this process often requires, but it’s becoming more common to outsource retouching around the world.  Text-Based Notes on Visual Assets The outsourcing trend for retouching has made communication challenging. How can you describe which sections of a visual asset should be changed and to what degree through text alone? “Clean the hairline on the left shoulder.” “Clean the background foliage.” “Smooth skin.”  These are all vague descriptions that cannot properly communicate the desired level of retouching. If multiple team members have to make retouching notes, things become increasingly difficult. For post-production managers, time spent organizing email, text, Slack, Hangouts, and face-to-face conversations means less time actively working on content. This “omni-channel communication” also creates risk as notes can easily be lost, forgotten, or separated from the assets that they refer to. Many production houses create a PDF copy of the assets as a workaround. This PDF can then be opened in Preview, Acrobat, or Photoshop to add layers of drawings and text notes to communicate what needs to be done. This method is a decent fix, but is difficult to scale as multiple team members may have to make notes on hundreds of images a week. Additionally, this introduces multiple new versions and files to track. Multiple Retouching Rounds Multiple rounds of retouching for campaign, editorial, and commercial production magnify these challenges. It is important to have access to the raw files, as well as all rounds of retouching to keep a close eye on the retouching process. Oftentimes this is achieved through a name-change denoting which stage the file is in (e.g. name-V1, name-V2, etc.). Unfortunately Dropbox, Drive, and Wetransfer do not support two-up diptych viewing, making it difficult to see the changes side-by-side without downloading and opening the files on each local machine.  After one round of retouching, all stakeholders should view the assets and either approve the version, or repeat the same visual markup process to communicate further work that needs to be done to finalize the asset.  How does Globaledit help? Let’s back up to the end of After The Shoot – Part 2.  We’ve just made our final selects in Globaledit and have uploaded derivative files so the final selects all have a .PSD file attached. Through the creation of a Lightbox – a playlist of assets that can be sent to certain users – we can automatically notify our Art Director, Creative Director, and Client that final selects have been made and that they have images that need retouching markups. Let’s say that we have a tight deadline for final assets, so we set an expiration date to put some pressure on the review team.  From here, those three users can log into Globaledit and use the retouching markup tool to draw on the assets and make text-based comments. These actions are name and time-stamped to ensure there’s a central record that can be referred to later when needed. Globaledit supports the upload and markup of high-res video formats so users can add frame-accurate comments and notes to those as well.  Going one step further, let’s say you have already created a “Workflow” rule within Globaledit to move all assets that have been marked up by the client into a “Ready for Retouching” Lightbox. This second Lightbox will be assigned to a retoucher who has preset permission to download the .PSD to start work immediately. The retoucher may also view markups within Globaledit or generate a PDF in the form of a to-do list that lists the markups one-by-one. At the end of the first round of retouching, the producer sends a Globaledit Uplink to the retoucher that allows the retoucher to securely upload the assets into a pre-built “Retouching Round 1” folder and appends any necessary metadata to the assets. We have decided to color-code round 1 images with a blue color tag upon upload. The same team members who added markups will then be notified that the retouching work is complete and ready for review. Using the Round 1 folder as an Approval Gallery, any images that the team “approves” will be ready for finalization. Any additional images that receive retouching markups can automatically be added to a Round 2 retouching lightbox that is sent to the same retoucher and the process repeats again. This time an Uplink moves new assets into a “Retouching Round 2” folder and a yellow color tag is added to show that this is a 2nd round asset.  Unlike Finder, Dropbox, and other file viewers, when selecting a root folder, Globaledit makes it possible to see all content within subfolders. In English – if you have a retouching master folder, containing three different folders, “Unretouched,” “Retouching Round 1,” and “Retouching Round 2,” all assets within the subfolders can be viewed at once. This means that the same image in different stages, denoted with a blue color tag and yellow color tag, can be viewed using a two-up view to compare round 1 and round 2 side-by-side. This makes it easy to ensure the proper changes were made and that everyone is happy with the asset before moving forward.  Increased outsourcing and adoption of technology have opened a new world of high-end and time-friendly retouching services. Post-production workflows that have worked in the past are now being put to the test and are causing significant delays that lengthen the time-to-market of creative assets. This happens at a time when social media, eCommerce, and advertising require brands to produce content as quickly as possible.  Globaledit was built as an internal tool to streamline this process for the leading production house in New York City and is now offered as an enterprise-level SaaS platform to enable brands and studios around the world to do the same. If you’d like to learn more about Globaledit and how it can help your creative workflow, contact us by clicking here. Stay tuned next week for After The Shoot Part 4, where we discuss finalization, distribution, metadata enrichment, and finally Archival and DAM storage.  

The beauty and cosmetics industry has a lot to learn from streetwear brand success. Through building hype and limiting supply, lines down the street outside of Kith and Supreme are commonplace here in New York City. As the retail industry turns towards experiential shopping, exclusivity and being “in the know” are big revenue drivers for the “drop” model we see regularly in the footwear and streetwear industry. Estee Lauder and Malin + Goetz have produced limited release packages for Kith, testing the waters for the limited release model. Creative photography and videos are vital to building hype around a limited drop through all media channels available, but this model means more creative materials are needed faster than before. Globaledit’s cloud-based platform can shave days off of the time-to-market for creative production, allowing brands to shift towards a more aggressive “drop” model easily. Contact us today about how you can improve the production process of creative visual assets.  

Fast-fashion giant H&M opens up about its plans for the future in the quickly changing retail landscape. Citing further investment into eCommerce and quicker time-to-market online, as well as more experience-oriented brick-and-mortar stores. As fashion seasons have become shorter, the need for quick and efficient photo and video production has never been greater. Globaledit helps by connecting global teams through a cloud-based, work-in-progress platform, ensuring that edits, retouching, approvals, and distribution can take place as quickly as possible, decreasing the time-to-market of all creative assets. Contact us today about how you can speed up the production of creative visual assets for a competitive go-to-market strategy.    

By Luke Schneider, Business Development at Globaledit   Welcome back to After The Shoot, the blog-series about creative post-production workflow. Last week we discussed the challenges associated with securely handling hundreds or even thousands of gigabytes of files created during photo and video shoots. This week I will discuss the editing process and how challenging it can be to get the necessary input and feedback from all stakeholders. Editing and culling images can be a slow process, especially on campaign and editorial projects where an on-set art director, agency creative director, and client team may all need to give their two-cents. Aesthetic is often a matter of personal preference which makes it challenging to keep everyone on the same page. On the eCommerce side, brands may have stakeholders determining brand image, all of whom may want to give final approval before product pages go live. Sending multiple options to everyone can be an organizational nightmare, let’s take a look at a few ways to handle this process. On-Set or After the Shoot Most productions will have an on-set art director, ensuring that images are on brand and aesthetically pleasing. Depending on the shot list and schedule there may be time to make a rough edit after each shot or during lunch and at the end of the day. For on-figure productions, this edit tends to narrow down roughly 50-400 images per shot to 5-20 final options. Let’s say there are 15 shots for the day, this is still 75-300 final options even before taking into account second options that should be accessible in case someone wants to see more versions.  If the shotlist is more packed – a common occurrence now that social and online channels require more content than ever before – there may not be time to make a rough edit on set. In this case, the AD is responsible for making those selects after the shoot and likely will have to take a physical drive or pull all of the images from an on-site server adding further transfer time as the files are moved to their machine for editing.   Client Feedback and Input Before images can be sent to retouching, the final options often need to be approved by the client or creative director so time and money aren’t wasted finalizing images that will never be seen. This can be done a number of ways, including physical/PDF contact sheets with thumbnails, Dropbox/Google Drive/WeTransfer/FTP links, or through shipping a physical hard-drive carrying the files.  The good news here is the sent files can be low-res and transfer quickly.  However, all of these methods rely on other forms of communication to give feedback based on file name, or sometimes the vague “I like the 8th one, let’s go with that,” that then requires the producer to match file-names to files on the server. Adding another step to the mix, the producer then has to ensure that they’re sending high-res TIFF, PSD, or EIP files to the retouchers, and not the low-res copies sent for approval. This is also assuming that all necessary parties send feedback through the same channels. More likely the producer will be inundated with feedback received through Slack, Hangouts, email, text, or conversation, increasing the chance of miscommunication and mistakes during the post-production process.  Media & Entertainment Talent Approvals  When working with celebrities there may be contractual “Approve/Kill” requirements. Actor A may have the right to kill 50% of the final options for show and movie promos, while Actor B may only get to approve 25%. This imagery is often leak worthy or containing spoilers which requires increased security that traditional methods cannot maintain.  Meeting these contractual and security requirements is a significant challenge for M&E productions. Finding platforms that can allow actors to make their approvals/kills while in transit or working on other jobs is challenging but vital for timely production.  How does Globaledit Help? Globaledit allows production teams to go to the files instead of the other way around. After an initial upload into the platform, users and teams can be assigned to specific jobs. Final-options can then be separated and shared with the necessary stake-holders. Because Globaledit renders a low-res JPEG proxy, anyone can quickly view and edit assets on any device with an internet or cellular connection and the Globaledit app. Users can comment directly on individual assets or whole collections and can even use @-mentions to notify specific users. These comments are saved and time-stamped so there is a cohesive record of who-said-what and when they said it.  With our “derivatives” feature, PSD, EIP, and JPEG files can be paperclipped together, allowing seamless file delivery without searching through file-specific folders. Furthermore, custom workflows can be built so that images are moved into a “Ready for Retouching” folder as soon as the necessary approval has been made, so retouchers can start working right away without back-and-forth communication.  For Media & Entertainment, approval galleries through Globaledit allow each talent-user to be assigned a Kill/Approve percentage. Further security options allow automatic watermarking with company name, or for increased security, with an individual’s user name to discourage leaks. Because Globaledit is cloud-based, talent can complete approvals/kills while in transit with nothing more than their phones.  The modern editing process has many bottlenecks. Globaledit works with our clients through dedicated account managers and a digital-experience solutions team to remove technological hurdles. We help our clients focus on finding the best assets and avoid spending hours on file management. That’ll do it for this week’s edition of After The Shoot, stay tuned next week when we discuss the challenges associated with the retouching markup process. To learn more about how Globaledit can accelerate your creative production message us here.  

    By Luke Schneider, Business Development at Globaledit You did it, you’ve just finished that big production you’ve been working on for weeks! The talent, the crew, the gear, everything went according to plan and you’re about to start the post-production process. How do you take terabytes of raw assets, likely thousands of images or hundreds of video files, and get them culled down, organized, cropped, retouched, approved, and distributed across all channels?  Before joining the team here at Globaledit, I worked as a photographer, retoucher, photo editor, and digital tech with some of the most successful global apparel and home brands. Working in high-end, high-volume production has given me a unique look into this process at scale and over the next four weeks I’ll lead you through industry standards and best-practices to help you streamline post-production for your next photo or video production. Files, Files, and More Files Let’s start with the basics. At the end of most productions, you’ll likely have hundreds of gigabytes of files, if not multiple terabytes. Digital Imaging Technicians (DTs) will be backing up the raw files and the CaptureOne sessions containing image ratings and notes made on set throughout the day, and, if you covered your bases, you now have two identical hard drives containing everything, from lighting tests, to silly gray-card frames, to actual content.  Depending on your workflow, DTs may have processed out low-res JPEGs for contact sheets and other file types such as PSDs or TIFFs from a rough-edit made on set so retouchers can get working as soon as the finals are approved. Additionally, for location jobs or companies not headquartered in New York City or Los Angeles but shooting content through production houses in these cities, shipping physical hard drives may be necessary.  This introduces a significant security risk should the drives be lost or damaged. After all, the contents of those drives cost five, six, or sometimes more than seven-figures to create.  Next, these files need to be moved to a secure location where they can be accessed by the producer, art director, retouchers, creative director, and other stakeholders higher up in the marketing department. Depending on how fast your on-set hard drives are (pretty slow if they’re the standard rugged USB spinning hard drives) it could take hours to get all of the assets onto a server and downloaded to each local machine, which leads to your first liability – duplicate images. To further complicate things, different people need different types of files, Art Directors can make selects and notes using low-res JPEGs, but retouchers will need either RAW, EIP, TIFF, or PSD files depending on your workflow. This could mean additional manual processing time on another machine, which means additional places to copy everything.  If you think this is starting to get complicated, you’re right. Keeping track of what files are on which drives and who possesses those drives is a difficult and time-intensive part of managing a studio. In today’s global world, it’s likely that photographers, art directors, and retouchers may not all be in the same studio, city, or even country while working on a project. We will touch on the difficulties this presents in our next article covering the Editing Process, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume that it’s not a huge time-suck to get all the files onto everyone’s computers, and that sharing final-selects is quick and easy (which I can assure you, it often is not).    How does Creative Production keep up in the age of Cloud Storage? With faster internet connections and the development of 4G and 5G wireless, more tools are being developed that allow users to bring themselves to their content, rather than the other way around. Services like WeTransfer, Dropbox, and Google Photos allow relatively quick consumer solutions, but while these may suffice for sharing JPEG files from small freelance jobs or managing personal storage, they cannot keep up with the volume, speed, data, and security requirements of large-scale production.  If you’ve ever tried to move and store thousands of RAW files on these platforms, you likely found that you had to wait multiple days for the files to upload and be accessible from another machine. What’s worse: these files aren’t even viewable. Because of this, you’ll need to have a separate folder with JPEGs to utilize the cloud-based viewing features of these platforms, or you will need to download the files locally to review using Bridge, CaptureOne, or similar RAW capable software.  Additionally, shared folders may have significant security risks. These links can be forwarded to anyone, opening the project up to leaks. On some platforms, non-users may even have the capability of deleting the source files themselves (a terrifying thought considering the time and money that goes into creating content). These transfers may also have hidden expiration dates, potentially causing dead-links towards the end of the post-production process. These potential risks are sometimes found with internal on-premises corporate servers as well.    Where does Globaledit fit in all this? Globaledit was developed for creatives, by creatives. Industrial Color, a photography, video, CGI, retouching, and all around digital creative production house, originally developed Globaledit in 2002 as an internal solution to address the headaches associated with post-capture production. Globaledit provides cloud-based active storage, editing, visual retouching markups, client and talent approvals, metadata enrichment, distribution of projects, and archival storage.  Let’s jump back to the end of the last shoot day we talked about above. In addition to copying a hard drive on-set, that digital tech could set the Globaledit desktop app to watch the CaptureOne output folder. This creates a hot-folder that will automatically upload to our platform. Globaledit supports the upload of folder structures rather than simply uploading archives or buckets of files one folder at a time.  This saves time organizing your assets during the production process. Additionally, Globaledit’s “Uplink” feature allows producers to send a web-link to an upload portal within the platform. Uplink’s allow the rest of the assets on the platform to stay secure, and offers a quick way to receive files from location and freelance teams around the world. Upon upload, Globaledit renders out a low-res JPEG of the source file for quick and easy viewing over the internet.  You can also append or “paperclip” derivative files (high res JPEG, PSD, or RAW files of the same image, see all supported file types here) to prevent clutter. This means that users with access to the project on Globaledit can use their mobile phones or tablets without the need for strong WiFi connections to view, comment, select, approve, and markup the files. Admin users can determine which users can view, move, download, upload, and delete which assets, and can even apply watermarks for certain users (think freelancers that need access to leak-worthy assets) to keep the files far more secure than most servers and cloud-storage solutions. Globaledit also has a dedicated solutions architecture and implementation team to assess, train, and set up best practices, along with dedicated Account Managers who are available to help our clients far past technical troubleshooting and FAQs. Wrapping a creative production should be a great feeling, however, like with many things in the production industry, there is no standard for how to handle what takes place after the lights and cameras have been put away. We’ve discussed the difficulty of moving terabytes of files to ensure that they’re accessible by the necessary parties, organized so time isn’t wasted, and safe so the company doesn’t face unnecessary risk. Over the next few weeks I will discuss the editing and approval process, retouching markups, and distribution, security, and metadata and how Globaledit can help alleviate some of the common hang-ups and headaches that all creative producers face. To learn more about how Globaledit can accelerate your creative production message us here.  

A recent Glossy article with the headline “Fashion Brands Are Using Customization” points to the industry’s growing trend of personalized products and, subsequently, the need for the production of more creative content. Fashion brands are shaping their identity around designing pieces tailored to fit their customer’s personal style and image. Glossy article “Fashion Brands Are Using Customization” notes, “More fashion brands are following the beauty market’s lead by introducing product customization options that make each purchase feel tailor-made.” For instance, Bite Beauty’s philosophy is based on the concept of bespoke beauty. The Bite Lip Lab allows customers to discover “their own signature, unique lipstick.” At the Bite Lip Lab, customers are able to find their perfect shade on the spot by selecting their shade, texture, finish, and flavor. Bite Beauty is one of many cosmetic brands to harness the power of the customization. The burgeoning fad for customization in the fashion and cosmetics industry is driven in part by a consumer-first marketing strategy, technology, and consumer behavior data. While personalized products and a customized consumer experience seems contemporary, these marketing and production strategies are not rooted in the digital age of the 21st Century. Forbes article “The New Size is Custom: How Retailers are Using Personalization to Win Consumer Loyalty” explains that customization isn’t unprecedented; Shamil Hargovan, CEO custom-fit footwear company Wiivv, says “Clothing and shoes used to be individually made for their users, by cobblers or tailors and dressmakers. When mass production hit, that’s when customization was lost.” Ironically, the hype for personalization of garments can be traced back to design approaches founded by the House of Worth in the 19th Century. The ability to meet the demand for personalized products is not simple in a world of fast fashion and mass production. “People expect their favorite brands, products and apps to be smart and on-demand, so they can live better, easier lives. This is what custom-fit products are all about,” says Shamil Hargovan. Whereas bespoke tailoring in past centuries had the luxury of time, the modern trend of custom-fit products must meet the requirements of mass production and on-demand delivery. Moore in her recent Glossy article expounds on the challenges: “Fashion brands offering custom orders have to find a way to integrate one-off orders into their supply chain management and logistics workflows, all while considering its impact on production time and delivery as it relates to the overall customer experience.” The option for customized orders also generates the need for the production of more creative content across the brands’ website and social media platforms. All birds, a company designing environmentally friendly footwear, offers the same style of shoe in multiple colors to fit their customer’s personal style. The look in multiple colors requires more visual assets to be created for the customer to visualize how the shoe looks in that particular color. Louis Vuitton’s launch of the “Personalization Collection for Women” and “Mon Monogram Collection for Women” calls for more creative content, with additional visuals of how the purse would appear in 34-plus colors for both exterior and interior lining along with the placement of the monogram. With the growing trend of customization and the need for more creative content, the importance and structure of creative operations continues to grow. Creative operations must be able to produce more visual assets for custom products seamlessly and deliver them in a timely manner. The need to improve workflows for efficiency and acceleration is vital to generate vast amounts of creative content showcasing personalization. Learn more about how your brand can stay competitive with customization and the efficient production of visual assets.

Blackrock purchases 30% stake in Authentic Brands Group, highlighting the importance of diversification within the consumer retail & fashion space. Authentic Brands owns a wide range of Fashion, Sportswear, Shoes, Media, and Celebrity brands including our client Misook. Read more about our customer success stories here or chat with us now.

Direct-to-Consumer brands are using Instagram, Facebook, and similar online platforms to determine which content resonates with their customers Through small digital campaigns, they’re able to determine which fits, colors and photo styles convert best without having to commit to huge print campaigns. This data then allows them to tailor their bigger advertising campaigns, as they already know what their customers like to see. Metadata plays a significant role in gleaning consumers’ insight, demand, and trends. Globaledit equips brands like Uniqlo and Showtime with robust metadata and search functionality for creative visuals assets. Click here to get in touch with us today.

Online fashion giants are beefing up their tech, using AI and deep learning to help consumers quickly find what they’re looking for. The deep learning of metadata, an automated search functionality that provides data which gives information about other data, helps consumers in their search to stumble upon an item they did not even know existed, but that is highly relevant to their needs and wants. Metadata, in particular, product metadata, is crucial in propelling fashion companies’ AI strategies. In fact, AI strategies would not be possible without product metadata, and it is the creative teams that are the ones best suited to capture and drive the influence of this information during production and post-production. There is a ton of first-hand knowledge that only creatives have access to that,  if applied, can empower marketers to showcasing highly relevant and accurate product suggestions to the right customers. Globaledit supports all standard metadata formats and can build custom schemas to fit your business needs. Feel free to message us to hear more about Globaledit’s capabilities.    

Steve Madden adds to its direct-to-consumer portfolio with recent acquisitions of GREATS and BB Dakota, Inc. The acquisitions extend Steve Madden’s focus on athleisure, in turn widening its men’s footwear reach. Steven Madden’s broadening of their horizon with athleisure grants access to capital and infrastructure to advance their growth. With Steve Madden’s move into athleisure, they will need to generate more photo and video content to deploy across a variety of marketing channels. Acquisitions and growth into new areas, such as athleisure, urge brands to create more creative visual assets for marketing purposes. Globaledit’s robust metadata capabilities allow brands to easily organize and enrich legacy photo and video content. All visual assets are stored in a cloud-based centralized location in order to glean the most marketing value out of all content. Contact us today about how you can speed up the production of creative visual assets for a solid go-to-market gameplan.    

A McKinsey article “The Need for Speed: Capturing Today’s Fashion Consumer” shows that high-volume retailers are searching for products to execute the insights they derive from data. Long lead times to-market are being optimized to keep up with the evolving “see it-buy it” consumer behavior. Becoming agile for these express cycles require the streamlining of the creative workflow. Globaledit allows for a quicker to-market funnel by connecting teams in their upload, edit, retouch & distribute processes. Contact us about you can speed-up your creative workflow today.

Globaledit is now empowering users to have more control over the lightbox sharing functionality with guest users. The new update tightly implements enterprise-level control.  With this recent update to globaledit, you now have the ability to password protect lightboxes shared with guest users. With recent updates to the lightbox-sharing feature, an account administrator will have the choice and power to enable or disable Guest User Login passwords. View the below screenshots to learn more about how to leverage password protected lightboxes:  Invitation to Shared Lightbox:  Registered to View Lightbox: Confirmation Email Sent: Creation of Guest User Account:     Set Up Your Password:  Login to View Lightbox:

A recent Glossy article with the headline “Fashion Brands Are Using Customization” points to the industry’s growing trend of personalized products and, subsequently, the need for the production of more creative content. Fashion brands are shaping their identity around designing pieces tailored to fit their customer’s personal style and image. Glossy article “Fashion Brands Are Using Customization” notes, “More fashion brands are following the beauty market’s lead by introducing product customization options that make each purchase feel tailor-made.” For instance, Bite Beauty’s philosophy is based on the concept of bespoke beauty. The Bite Lip Lab allows customers to discover “their own signature, unique lipstick.”  At the Bite Lip Lab, customers are able to find their perfect shade on the spot by selecting their shade, texture, finish, and flavor. Bite Beauty is one of many cosmetic brands to harness the power of the customization. The burgeoning fad for customization in the fashion and cosmetics industry is driven in part by a consumer-first marketing strategy, technology, and consumer behavior data. While personalized products and a customized consumer experience seems contemporary, these marketing and production strategies are not rooted in the digital age of the 21st Century. Forbes article “The New Size is Custom: How Retailers are Using Personalization to Win Consumer Loyalty”  explains that customization isn’t unprecedented; Shamil Hargovan, CEO custom-fit footwear company Wiivv, says “Clothing and shoes used to be individually made for their users, by cobblers or tailors and dressmakers. When mass production hit, that’s when customization was lost.” Ironically, the hype for personalization of garments can be traced back to design approaches founded by the House of Worth in the 19th Century.   The ability to meet the demand for personalized products is not simple in a world of fast fashion and mass production. “People expect their favorite brands, products and apps to be smart and on-demand, so they can live better, easier lives. This is what custom-fit products are all about,” says Shamil Hargovan. Whereas bespoke tailoring in past centuries had the luxury of time, the modern trend of custom-fit products must meet the requirements of mass production and on-demand delivery. Moore in her recent Glossy article expounds on the challenges: “Fashion brands offering custom orders have to find a way to integrate one-off orders into their supply chain management and logistics workflows, all while considering its impact on production time and delivery as it relates to the overall customer experience.” The option for customized orders also generates the need for the production of more creative content across the brands’ website and social media platforms. All birds, a company designing environmentally friendly footwear, offers the same style of shoe in multiple colors to fit their customer’s personal style. The look in multiple colors requires more visual assets to be created for the customer to visualize how the shoe looks in that particular color. Louis Vuitton’s launch of the “Personalization Collection for Women” and “Mon Monogram Collection for Women” calls for more creative content, with additional visuals of how the purse would appear in 34-plus colors for both exterior and interior lining along with the placement of the monogram. With the growing trend of customization and the need for more creative content, the importance and structure of creative operations continues to grow. Creative operations must be able to produce more visual assets for custom products seamlessly and deliver them in a timely manner. The need to improve workflows for efficiency and acceleration is vital to generate vast amounts of creative content showcasing personalization. Learn more about how your brand can stay competitive with customization and the efficient production of visual assets.  

Many brands are attempting to publish more creative content to meet marketing demands through in-house agencies. An ANA study finds, “Nearly 80 percent of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) members have some form of in-house agency.” ANA CEO Bob Liodice has noted, “Traditional agencies are becoming increasingly challenged as marketers move more work in-house while encouraging their external agencies to provide differentiated services and increased value.” While there is a dramatic shift away from traditional agencies, in-house agencies are facing challenges, particularly within the context of the fast-paced, complex marketing strategies of today. McAteer points out, “The biggest challenges for in-house agencies are related to managing growth. Specifically, the two top challenges are managing workflow (increased projects) and efficiently managing resources.” Traditional agencies should take note of the in-house agencies’ weaknesses and play them to their advantage. Forbes article “As In-House Agencies Become the Norm, The Opportunities For Outside Agencies Evolve” recognizes the new possibilities for traditional agencies, in spite of the recent growth of in-house departments. The article notes that “talent pool, staying abreast of trends, the informality of client relationships, and strategic acumen” are issues in-house agencies face on a daily basis and adds “every one of those are opportunities for individual outside agencies.” Traditional agencies should transform their competitor’s weaknesses into their strengths. If traditional agencies can provide differentiated services and increased value and enhance their efficiency and productivity, they can win the battle against in-house agencies. A creative asset management such as gloabledit can help in-house and traditional agencies manage workflow, increased projects, and efficiently manage resources. Learn more about how your agency can overcome the creative content demands of today and beat the competition, whether you are an in-house or traditional agency.

Meet Today’s Creative Content Challenge Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, the leaders of original content production, intend to maximize their growth of original content production in 2019. Past success with original content only calls for more original content creation.  According to a recent Variety article, Netflix’s CFO David Wells commented, “Let’s continue to add content–it’s working, it’s driving growth.”Growth for these leaders is measured outside of revenue; unique viewership is key. To support attracting more unique viewers across a growing original content collection these studios need to invest heavily in marketing. If media and entertainment leaders want to win the battle for viewers they need to pump out promotional content faster than their competitors and aggressively promote it across all marketing channels. The recent success of Netflix’s Bird Box is proof of the power of early and heavy advertising for new releases. To successfully execute advertisements, leaders must remove obstacles that slow them down when managing unit and gallery photography for key art. Obstacle 1: Inefficient Talent Approvals One of the most crucial parts to releasing key art for marketing and promotional purposes is the talent approval process. It is important for the talent to have their images sent to them in a secure and timely manner. Additionally, it is crucial to have technology that can easily track the amount of killed or approved images made by any given talent. A platform that can create a unique image gallery with precise ratios of approvals and kills efficiently moves the correct visual assets into the next step in the asset lifecycle, in turn slashing the production time of promotional content. Obstacle 2: Ineffective Searches for Creative Assets The key to producing promotional content quickly is finding the correct images you need, with specific actors, scenes, movies, etc, and ensuring you have the right to use them for that particular media. Locating the right visual asset for a certain channel and campaign in a mounting pile of images can be akin to finding a needle in a haystack. If metadata is applied to each photo, with technology, searching and finding the right image is a seamless experience. We are just at the beginning of all studios truly reaping the benefit of leveraging metadata to improve processes and enhance the security of visual assets. Obstacle 3: Disconnected Collaboration Creating high-quality primary artwork used across all ads and promotions for a motion picture can be a tedious process when lacking a creative workflow process. Many details from the font of the title to the portrayal of the actors must be determined and approved by various key players. Without a creative collaboration management system, conflicting opinions on visual designs, fonts, scenes, actors, etc. can lengthen production time, or cause an entire advertising campaign to be canceled because timely release deadlines cannot be met. Bring a Technology Focus to Drive Growth With an effective creative workflow management system in place, media and entertainment studios can outshine their competitors and win over viewers. Learn more about how a creative asset management system can enhance efficiency and drive growth for media and entertainment brands.  

A Creative Asset Management platform (CAM) accelerates and enhances visual assets that will be leveraged downstream in marketing efforts. The markup and review functionality allows for markups and comments to be made on the individual images for the retouchers. Approved assets can then be sent to the retoucher securely with specific asset rights, controlling the ability to download the content and how long it is available.  Without a CAM, such as globaledit, retouching the wrong assets or having unapproved images released to market might become an all-too-familiar scenario. Enhanced efficiency upstream in the creative process greatly impacts the asset value downstream when used by marketing teams. Product metadata is critical to marketing teams executing high-level marketing strategies such as omnichannel marketing, multi-channel, or AI customer experience strategies. In fact, the real driver behind successful AI strategy is the creative team capturing and driving the influence of product metadata during production and post-production. Likewise, for an omnichannel approach, product metadata captured during the production phase is vital to searching and locating specific visual asset for the appropriate channel in an efficient manner.   Metadata historically has been considered a time-consuming, tedious process that is the domain of an administrative librarian. With a CAM, metadata is ingested from other systems, reducing the risk of manual error and enhancing efficiency. A CAM allows for asset ingestion and metadata extraction and enrichment to be an unobtrusive part of the creative workflow. Automation of tasks such as cataloging assets and transformations for specific applications allow for increased productivity.   If you do not have a Creative Asset Management System in place, you run the risk of having poor product metadata or no metadata, making advanced marketing strategies such as omnichannel marketing, multi-channel marketing, or AI near impossible. Additionally, without a CAM, retouching the wrong assets or having unapproved images leak into the market may become a commonplace issue. When disregarding the importance of accuracy and efficiency downstream in the creative process, the visual assets upstream when used by marketing teams are greatly at risk. Remember C comes before D. To avoid inaccuracy and inefficiency throughout the lifestyle of visual assets, see how creatives like yourself, are getting to know CAM. Discover  CAM   SaveSave SaveSave SaveSave SaveSave

Meet Today’s Creative Content Challenge The demand for visual content across all industries is putting a spotlight on creative teams to bear the brunt of supply and demand. Creative content production is increasing as CMOs realize the importance of investing in strategies such as omnichannel and multichannel marketing, visual commerce/shoppable social, and AI customer experience. These strategies call for a vast amount of highly optimized creative content to be produced under a tight turnaround. Technology is key to successfully executing visual content strategies. When it comes to searching for product photo production technology a DAM or Digital Asset Management software may populate in your search results. Although, a Digital Asset Management is about the final approved assets along with usage rights amongst other permissions it should never be confused or substituted with a Creative Asset Management (CAM). A CAM is a creative management workflow platform designed for the processes and workflows of creative and production teams. It’s simple, C comes before D; CAM is necessary at the beginning of a creative asset lifecycle when there is a massive volume of content. In addition to being critical at the start of creative production, a Creative Asset Management can also be used throughout the entire processes and workflows for creative and production teams. The volume of content at the start of an asset lifecycle is vastly different from the amount of content that ends up in a Digital Asset Management. Digital Asset Management technology companies report that their customers store around 39,000 assets in their Digital Asset Management platform. With a Creative Asset Management platform (CAM), the average customer can upload 1M+ visual assets; 39% of the assets stored in a Digital Asset Management on average. It is necessary to have technology specifically designed to manage the volume and processes related to photo and video production at the beginning of the creative process to arrive at your end goal of finalizing creative content faster. Efficiency and effectiveness at the start of the asset lifestyle are critical to deploying highly optimized content across multiple channels and marketing strategies. A CAM will create the efficiency and effectiveness you need.  Get Started with a  CAM. P.S. Stay in tune for our next post to learn exactly how a CAM creates efficiency and accuracy throughout the photo production process.  Learn more about our products here: globaledit Launches New Digital Asset Management Platform to Help Creative & Marketing Teams Accelerate Creative Production or DAM or WIP?

  A Key Metric In Today’s Photo Production ‘Time-to-site’ is becoming an increasingly throttled target within eComm photo and video production. Brands need content to be produced and published faster and faster, without compromise of quality in order to stay ahead of the buying patterns of a fickle consumer base. In a recent Glossy article, Fabletics Co-CEO Adam Goldenberg emphasized, “Speed is key to the next phase of growth as Fabletics looks to minimize its production window from a nine- to 12-week cycle down to a six- to eight-week cycle by early next year. A lot relies on newness, since customers come back each month and decide if they want to buy something or not.”   As reducing time-to-site becomes cemented in a top-down corporate strategy, creative teams must find ways to accelerate their visual production, hunting efficiencies and effective processes along the way. Here are two recommended strategies. Efficiency: Remove manual, time-consuming tasks in favor of automation whenever possible We’ve been there…production days on-set can feel like they stretch on forever – all you want to do is go home, but you still have to format, backup, and distribute all of the photos from the day’s shoot so that your team members can see the progress made that day. This distribution is sometimes the most focus-intensive as it represents the presentation of content to stakeholders (including clients and/or upper management). “Did we get everything we needed? Have I sent every required asset?” Fatigue at this stage can increase the potential of human errors which is unacceptable and, most importantly, can be avoided. Get away from manual uploads and file reconciliation. Creative asset management platforms, like globaledit, can tether to capture stations and automatically upload content for access to other stakeholders in synch with your capture process. If you capture products by SKU or ‘look’, make sure your distribution platform is cloud-based, can mirror the folder structure into which you capture, and transfer any ratings or metadata captured on set.  As a result, you don’t have to worry about uploading, sharing, and communicating progress. The moment you capture or process, it gets to the people who need to get their eyes on it, wherever they are. You can now use that time to complete other creative tasks. Effectiveness: Improve collaboration strategies to the language of the medium Disconnected, non-standardized communication through production slows things down and increases liability. Comment-based email or text messaging is probably one of the worst means of providing input to retouchers, yet it is still heavily utilized.  You may have heard the phrase “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture”. The point is to use the nuances of the medium and stay in its space for true effectiveness. In the case of visual imagery, communicate notes visually. Text comments require subjective interpretation and lead to additional rounds of revisions that eat up valuable post-production timelines. Find a creative asset management platform which provides a means of consolidating comments and callouts visually and records all user input over the history of the asset’s lifecyle, so when you look at an image you know exactly what needs to be done, who offered what feedback and when. Visual markups provide crystal clear direction and social media methodology such as ‘@mentions’ allow you to bring user attention to the asset, not the asset to the user. CAM: Creative Asset Management Platforms Hyper-sensitivity of ‘time-to-site’ has incentivized brands’ use and prioritization of  CAM platforms, such as globaledit, to track and accelerate their photo and video production. There are a number of ways through which globaledit removes the manual, disconnected obstacles commonly found in creative production. If time-to-site matters to your brand, we can help. Fill out our contact us form and we’ll be in touch in less than an hour.

Homeless World Cup organizes tournaments for the homeless all around the world. The nonprofit has over 450 locations, reaching 100,000 homeless people every year. Each year, their network of street football partners picks more than 500 players to compete in the annual Homeless World Cup tournament.  In addition to inspiring marginalized people around the world, the Homeless World Cup aims to challenge public’s perceptions of homelessness. Images of the players play a large role in subverting pernicious stereotypes surrounding homelessness.  Volunteer photographers from all around the world work to capture empowering photos of the players. With the many photos streaming in from around the world, the Homeless World Cup realized they needed a platform for organization and an improved workflow. Globaledit’s online photo management software allows photographers from all over the world to upload their photos to one central location from anywhere, anytime. The nonprofit can then access and view all the images quickly after international photographers have uploaded them. For an enhanced organization, each photographer creates and maintains their own folder in globaledit. The advanced folder structure in globaledit permits the nonprofit to have a solid understanding of which images are uploaded by which photographer. Globaledit’s metadata schema further provides the nonprofit with valuable asset information such as the date, players, game, background story etc. The ability to search and find photos related to a specific event, such as a game is now simple. This data gold allows the needle in the haystack to be quickly spotted. With gloabledit, the Homeless World Cup can find the precise images they need to push out on their social channels efficiently. Another feature of globaledit that has impacted the organization’s creative production is the star ratings and approval functionality. Globaledit’s star ratings assists the nonprofit in selecting the best images that convey compelling stories and portray the players in a heroic manner. The nonprofit is then able to send their favorite selects securely via a lightbox to the photographers and players, enhancing the production process. With globaledit’s accelerated photo workflow, the nonprofit is then able to share these compelling images of the players via social media shortly after the game.   If you’re also working with internationally-based or dispersed teams or simply interested in creating efficiencies in your photo production, then let’s talk. Photo Credits: Daniel Lipinski

Nike recently announced that they plan to release new features in their app that will allow consumers to shop the look of mannequins in their stores. Nike’s App at Retail will let shoppers instantly access and shop a “head-to-toe look,” after scanning a QR code at the base of in-store mannequins. For this enriched consumer experience, detailed product information must be associated with photos, so the app can search, retrieve and deliver the right products. It is product information or metadata that informs these recommendation engines to search and find the correct assets. So much of this data gold can be captured during the photo production process. Creative Asset Management (CAM) platforms, such as globaledit, ingest, append, and embed rich product information into the image itself. The entire process of capturing metadata is automated, eliminating manual time-consuming tasks. Those in creative production need to adapt, update workflows, and adopt such technology. Without this technology, countless hours are lost to manually organizing or re-keying that product information in retroactively. This not only creates inefficiency but also makes room for manual error. If brands, like Nike, want to truly deliver unparalleled in-app experiences they need to recognize the value that is being generated in the early stages of an asset’s life-cycle. They must empower their creative teams, via technology, to effectively capture and pass product metadata. If you’re ready to adapt and adopt technology, we should talk.

  A proliferation of research and articles show that the demand for creative content has significantly increased over the years. As a result, traditional approaches to creative content production have shifted. Previously, companies allocated hefty sums of money to taking a few high-quality shots for a single consumer touch point. Now modern-day consumption models call for a vast amount of content production across various digital platforms.    An article in Glossy “How fashion creative is keeping space with production” highlights the demand vs. capacity issue present in the creative production process. It makes evident that brands now face the struggle of depending on a single photoshoot to generate all of the content to cover multiple digital platforms. With this new approach comes new creative challenges. There are more people on set, and each has their own content creation needs based on the channels they support. Photographers and producers, more now than ever, need the proper tools and technology to fuel effective communication and collaboration during production and post-production. Which photos are for what channels? With the increased demand for photography the sheer volume of assets coming out of production has dramatically increased. Searching and finding specific visual assets for specific channels can be a nightmare. But with the proper technology and processes, metadata captured during production empowers you to find that needle in the haystack. Creative asset management platforms, like globaledit, allow you to ingest and append metadata to images, so you can easily filter and find the content you need. For example, you could create a rich metadata schema that includes channel. The ability to locate the precise image for its respective channel slashes time within the production process. Who said that? Online creative workflow management software also meets the challenge of having multiple key players involved in the creative production process. Globaledit’s online collaboration tools accelerate creative teams’ productivity. Powerful tools allow for comments, markups, and ratings to be made on individual assets in real-time. All activity is tracked, ensuring a historical record of team members’ changes and edits. Collaboration also is enhanced with globaledit’s secure, centralized cloud-based library, accessible from anywhere, at any time. One central location of all visual assets allows teams to optimize their workflow speed and efficiency. Investing in creative production platforms that aggregate and optimize metadata at multiple steps in the production process is invaluable to brand managers, producers, and creative directors, who are stuck in the trenches of creating content. Discover how globaledit can streamline your production workflow and overcome the production challenges of today.

By David Iscove, Manager of Solution Architecture and Implementation at globaledit AI isn’t a buzzword anymore, it is a powerful marketing tool that brands like TUMI are implementing to drive personalization and increase online conversions. Deep machine learning and analysis of consumer trends allow brands to process customer data across channels in order to refine targeting, tailor messaging, and offer product recommendations with greater personalization. AI-driven analytics are impacting the customer experience dramatically, but what is the glue that connects a person’s shopping interest or ‘likes’ to the appropriate product or product range? The answer lies within our favorite topic…metadata! For every aspect of consumer trends that AI interprets, it needs organized product data to make the perfect recommendation. In this way, brands actively drive customers to ‘discover’ products instead of passively delivering only the results of a specific customer search. If a brand is not putting effort into optimizing their product metadata, they limit their ability to offer relevant, alternate recommendations and their programs ultimately fall flat based on only servicing a ‘passive’ search. By passive, I mean the results of a direct query by the user. In this way, a search for ‘SKU123’ only returns the result of ‘SKU123’. With relevant product metadata actively fueling consumer algorithms on the backend, a search for ‘SKU123’ can return ‘SKU123’, ‘SKU123a’, ‘SKU123b’, even ‘SKU124’ (if appropriate). More product metadata = more SKUs availability to consumers = more conversions It saddens us that product metadata doesn’t get the same visibility as “cool” new consumer engagement toys labeled under the AI banner. This is partly due to the fact that metadata has historically been considered the domain of the stuffy administrative librarian. The bottom line is that these headline-grabbing AI strategies wouldn’t be possible without product metadata and it is the creative teams that are the ones best suited to capture and drive the influence of this information during production and post production. There is a ton of first-hand knowledge that only creatives have access to that, if applied, can empower marketers to do a lot more than just search and find assets. The creative team is the real driver behind successful AI strategy. In our last masterclass, we dove deep into specific techniques creatives can use to capture rich product-driven metadata for use downstream. The most forward-thinking brands are leveraging this data to analyze how specific creative operations decisions directly drive conversions. In doing so, they learn how to optimize future eCommerce production towards greater efficiency and effectiveness, turning what seemed like a disconnected workflow into valuable data. This is what we call eComm gold. If you’re a creative professional wanting to harness this power, I highly recommend you watch our last masterclass. I dive into some of the specific techniques that you can perform to capture and enrich your workflow with product-driven metadata. It’s time to make the header of the file just as important as the visual payload. I’ll explain that in greater depth in an upcoming blog.

Hey creative community! What will you be doing on May 3rd – 4th? Globaledit will be attending the Henry Stewart DAM event in NYC: the world’s largest conference dedicated to Digital Asset Management and Creative Operations. We think you should join us and here is why… DAM NY 2018 will feature 100+ speakers and 60+ sessions covering topics like Metadata, Integration, AI, Automation, Creative Operations, Corporate Archives, Video Workflow, Rights Management, Semantics, Governance. Want another reason? Co-located at the DAM NY event, on May 3rd, is the Creative Operations. It is a great opportunity to network with your creative community and share best practices. Our very own creative operations guru, David Iscove, is participating in a very exciting panel “What’s in your Creative Ops Toolbox?” If you’re serious about Creative Operations, this is an event that can’t be missed. You will also have a chance to check out a live demo of globaledit, the essential creative collaboration platform, at our booth! See for yourself why brands like Asics, Rent the Runway, boohoo and Warby Parker have made investments in tech to create efficiencies in their photo production processes. Finally, don’t forget to use the code GLOBALEDIT100 to save $100 on your registration! SESSIONS NOT TO MISS: MAY 3rd, 9:40 AM – 10:10 AM – David Iscove’s TechLab   How to sync capture software to embed and deliver custom metadata into your DAM In this TechLab, David Iscove, Solution Architect for globaledit, will show you strategies to collect custom metadata prior to the point of capture in order to embed and deliver valuable product data to downstream users of a DAM. MAY 3rd, 11:20 AM – 12:20 PM – Panel with David Iscove What’s in your Creative Ops Toolbox? A Scenario-Based Approach Co-panelist: Lauren Luscombe, Creative Resource Director, Netspend Moderator: Kevin Brucato, VP, Creative Operations, Prudential The panel will use a scenario-based format to go behind the curtain and explore which tools the panelists identified as must haves for their Creative Ops Toolbox.

By David Iscove, Manager of Solution Architecture and Implementation at globaledit The fast-fashion brand first jumped into AI-driven image recognition to make alternative recommendations to customers who were searching for items which were out of stock. Boohoo.com has since gone through seven months of refinement and have advanced their search technology to allow consumers the ability to upload a picture themselves which identifies similar items in Boohoo’s catalog. The backend of this consumer-facing AI tool depends on deep metadata tagging of each product within their inventory to “match” the images uploaded by consumers. As we can see in this and other B2C models, metadata, now more than ever, is playing an invaluable role in the consumer experience. Product information which is associated with eComm photography makes assets smart and identifiable, fueling innovations like AI-driven visual search, image recognition, machine learning, and online recommendations, such as market trends like “shop the look”. The unfortunate truth is that brands are overlooking opportunities to add this valuable metadata during the production process. This is because the process of capturing this data-gold has traditionally been extremely manual and time consuming. However, with the right tools and technology, metadata enrichment can be automated, seamlessly transferring metadata from capture software to work-in-progress creative tools to asset management platforms, and ultimately into your consumer-facing ecommerce platform. Innovative creative professionals are using globaledit in their photography production process to manage the ingest and enrichment of metadata from capture software platforms like Capture One and Lightroom. Globaledit’s automated enrichment process streamlines productivity, providing creatives the ability to scale to meet the increasing demand for content which is optimized for today’s consumption models. When it comes to creating efficiencies in the creative production process, this is just the tip of the iceberg. See for yourself how globaledit is changing the way modern creative professionals collaborate.

It seems all we hear about today is how Amazon is doing everything in retail perfectly. We’re all trying to find ways to be more like Amazon. But what is it that they’re doing so well? The answer: They have created an exceptional customer experience. But it goes beyond Prime and free returns. Amazon is continually investing in new ways to enhance a customer’s interaction with their brand. As reported in the New York Times, Amazon plans to “(…) pour money into photography to give internet shoppers a better representation of garments (…)”. They know that providing more photos will give people more buying information, improving the customer experience, and as a result increase purchases. To this point, brands spend millions on strategies that are aimed at improving the experience one has with their brand. They test websites, optimize purchase paths and deliver personalized experiences across all channels, but rarely think about how to enhance the process that delivers them the valuable assets that empower these strategies: Photo and video content. Think about this like a supply chain. E-comm teams are requesting more shots per SKU, social teams continually need new and fresh content and email teams require unique images for different customer segments. The demand for photos has never been greater, and creatives are running at capacity. They can incrementally increase production by focusing on people and processes, but without technology, they are at a disadvantage. It has become critical for brands to invest in technology that makes production more efficient, allowing creative teams to deliver more assets while also accelerating the process. The ability to create more, faster, in a scalable and repeatable fashion is a competitive advantage that gets a brand to market more quickly. And with more retail brands going bankrupt, or worse out of business, it has become a business imperative to move faster and improve the customer experience. Brands must invest in technology, for their creatives, to remove the obstacles that slow production down. There are unique roadblocks at each stage of the creative process (upload & ingest, review & approve, distribute & share, search & retrieve) so having a comprehensive work-in-progress solution is essential to making production more effective. This technology automates manual, repetitive and time-consuming tasks that creatives are wasting time on when they could be creating. It provides visibility for all stakeholders into where projects are in the process. Collaboration and communication are optimized by consolidating interactions, notes, comments, and markups. Asset histories deliver valuable information into the who, when and why behind a photo. This level of efficiency keeps visual assets moving through the supply chain, getting them to the internal customer (marketing, e-comm, social, brand, store teams) faster. In turn, the external customer has an improved experience with the brand impacting purchases, loyalty, and LTV. Leading brands, like Theory, Lucky Brand, and Smashbox Cosmetics have invested in such platforms, but not all solutions are created equally. To learn why globaledit is the clear choice to accelerate creative production read our blog, “Built for creatives, by creatives”.

Does your brand’s demand for visual content exceed your production team’s capacity? Does the combination of volume and speed have you looking for better ways to manage post-production workflows? If you are a creative on a daily hunt for answers to these pressing questions, join globaledit at the Digital Assets & Content Leadership Exchange presented by Insight Exchange Network on January 22 – 24, 2018 in New York City as we explore the solutions and challenges faced by the creative ops community today. The event will explore two parts of the creative process: strategy & monetization and implementation & stewardship. Network with us, share experiences and hear stories from industry experts at brands like Revlon Cosmetics, NBCUniversal, Hasbro, Facebook, World Wildlife Fund and many more. Additionally, don’t miss out on two presentations from our thought leaders: January 22, 2018 – 9:10 AM   Mathieu Champigny, CEO at globaledit Today’s digital commerce requires creative production to move faster, and for digital assets to be made smarter. Creative production leaders are now tasked with designing and implementing digital content management solutions with the future in mind, from smart digital assets to the breakthrough of Artificial Intelligence. Mathieu will explore the topics of digital creative asset production challenges, review industry-leading practices and future technologies. January 23, 2018 – 9:35 AM David Iscove, Creative Production Solution Architect at globaledit In today’s fast-paced creative production environments, metadata has more value than ever before, enabling automation to accelerate your time to market and analytics to inform future creative ROI. But unlike the traditional approach to administrative and descriptive metadata where enrichment occurred post asset creation, new sources of relevant data, such as product and sample information, can be captured upstream prior to the creation of an asset to then feed downstream value. David will show you how to identify and capture both this valuable upstream product information and downstream creative feedback to provide more value and automation to your creative assets as they move to market. To learn more about the event, visit the Insight Exchange Network website. Use the discount code GE200 for $200 off this event until 1/22/18  

Top brands, leading organizations, and fast-growing startups are investing in creative operations to scale and fuel growth. That’s why the Henry Stewart Events is hosting their Creative Operations event in Los Angeles, co-located at the Henry Stewart DAM LA 2017. This gathering is a great opportunity for the creative ops community to network with their peers, share experiences and learn best practices from industry experts with frontline experience. Brands like HBO, The Coca-Cola Company, Farfetch, Nickelodeon, and Beachbody will be in attendance. In 2003 globaledit release the very first cloud-based collaboration platform offering essential work-in-progress features to create efficiencies in creative production workflows and processes. We are pioneers on creative operations and this is why we are honored to be participating in several sessions during the Creative Operations Conference in LA on November 14, 2017. We look forward to seeing you at one or all of our sessions. Segmenting hi-res and low-res workflows to accelerate creative production What is in your creative ops toolbox Securing buy-in for investments in creative ops technology For more details visit the Henry Stewart DAM conference website. Use the discount code GLOBALEDIT100 to save $100. REGISTER NOW. Here are the details of our panels: Tuesday, November 14, 10:20-10:50 am PDT   Accelerate Creative Operations: Segmenting Hi-Res and Lo-Res Workflows Segmenting your hi-res and lo-res workflows can accelerate your review and approval, post-production processes, and creative asset delivery. Join David Iscove, Creative Production Solution Architecture & Implementation Manager, to learn real-world techniques and dive deeper into the specifics of creative production. David Iscove is a seasoned professional with 10+ years experiences as a digital archivist, workflow solutions architect and asset manager at companies such as Activision Blizzard, EMI, and Universal Music Group. ************************************ Tuesday, November 14, 2:20-3:40 pm PDT What’s in your Creative Ops Toolbox? An Interactive Session In today’s creative environment, where the stakes are high and the challenges are real, each of us needs our Creative Ops Toolbox to get the work done. Every successful marketing and creative leader has their own key “tools” which help them sort through the complexity that modern-day creative execution demands. Many think of these as their “Swiss army knife for success”. Automated Workflow, Data Analysis, Agile Methodology, and Business Acumen are a few examples of the “tools” that these leaders depend on to be successful. In this interactive panel discussion, we will go behind the curtain and explore which tools these industry professionals have identified as must-haves for their Creative Ops Toolbox. These tools include: Technology for identifying and overcoming pitfalls in your creative process Creative harmony through a balance of technology, process, and business acumen Meaningful reports and dashboards drawn from a set of data A standardized intake process to drive efficiencies in your workflow Agile project management which keeps your processes nimble Real-time content production. What you need in order to keep up. Augmented and Virtual Reality, what’s next on the horizon? Change Management: Embrace the change Moderator: Kevin Brucato, VP, Creative Operations, Prudential Panelists include: Clair Carter-Ginn, Partner, Forecast Carin Forman, Director, Digital Photo Services, Home Box Office, Inc. David Iscove, Manager, Solution Architecture & Implementation, globaledit

Today’s creative production team must produce more photos, faster, with fewer resources. Rising to this challenge entails transforming the creative production process. In this second session of our online masterclass series, we address a radical new vision for photo production, based on the concept of ‘smarter assets’ produced through automated metadata tagging. This masterclass covers: Automating metadata to enable ‘smarter assets’ through multiple platforms in the creative production process How to use ‘smarter assets’ to accelerate creative production Implementation guidelines for a ‘smarter asset’ workflow for high volume photo production WATCH MASTERCLASS > Past & upcoming classes: Segmenting hi-res and low-res workflows Building a best-in-breed creative production tech stack: Understanding the nuance differences between systems The metadata holy grail: Designing a metadata schema for immediate communication and long-term access

When creative professionals are evaluating technology, such as a work-in-progress platform (often also referred to as a collaboration platform), one of the questions they need to ask is, “who developed the product?” Was it someone who had a “great” idea one day, a product manager who did a handful of prospect interviews, or was it someone who would actually use the product himself? Was it someone who was feeling actual pain, and found a way to solve it? While each approach can provide value, there are varying degrees of value that tech can provide. Understanding the history behind who developed your solution, and why, can reveal the differences between a tool that just ‘does the job’ versus a tool that you feel was designed for your exact needs. Globaledit’s creative collaboration platform was developed by creatives for creatives. Our history as the pioneers in creative production explains why we’re the right choice for driving efficiencies that accelerate the creative process. We continually strive to provide acceleration tools to increase the capacity of creative teams, ensuring you never miss a deadline. Our History 1991: Impact Digital founded Founder Steve Kalalian and Janet Mayfield start the company under Impact Digital, a two-person graphic design team. 1996: Impact Digital Retouching and Pre-Press launched Impact Digital specializes in retouching and pre-press for high-end photography and fashion. 2001: Industrial Color founded Industrial Color is established to offer the first digital capture packages in the industry, setting the new standard for digital production. 2002: Acquisition of Fast Ashley Studios Industrial Color expands to operate Fast Ashleys Studios, Brooklyn’s premier full-service photo studio and equipment rental center. 2003: globaledit® launched Industrial Color launches globaledit®, a web-based production workflow platform for creative teams. The SaaS platform provides a simple, powerful tool to streamline the creative process from capture to distribution. 2003: Los Angeles offices Industrial Color opens offices in Los Angeles. 2004: Miami offices Industrial Color expands, opening offices in Miami. 2006: globaledit® development brought in-house Globaledit launches its in-house software development and data center to push workflow innovation and hosted services. 2007: CG Division launched Industrial Color and Impact Digital launch a CG division to offer new creative technology for print and video clients. 2008: Motion capture and post-production Industrial Color launches video capture and post-production services. 2010: globaledit® iOS app As Apple launches the first iPad, globaledit® simultaneously releases its globaledit App for iOS, ushering in the first mobile production workflow platform. 2012: Industrial Color Brands created The brand portfolio is consolidated into a new entity: Industrial Color Brands, a family of integrated creative production services. 2015: Smashbox Studios relaunched Industrial Color Brands partners with Smashbox Cosmetics to renovate and operate the legendary Smashbox Studios in LA. 2016: Acquisition of eBay Studios Industrial Color Brands acquired eBay studios in order to expand services for eCommerce clients. The Tribeca office added two new studios to its footprint and with the acquisition, Industrial Color Brands gained studios in Pennsylvania and Kentucky. So as you can see we’re not simply a technology provider, we are your peer. We’ve been first to market across several areas of creative production and have earned our reputation as pioneers. But while we are creatives, we don’t think we know it all. Our customers, over 4,000 users, have been providing us with feedback about their pain points and challenges which have been the drivers of ongoing innovation. That is the value of globaledit®. Technology for creatives designed and built by creatives.

This year globaledit attended fantastic creative operations conference both on the West and East Coast. One of the main feedback we received is that creative production professionals were yearning for the chance to dive deeper into many topics discussed. As a result, our Masterclass Series was born. We will be putting on a series of online masterclasses led by experts in the field of creative operations. The first session will be: Segmenting hi-res and low-res workflows to accelerate review and approval, post-production processes, and delivery. REGISTER NOW > Upcoming classes: Leveraging metadata to enable ‘smart assets’ through multiple platforms in the creative production process. Building a best-in-breed creative production tech stack: Understanding the nuance differences between systems. The metadata holy grail: Designing a metadata schema for immediate communication and long-term access.  

Creative Operations is in demand. An increasing number of brands and organizations across all sectors are recognizing the importance of “creative operations” – the tools, systems, and methods that maximize the productivity of “creative staff”. That’s why the Henry Stewart Events launched a conference dedicated to Creative Operations, co-located at Digital Asset Management New York. This is a great opportunity for every member of the Creative Operations Community to meet with their peers, share experiences and hear from a leading team of experts with hands-on, frontline experience of the latest thinking, best practices and best-in-class solutions necessary for ensuring end-to-end solutions. We’re creative ops veterans: Since 2003, we’ve been constantly innovating to help our customers – some of the top brands, retailers, media and entertainment companies, and advertising agencies, accelerate creative production. This is why we chose to sponsor the Creative Operations Conference co-located at Henry Stewart DAM Event. This year, we are thrilled to announce that our CEO Steve Kalalian will deliver an insightful talk entitled “Darwinism in Creative Operations” (Thursday, May 11 at 12:35 pm EST). Also, Sandie Roberts, VP of Content & Technology Operations at Rodale, will join us for our TechLab session to discuss how she uses technology to streamline ingestion and optimize content for downstream delivery and usage (Thursday, May 11 at 9:40 am EST). We hope to see you there! Use the discount code GLOBALEDIT100 to save $100. Register now. Here are the details of our panels: Thursday, May 11, 9:40-10:10 am EST Accelerate Creative Operations: Capturing Assets and Metadata Upstream Large-scale creative operations must effectively manage incoming content from multiple sources, teams, and partners. To do this right, brands are leveraging technology: Platforms that are flexible enough to provide multiple options for ingest, yet powerful enough to enforce an organization’s delivery requirements, often in the form of metadata enrichment/validation or file name convention rules. In this session, Sandie Roberts, VP of Content & Technology Operations at Rodale, will discuss how she uses technology to streamline ingestion and optimize content for downstream delivery and usage. Sandie Roberts, VP of Content & Technology Operations, Rodale David Iscove, Creative Operations Specialist, globaledit ************************************ Thursday, May 11, 12:35-12:50 pm EST Darwinism in Creative Operations Creative Operations has changed tremendously over the past 20 years. Those who do not evolve, by inheriting superior traits, will inevitably become extinct. Those who do will prosper from the process of natural selection. Join Steve Kalalian, CEO of Industrial Color Brands, to learn about the single most important evolutionary trait of successful creative groups: acceleration.

By David Iscove, Creative Operations Specialist at globaledit Eric Fulmer of ShotFlow One (Capture Integration) is one of the sharpest minds within the fashion photography industry. I recently read an article he wrote that referenced the massive shift that the fashion industry has undergone in recent years, known as the “Zara Effect”. For those not familiar, Zara has set the benchmark in reducing time to market in that they “can design, produce, and deliver a new garment and put it on display in its stores worldwide in a mere 15 days”. This represents a massive acceleration of previous development cycles which once spanned seasons, then months, weeks, and now days. This is the new race that modern brands must run in order to compete and, ultimately, survive. To compete, brands must transform their overall approach to creative production and identify any gaps that have the potential to force delays. And, as Fulmer states, “(…) there really are only three levers available to pull.” People Process Technology The culture must be willing to analyze their processes and systems objectively.  To be blunt, learn to accelerate your creative production, and, in so doing, reduce your time to market, or die. But proper acceleration has two benchmarks – efficiency and effectiveness. People often confuse them, but they are very different. Efficiency is about speed, while effectiveness is about quality. If you accelerate, yet produce low quality visual assets you have not improved your creative production process. How To Create Efficiency And Effectiveness With Technology At present, moving to a cloud-based creative production collaboration platform is the most impactful way to drive both efficiency and effectiveness. It creates an accessible “single source of truth”, for all of your visual assets. But cloud access and redundancy is just the starting point. In-app collaboration tools such as markups, commenting, or @mentions to other stakeholders are essential in reducing  friction by allowing all communication to occur  directly within the same interface used for file access and sharing. And this collaboration strategy must be mobile to respond to the world we live in so that collaboration can happen from anywhere and on any device. Each connected system must inherit any input previously made on an asset, picking up and displaying metadata or ratings made on other systems. This ‘linking’ of asset inheritance provides full business continuity and, picking up on another concept from Fulmer, makes those assets “smart”, whereby they can inform their own process in the creative production process. And during the review process a platform should drive efficiency with fast previews, regardless of the file size or format. This is a key differentiator in the effectiveness between a visual asset management platform and simple online storage.  You should be able to view those images in whatever visually appealing layout you require – one at a time with deep zoom, full screen, contact sheet, list or side-by-side comparison. And as you add markups, annotations and comments the history of that asset becomes compiled, searchable, and forever accessible, providing visibility into the production lifecycle of each image. Technology that provides these guidelines will not only improve a team’s overall efficiency, but ensure the organization’s effectiveness in going from concept to market. Let’s Dive Even Deeper Creative production and operations have forever changed due to the “Zara Effect”. That is why I am very excited to attend the first Creative Operations Exchange in San Francisco on April 10-11, 2017. I will be monitoring a panel discussion “Workflow solutions – Find the tool to boost your team’s creative process!” I hope you’ll register so we can meet face to face to dive even deeper into how technology can accelerate your creative production.

The first West Coast conference dedicated to Creative Operations is happening in San Francisco on April 10-11. This is a great opportunity for you and 200 of your peers to convene, learn, and share experiences with each other. You will learn from seasoned experts at leading brands, including Calvin Klein, Google, Amazon, Lonely Planet, Michael Kors, Oakley, Wieden & Kennedy, and many more. Since 2003, we’ve been accelerating studio production for our customers, some of the top retailers and media and entertainment companies, and we saw this event as a great opportunity to connect with the growing creative operations community. This is why we chose to sponsor it and participate in two panel discussions. Here are the details of our panels: Tuesday, April 11, 1:15-2:00PM Workflow solution – Find the tool to boost your team’s creative process!   Moderator: David Iscove, Creative Operations Specialist at globaledit Panelists: Molly Gallagher, Creative Services, Creative Operations, Consultant Yasaman Golban, Creative Operations Manager, Firewood Marketing – Google Inc. Jennifer Pentes, Senior Director, Client and Creative Services at Lonely Planet —————- Tuesday, April 11, 2:00-3:00PM Online Proofing, Review and Approval Tools Panelists: Dickson Bueno, Director of Creative Operations – Americas, HH Global Patti Fox, Creative Project Manager, Scout Steve Kalalian, CEO of Globaledit Shannon Leighton, Senior Project Manager, Global Prairie We hope to see you there! For more information on The Creative Operations Exchange 2017, visit: http://www.insightxnetwork.com/creative-operations-exchange-2017.html

On Thursday, January 26th, globaledit and Industrial Color Brands teamed up for the first 2017 Creative Operations Breakfast with Communication Arts to highlight new trends in Photography & Advertising. We were delighted to welcome Patrick Coyne, editor and designer of Communication Arts magazine. Communication Arts (CA) magazine has been the benchmark for creative excellence for nearly six decades, even as so many competitors have fallen by the wayside. One vital component of that excellence has been the magazine’s long-running annual competitions, which are judged by some of the industry’s top creative professionals. Coyne outlined the philosophy and mission guiding CA, and presented examples of the latest trends in advertising and photography, along with anecdotes and insights on how the jurors are chosen for their famed annual competitions. Coyne described the jury selection process at CA and how they select the winners. “It’s a fun and fascinating process, just to see what [the jurors] pick and how they narrow it down…” He also illustrated the types of trends they see when reviewing submissions. “Something [we see] especially in photography but also in illustration is how quickly visual trends show up.” Watched the video recording: The Creative Operations Breakfast series brings together creative leaders to address key issues and challenges faced by creative production and operations professionals today.

More, More, More In today’s eComm world, it’s not just about the brand’s own site anymore. With the rapid rise of alternative online channels for content (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.), retailers face increasing pressure to engage with both customers and prospects in new ways.   For consumers, following brands on social media is a great way to stay current with the latest trends, sales and news.  For retailers, the challenge is to craft a presence that draws those consumers in. Of course, there has to be content to support it, and with that comes the need for more from these brands: More channels to support, more content to produce, and more efficient processes. The question is: How can they achieve this without blowing up their budget, derailing their current system and watering down their brand? Fashion is Getting Faster The idea of Fast Fashion is also something that the eComm industry has been abuzz about for some time now. With the rise in opportunistic product buys to keep up with ever-changing fashion trends, retailers are finding that the production timeframe is getting shorter and shorter. What used to be a 6- to 9-month lifecycle several years ago has now turned into 12 to 8 weeks. Brands are now feeling the pressure to produce more content in a shorter period of time to remain relevant. So what does this all mean for retailers and their content creators? Well, for one thing, lots of last-minute, “squeezed-in” campaigns and shoots to promote various trends across various channels. This leads to quicker turnaround times, which inevitably calls for a workflow process that’s as streamlined as possible to ensure that clients are getting exactly what they need, right when they need it. How to Succeed in eCommerce Creative Production Here’s the thing: Trends will come and go faster than you can say “I have to have that new [insert latest style here],” but as long as your workflow process can handle it, you should have no problem navigating the ever-changing eComm landscape. Studios and content providers are constantly partnering up with production solutions to organize their photo and video assets and decrease turnaround time. Globaledit even has a mobile app that lets you review and approve content during that train ride home, making the most of your over-scheduled day. Combining strengths helps you serve your clients better, providing solid results and a positive outcome in the long run. It’s important to take a disciplined approach and map out your workflow from start to finish. This allows you to find ways to standardize key aspects of the process, such as naming conventions. Are your conventions flexible enough to be able to accommodate projects of various scopes and scales? Are you prepared to handle a last-minute request without having to resort to a manual approach? In short, can you keep up? Asking questions like this and planning out your methods in advance makes it much easier to take on pretty much anything thrown your way, avoiding a never-ending series of fire drills that waste time and suck the life out of your staff. This allows you to offer clients and/or other departments an end-to-end, automated solution to help organize their content in a usable way, which, in turn, lets them utilize said content across all different types of channels faster and more efficiently.   When it comes down to it, the better prepared you are before the requests come in, the higher the chances of seamless production, minimal disruption to your workflow and — of course — satisfied, happy clients. Check out our Ramping Up Your eCommerce Production Workflow webinar with Jim Zdancewicz, Head of Studio Services at Industrial Color Studios.

Building the Case for a New Workflow Solution Drive Transformation in your Organization Featuring Molly Gallagher, Consultant, Former VP of Marketing, Creative Services and Operations at Kenneth Cole Productions. WATCH THE WEBINAR Congratulations! You’ve identified new workflow solutions to make your creative services team more productive and deliver more content more economically. Now what? How do you convey the message that with the right tools the cost center can be transformed into a revenue engine? How do you get the resources? How do you get C-level sign off? And once the budget is in place, how do you roll it out and get broad-scale adoption? In this webinar, Molly Gallagher, Consultant, Former VP of Marketing, Creative Services and Operations at Kenneth Cole Productions, will offer strategies, tactics and tips to build the business case for a new workflow solution. That’s the best way to drive innovation and transformation, and reap the benefits accordingly. Watch this FREE webinar and learn how to: Identify the right timeframe to implement a new technology solution Communicate the need–and the enhancements possible–to decision makers Understand the potential disconnect between system users and C-level executives Develop successful strategies for rollout / adoption FEATURED SPEAKER Molly Gallagher is an accomplished executive-level creative marketer with over 15 years of industry related experience. Molly has an outstanding record of achievement in creating efficiencies and a proven track record of establishing and developing fully integrated processes, teams, systems, and calendars in order to deliver a cohesive 360 brand experience. As VP, Marketing Creative Services and Operations for Kenneth Cole Productions, she was responsible for implementing an effective department workflow. At David Yurman luxury jewelry, Molly helped to establish a creative infrastructure as well as processes and calendars upon the company’s split from its longtime creative agency. She began her career in magazine publishing at Conde Nast as a photo shoot producer for celebrity and fashion photo shoots spanning the globe. Globaledit is a cloud-based platform that empowers creative professionals to manage visual production at scale. Globaledit is part of Industrial Color Brands.  

Globaledit released a new webinar in partnership with Industrial Color Studios. Ramping Up Your eCommerce Production Workflow: How to Better Manage High-Volume Imagery As retail transactions migrate increasingly to the internet, eCommerce image production workflows have become intensely demanding and essential to the profitability of today’s merchants. In this webinar, Jim Zdancewicz, Head of Studio Services at Industrial Color Studios, illuminates the best practices for achieving the ideal high-volume image production workflow at your company. Whether your’e at an eCommerce brand, a traditional retailer, or any company wanting to improve its creative production workflow, don’t miss this special webinar! In this session you will learn: Current State: More is More Workflow Strategies Repurposing Assets Who should register: Creative Directors, Art Directors Directors of eCommerce Studio Managers Anyone interested in improving their eCommerce image production workflow ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKER: Jim Zdancewicz (aka “Jim Z”) is Head of Studio Services at Industrial Color Studios, and works out of the Pennsylvania office. Jim brings over 25 years of content production expertise, operational management and creative producing to the to the Industrial Color team. In his previous role at QVC, he led the broadcast graphics, post-production and digital imaging teams. In 2010, eBay Enterprise recruited Jim to help grow their e-commerce studio presence in the fashion industry. Jim assumed responsibility for all creative projects including creative production for eBay Enterprise’s marketing, display, e-mail and affiliate clients. Globaledit is a cloud-based platform that empowers creative professionals to manage visual production at scale. Globaledit is part of Industrial Color Brands. Industrial Color Studios is the latest addition to the Industrial Color Brands family, offering a variety of high-end services that can deliver efficiency and value for your brand’s digital and eCommerce content needs. Learn more about our products here: PIM: The Advantages of Using a Product Information Management System

For six consecutive years, The Boss Group, Cella Consulting & In-Source have teamed up to benchmark the in-house creative community. The 2016 In-house Creative Services Industry Report is full of insights, as always. How are in-house creative services teams becoming more strategic and handling their increased responsibility? What role are existing and emerging technologies playing in this transformation? And how can they be used more effectively? Mai Nozoe from alice + olivia and Brendon Derr from The Boss Group joined us Thursday, September 22 and share their insights and the implications of these for your companies and creative teams. Watch the video recording: The Creative Operations Breakfast series brings together leaders in the creative production and operations community for a casual breakfast. ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKERS Brendon Derr – VP, Enterprise Solutions, Cella Consulting and The BOSS Group As the VP, Enterprise Solutions, Brendon Derr and his teammates have helped hundreds of Fortune 1000 organizations to optimize their investments in marketing and creative resources. He has helped companies like American Express, Staples, Coca-Cola, Verizon, Chevron, and many others to build, optimize and evolve their in-house agency capabilities. Brendon has been working within the corporate creative environment for more than 15 years. Mai Nozoe – VP, Creative Services, alice + olivia Mai Nozoe joined alice + olivia in 2013 to develop their first in-house creative department. In her role, she oversees all creative branding and global image direction of brand collateral and website. Prior to her current role, Mai served as the first VP of Creative Operations for Moda Operandi where she was responsible for developing their first branding print campaign and global photo studio operations. From 2005-2012, Mai was responsible for developing the first in-house creative department at Michael Kors. Mai holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing and International Business from the Stern School of Business at NYU. She is also certified in Digital and Graphic Design from the Parsons School of Design. Globaledit is a cloud-based platform that empowers creative professionals to manage visual production at scale. Globaledit launched the Creative Operations Breakfast in 2015 to address key issues and challenges faced by creative production and operations professionals today.  

As Vice President Enterprise Solutions for BLR Holdings, Brendon Derr and his team have helped hundreds of Fortune 1000 organizations build, optimize and evolve their “in-house creative agency” operations over the past 15 years. In this interview, Brendon shares some industry insights from the sixth and latest survey benchmark for the in-house creative community from Cella/BOSS and In-Source, along with advice on how to best optimize creative resources. You can see Brendon Derr live at our next Creative Ops Breakfast, on September 22nd in New York City. Q. What common and recurring challenges are your clients facing when it comes to creative services? Operational excellence. Justifying the need for, and orchestrating the necessary people, processes and technology/tools needed in today’s creative production environment poses a huge challenge while most creative leaders are already consumed with producing great creative work. The result is many companies struggle to find the time and resources needed to organize their operations so that creative teams can produce their best work in an organized and timely manner, while maintaining the level of efficiency and cost effectiveness that they are counted upon to deliver. Specifically, the sheer variety of work being produced, along with the need to coordinate creative across many channels, has been a great challenge across the industry, particularly in the larger and more complex companies. Q. What one piece of advice do you have for companies that are looking to optimize their investments in marketing and creative resources? Don’t be a creative kingdom builder, be a value creator. The biggest and most common mistake that I’ve seen in-house creative leaders make over the years, often to the point of them losing their jobs, is to go down the road of building an ever-expanding team and pursuing an ever more sexy body of creative work for the company. To be clear, sometimes this truly is the best thing for the company and the creative team. Often though, it may not be the time for this approach, and is instead rooted in the personal aspirations of the creative team. Focus on creating value for the company first, and the kingdom will come. Focus on the kingdom first, and it may be hard for your company to see the value. Q. What do you think is the “Next Big Thing” for creative services? Near term, I see many companies beginning to nail down their big data management and technological capabilities to a level that starts to enable creative teams to develop strategies more targeted to specific segments of their customer base. Longer-term, virtual and augmented reality has the potential to be huge. It may take a few years yet to really take hold, but when these technologies gain traction with the mainstream consumer, look out! Use cases for design and content, and the associated creative skill sets required for production, will cause a talent and technological shift that may prove to be even more transformational than the advent of the web and Mobile. Brendon Derr was a guest speaker at our monthly Creative Ops Breakfast “Next Generation In-House Creative Services: Living up to the Challenge”, on September 22nd, 2016, in New York City. Watch the recording now.

We’ve all been there before. Your company’s creative production workflow process isn’t functioning quite as well as you’d like, but you’re not sure how to fix it without derailing the whole thing. Do you scrap everything and start from scratch? Do you make modifications to each step? Do you just leave it alone and hope for the best? First, don’t panic. The most important thing is to embrace the idea of change. Here are five easy tips to remember as you move toward a smoother and more efficient creative production workflow.  1. Take a Look at Your Creative Team as a Whole In order to make effective changes, it’s important to look at the big picture first, rather than focusing on just one person in (or one part of) the process. To do this, you have to make sure to map out the entire creative production process, step by step, and look for bottlenecks that may cause a domino effect and impact the final outcome. Find out the purpose of each step, who does it, how long it takes, how data is passed between steps and what tools are used. Talk to everyone on the team and make no assumptions! Once you find the bottlenecks, you can zero in on them and begin to figure out ways to make improvements. 2. Staying Agile is Key Agility is crucial when it comes to modifying your workflow. You have to remember that one change isn’t going to be the be-all end-all. Your workflow process is fluid, so be prepared to revisit changes and keep thinking of ways to improve. Implementing retrospectives with your team can also be helpful. This allows you to take a step back after making a change (or several changes) and talk about what worked well and what still needs improvement. Make it a social process and get as much team input as you can. 3. Divide and Conquer Once you have a solid idea of how your workflow, well, flows and where the bottlenecks are, look for ways that you can split large chunks of work into smaller pieces in order to keep things moving swiftly. For example, if you’re dealing with image processing, breaking up groups of 50 images into smaller batches allows your team members to work through them faster, thus getting them down the line at a quicker pace. Or, put one group of team members in charge of fixing one bottleneck while another focuses on improving something else. 4. Keep Your Changes Small You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to make a positive impact on your workflow. Making smaller, reasonable changes that you can easily accomplish, then evaluating their effectiveness, can create more of an improvement than completely turning the process on its head. For example, fixing one asset transfer step (like the more time-consuming process of burning images to a hard drive that has to be delivered by bicycle courier) could noticeably shorten the total production cycle and create an appetite for more improvements. 5. Make a To-Do List Keeping a running list of potential changes makes it so simple to stay organized. Anytime someone on your team has an idea for a modification, add it to the list so you can prioritize and determine what would help the most when it comes time to revisit your workflow. Organization is vital to ensuring that you’re attacking the right change at the right time. No matter what, remember that your workflow will probably never be 100% perfect, and you should never get to a point where you stop making changes. Tasks and responsibilities are constantly advancing, which means that there’s always going to be room for improvement. Using these tips can make the process as painless as possible for your entire team…which, in turn, leads to less headaches for everyone involved! To learn more about mapping your creative production workflow, watch the webinar recording “Fine-tuning Your Creative Production Workflow” with Senior Product Manager Brian Stuckey.

  Mai Nozoe is the Vice President of Creative Services for alice + olivia, a contemporary women’s lifestyle brand founded by Stacey Bendet in 2002. Mai joined the company in 2013 to develop their first in-house creative team. Her 8-people team handles all creative branding and global image direction including photography, video, art direction, casting, styling, advertising, design, and production of brand collateral and website. Prior to her current role, Mai served as the first Vice President of Creative Operations for Moda Operandi, and developed the first in house creative department at Michael Kors. In this interview, Mai shares her past experience, some of the insights and best practices she learned along the way. You can see her live at our next Creative Ops Breakfast on Thursday, September 22, in our TriBeCa office. Q. You’ve developed the first in-house creative department at Michael Kors and currently at alice + olivia. What recurring challenges have you faced in both jobs? Developing the first in-house teams requires being nimble and adaptable to business needs. Being able to change direction is key, while simultaneously developing a consistent aesthetic that represents the brand so the customer becomes familiar with and identifies with the brand over time. In addition, I have also experienced:   Adapting brands to overseas markets especially in the Middle East and Asia, which have been a consistent challenge and opportunity. The ever-evolving online world, which requires that we adapt and speak to the customer in new ways through different channels but with an omni strategy. The constant need for content in social media, which challenges traditional methods and processes for developing creative.   Q. What are the biggest challenges and opportunities for creative teams today? The greatest challenge is the constant need for more content with restricted resources. Creative services and its tie to social media as one of the greatest communication tools will continue to grow, and companies must focus on keeping up with developing the content by providing as many resources as possible in this area. What’s exciting is that there is now a greater need for in-house creative departments than ever. Q. Any tools or applications that are “must-have” or “can’t live without”? With the volume of content that is needed today, it becomes critical to have an organized workflow. In every company I have worked in, I require a creative brief for all projects. Asset management systems and archival systems should be implemented as quickly as possible. Q. What one piece of advice do you have for those just getting started in a creative leader role? It’s important to have thick skin and endurance. The glamour of the job fades quickly. Never get attached to one creative campaign and be ready to tackle the next project with consistent drive and passion. The most successful people put in hard work and are committed to developing a beautiful product. Mai Nozoe was a guest speaker at our monthly Creative Ops Breakfast “Next Generation In-House Creative Services: Living up to the Challenge”, on September 22nd, 2016, in New York City. Watch the recording now.

If you’re looking to transform your company’s creative operations, the single largest impact you can have on your organization’s creative operations productivity is the establishment of a single, centralized (ideally cloud-based) digital asset repository. This one change completely alters the way your team stores, manipulates, collaborates, searches, retrieves, tracks, secures, and shares photos, videos, PDFs and other files.  (Note: many of globaledit’s customers have already taken this step and have made globaledit that digital asset repository.) When you move to a central repository, the first impact your entire organization will notice is the sense of clarity that will emerge. The constant questions and uncertainty about “where the latest version is” and “where those files are” will be gone. A simple browse or search becomes the path to find any and all files – from anywhere and at any time. In this new world everything anyone needs to access is always just a search or a click away. It will make things easier when someone needs to grab the approved final version of an image, when someone needs to quickly browse through every shot taken on an old shoot, or when you need to check the metadata on a certain photo or video. The largest benefit may be in time saved. It will no longer take hours or even days to figure out where a file is, or on what hard drive it was stored. Projects finally move along and deadlines get hit rather than missed. Another potential win is mobility. You can now access years of archives right from your phone or tablet, and send it along to anyone with just a click. This kind of always-at-your-fingertips access to your library transforms the value of your entire photo and video library. Many companies find that the number of mistakes throughout the creative production process drops when a central archive is created. First because it is much easier to find the exact right version of any image when it’s needed. Secondly because many of these platforms offer some form of digital rights management — to enforce important rules or contractual obligations. There are other benefits too: Avoid mistakes, gain universal access, save time, and simplify the life of everyone touching your creative operations. It’s easy to understand why establishing a centralized digital asset repository should be considered your first step towards better productivity.

We get it. Creative production, as fun as it sounds, is inherently granular and complex. It’s not just shooting photos and videos, and bang, you’re done. In reality, someone has to take a picture, some else has to select images on set, along a chain of people who enhance or approve the content. So when our clients come to us for help, we usually recommend that they map their team’s workflow. Without some encouragement, few companies dedicate the time and resources to do this preliminary work. But it could improve their team’s productivity and well-being and the quality of the final deliverables. What are the key benefits of mapping your creative production workflow? Visualize a complex process and spot inefficiencies Depending on the size of your team and on the type and number of deliverables that you’re producing, the end-to-end process can be more or less complex. Taking a snapshot of your creative ops process at an instant, ideally from capture to finish, will help better understand the inefficiencies and spot bottlenecks or patterns in usage. With this map in front of you, inefficiencies, problems, and sometimes solutions suddenly become obvious. It’s a great start to figure out where you want to make changes. Clearly communicate the creative production process to all team members There is a lot to keep in mind: What are the deliverables, who is involved, what are the tools used, setting this shoot up and getting all the assets moving through the pipeline… Mapping helps to document all the relevant facts and communicate with other team members. A documented process is also extremely helpful toward smoothly on boarding new employees or freelancers. Ensure understanding of the creative production process Mapping is a collaborative process. It forces you and everyone on the team to go step-by-step, verbalize what they do, and eventually spot inefficiencies or current miscommunications. By having every team member review the final map, you ensure that everyone is on the same page. Note that a map may be in constant flux and evolution – as you will soon spot the inefficiencies and want to address them. If the process is working and performing well, why not use it as a template for other teams or divisions? Watch the webinar recording “Fine-tuning Your Creative Production Workflow” with Senior Product Manager Brian Stuckey to learn more about mapping your creative production workflow.

We’ve released a commonly requested globaledit feature — adding crop marks to images. The markup tool now allows you to draw constrained rectangles to clearly specify a set aspect ratio. To use the new feature, click on the shape icon in the Markup Editor. Select the shape you want and begin drawing. More tips to: Switch between portrait or landscape drawing: Simply use the mouse to draw a shape that is either taller or wider and the system will draw the appropriate shape. Move a crop mark: Select the pointer tool, click on the rectangle, and drag the shape around to move it. Delete a crop mark: Simply select it and hit the delete key or delete the layer it is on. Enjoy! Rectangular crop marks added to an image in globaledit  

With over 25 million visitors per month and over 175 million users across all platforms, Refinery29 has become the fastest growing media company and today’s go-to place for millennial women looking for daily lifestyle & fashion inspiration. How does Refinery29 creative production team keep up with the increasing needs? For the 6th edition of the globaledit Creative Operations Breakfast, we asked Refinery29 team members Anne Cassard and Michael Ciancio to discuss the unique evolution of the creative production workflow at R29 over the past three high-growth years. Learn more about the behind-the-scenes of Refinery29’s creative production: Globaledit presents the Creative Operations Breakfast Series, a monthly event that addresses key issues and challenges faced by creative production and operations professionals today. ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKERS Anne Cassard – Senior Project Manager, Refinery29 Anne Cassard’s work at Refinery29 centers on establishment, enactment, and constant improvement of workflow and inter/intra-departmental processes for the Design and larger Creative teams. She also oversees the growth and development of the Design and Creative staff in response to the shifting pursuits and demands of the business. Anne has refined her interest in creative management through her work with R29 over the past three years, having previously gained experience in the businesses of fashion and finance. Michael Ciancio – Creative Director, Refinery29 Michael Ciancio heads up the Design team at Refinery29, overseeing all aspects of design across editorial, events and branded content. He brings diverse experience to the R29 team, joining from Wolff Olins, a leading international brand consultancy, where he helped major clients strategically and creatively change the way they do business. Michael was previously a grant-holder at FABRICA, the Benetton design research center based in Treviso Italy, where he worked alongside a wealth of international creatives, practicing product design and advertising.

Are you attending Henry Stewart DAM NY May 5-6 and its Creative Operations track on May 5? As the largest event focused on Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Creative Operations, it’s your best chance to meet DAM and Creative Ops experts and professionals, and globaledit will be a sponsor of the Creative Operations track. We’ll be on stage and at the exhibition to share insights and best practices to help brands and organizations better manage their creative production workflow and the digital assets that come with them. Plus use our discount code GE100 to save $100. Where can you find us?    1. At the panel discussion at the Creative Operations 2016 track Steve Kalalian, CEO of Globaledit and Industrial Color Brands, will be on stage to share his insights on today’s use of technology for Creative Operations management. Don’t miss his panel discussion! Theme: Creative Ops Technology: Same Destination, Multiple Paths When: Thursday, May 5, 2016, from 11:50AM to 12:50PM Where: New York Hilton Midtown Hotel, 1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York.   2. Exhibition Stop by our booth #12 on the exhibition floor to get a private session with our Creative Ops experts, get a workflow diagnostic, and see how we can help you take control of your creative production. When: May 5-6, 2016, from 9AM to 6PM Where: New York Hilton Midtown Hotel, 1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York. See the full agenda of the Creative Operations 2016 track here. Unable to attend the Henry Stewart DAM event? No worries, you can contact us here with any questions you have.

The digital asset management and creative production industry commonly mistake Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Work In Progress (WIP). People often believe they need a digital asset management (DAM) system when in reality, they’re looking for a Work In Progress system. There is overlap between the two, but also some distinct differences. Below are the key differences that will help make sense of it all and where globaledit fits in among enterprise solution providers. What Is Digital Asset Management (DAM)? Digital Asset Management is the practice of storing, cataloging and handling digital files to make them more findable, reusable and available for distribution and monetization. The term “DAM” is used industry-wide to refer to not only this concept, but also the software system used to manage files. A DAM system provides a centralized asset library for ingesting digital files. These files can be catalogued, searched, retrieved, distributed and archived. The DAM system stores these digital files in a database or on a file system. Metadata attached to each asset is entered at the time of ingest to categorize and make files easier to find and secure. The metadata is typically stored in a database alongside the files. The combination of the digital file and its associated metadata is referred to as a “digital asset”. Users can browse and search the DAM to retrieve the assets they need, as well as download, share or deliver the assets. Benefits of a DAM: Maximize asset reuse and minimize duplicate content production efforts by making your existing assets easily findable Enable teams to share and collaborate on content production Enable distribution and monetization of digital assets Learn the value of your media assets by gathering metrics about usage patterns Globaledit focuses on Work In Progress. But what Is Work In Progress exactly? Work In Progress usually represents the first step of the creative production workflow, right after the photo shoot or the digital asset creation. Work In Progress is the practice of sharing, collaborating and distributing media files including photo, video, audio and collateral documents (pdf, doc, etc.) prior to final delivery. Various groups within an organization generally co-managed WIP systems. They’re typically accessible to internally or external stakeholders in various geographical locations. This phase of the overall creative production process is the most chaotic and requires multiple collaborators to take action simultaneously in order to move that perfect asset along. A WIP system is similar to a DAM in that it can provide a central repository of digital assets. However, unlike typical DAM systems, WIP systems include additional functionality that is specific to team collaboration; such as rating systems, contact sheet generators, communication tools, and fast upload, download and ingest methods for large media files (photos, videos). They also provide vehicles to easily share assets with various stakeholders while managing user permissions. These tools enable an organization to collaborate on assets and manage their creative workflow process in a more streamlined, efficient way.  The results are shorter production times and work that gets to market faster, at less cost. A DAM system doesn’t care so much about getting the asset to market faster, but rather provides a organized repository for your employees to find approved assets later. Benefits of a WIP: Manage visual assets at scale, right after they are created Streamline the review and approval process Centralize all the assets into a single repository Enable teams to easily share and collaborate on assets in real-time and from any device (web, tablet, mobile) Workflow unification across departments, divisions and brands High Speed Distribution to teams, stakeholders and vendors – saves time and money vs. manual distribution methods Cloud-based WIP platform like globaledit appeals to enterprise creative teams because it needs little to no IT intervention. Implementation ramp up time is minimal. The ability to work anywhere, anytime and remain in sync is even more appealing. Globaledit provides easy-to-use and beautiful interface (along with enterprise-level security) to encourage adoption. Of course each company, process and team structure is different. It is important to find the right partners that understand your specific creative production workflow to recommend the best solution. The first step to improving your creative operations process is not putting all of your eggs in one basket. Speak to the “workflow wizards” within your company, as well as your vendors. Globaledit may just be the best egg. Happy hunting! To learn more about the difference between WIP and DAM or the globaledit platform contact us today. Lear more about or products here: Top Reasons to Consider Digital Asset Management and CAM

  Scot Safon, brand consultant and media executive, and former CMO of The Weather Channel, CNN, and TNT, was our Creative Ops Breakfast guest speaker in February 2016. In this short interview, Scot talks about why brands need to be storytellers, and the impact of storytelling on company culture.  

  At our fifth edition of the Creative Ops Breakfast at globaledit HQ on March 24th, 2016, Carrie Roberts, Director of Creative Operations at The Body Shop, and Dan Cohen, VP of Marketing at Republic Records, shared their strategies, tools, and techniques for leading successful creative projects from ideation to delivery. Check out what they had to say: Globaledit presents the Creative Ops Breakfast Series, a monthly event that addresses key issues and challenges faced by creative production and operations professionals today. ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKERS Carrie Roberts has over 15 years experience leading and executing creative projects for various companies and clients. Before leading the U.S. creative operations team at The Body Shop, Carrie was Director of Creative Services and Head of Production at Exposure America, where she was developing brand campaigns, events and content such as Nike, Converse, Dr. Martens, and Coca Cola. Dan Cohen has over 20 years experience in the music industry, working at various record companies, an independent marketing company and independent distribution company. He recently joined Republic Records (home to Ariana Grande, Lorde, Pearl Jam, The Weeknd, and more) as the Vice President, Marketing. Over the course of his career, he has worked with a wide array of artists including LCD Soundsystem, Gorillaz, Daft Punk, 50 Cent, and Chrissie Hynde, as well as chart topping campaigns for Alabama Shakes, The Decemberists, Five Finger Death Punch, All Time Low and Tyrese.

For our fourth installation of the Creative Ops Breakfast at globaledit HQ on February 25th, 2016, Scot Safon (former EVP/CMO of The Weather Channel, CNN, and TNT) and Christopher Grakal (former VP of Image Management & Technology Strategy at Turner Broadcasting) shared their perspectives on how to maximize the combined power of creative, tech and business teams. > Check out what they had to say: Globaledit presents the Creative Ops Breakfast Series, a monthly event that addresses key issues and challenges faces by creative production and operations professionals today. ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKERS Scot Safon is a brand consultant and media executive who has served as the Chief Marketing Officer of CNN Worldwide, The Weather Channel, and TNT. He also ran the cable network HLN. He started at NY ad agencies, after getting his MBA from Cornell and his BA from the University of Virginia. Christopher Grakal is the former VP of Image Management & Technology Strategy at Turner Broadcasting. He has strong track record of creating strategy and building technology-forward systems and organizations that maximize the value of content, marketing, PR and sales assets. He’s also a thought leader on how technology is driving consumer experience, advertiser value and creative workflow potential.

What should brands focus on when creating visual content? Jim Zdancewicz, Head of Creative & Content Production for eBay Enterprise, identifies three key principles for creating efficient and relevant visual content for your brand: 1. Define a clear brand message. 2. Determine your key objectives – and measure the results to optimize your creative assets. 3. Pick the channels that expose your brand in the right way, optimize for these channels – and expand from there. Watch Jim Zdancewicz’s full answer:

When getting creative assets out the door becomes too painful, and complaints and frustrations start to pile up, now might be a good time to review your organization’s processes and inefficiencies. Revisiting a workflow is an arduous task that requires months of planning and adjustment. But doing so can bring tremendous value to your organization and business: It increases predictability and reduces variance, it expands your creative team’s capacity and productivity, and ultimately, saves your team frustrations and your company money. Where to start and how to convince the top management of the ultimate return on investment? During our monthly Creative Ops Breakfast on October 22, 2015, three creative operations professionals join us to share their experience and advice on how to (re)build an efficient creative production workflow: Stephen Hunking, Director of Studio Services and Asset Management at Showtime Wiesia Mancewicz, Principal at High Touch Studio Lauren Philson, Digital Assets Manager at The Rockefeller Foundation We’ve turned their thoughts and insights into a guide to help you initiate a workflow overhaul. Step 1: Identify the problems “If you had no complains, then you probably have a very amazing system. I’ve never had zero complaints.” – Stephen Hunking, Director of Studio Services and Asset Management at Showtime. Clearly your team’s feedback should already provide you with great insights on what’s working or not. Start your petition by listing the main pain points and recurring complaints that people raise. Down the road you should measure quantitatively or qualitatively how these bottlenecks impact your team’s productivity, and ultimately your business. Step 2: Build a task force Time to involve your team /organization. On the one hand you need to convince your top management that investing in a creative production workflow overhaul will bring value to the organization. On the other hand, you need to empower your teammates so that they implement, drive, and embrace the change. Your task force will be composed of two groups: C-level and decision-makers: The initial group that you bring together will most likely be a mix of executive, senior manager, or director levels. They come to the table and bring the business purpose and the business use cases for each department/teams that would be affected by the project. This core group go through your petition, prioritize, help inform the phasing of the actual project, and most importantly, assign a budget and internal resources to it. Ambassadors & end-users: The second group that you will bring together is what Lauren Philson, Digital Assets Manager at The Rockefeller Foundation, calls the “ambassadors”: “These are going to be your power users, the folks that are embedded within each of the departments“. In the long run, the ambassadors will inform you when there are issues with the system itself, or with adoption. Once everybody has adopted the system, you make them the trainers. Involving different part of the business, different teams, and end users early in the process is key to succeed. As Hunking reminded: “It is very easy to lose sight of the end-user. If you don’t involve them earlier and throughout the process, you might end up overwhelming them with features that they don’t really need, while neglecting features that they really do need”. Also, you don’t want to be the person that dictates how the process is going to work and what they are going to do – without consulting the team actually implementing it. Practice an open door policy: Allow your team to come back to you with questions. They should have ownership over their workflow, you’re just here to empower them to use the system for themselves and make it their own. Stay tuned to our blog for Part II: How to Document Your Workflow

Written by Brian Stuckey, Senior Product Manager at globaledit. Talent Approval is an essential component of the media and entertainment industry. For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, let me give you some background. If you’re producing a TV show, movie, or even YouTube show, you probably want recognizable people to appear in your production. One of the common bargaining chips used when negotiating a contract for a celebrity is the right for the talent to approve or kill images they like or dislike respectively. This celebrity sign-off typically takes one of two forms: Talent Approvals – Talent has the right to approve any image of theirs used (within some boundaries.) Talent ‘Kills’ – This is the right for a celebrity to reject some percentage of the images of them. For simplicity, I’m going to focus on ‘Kill’ rights but the exact same logic applies to approval galleries. By giving your talent the right to reject images, you’re adding a significant speed bump to your creative process. You are effectively allowing someone to put a pause button in your creative process.  Before you invest in marking up and retouching images, you need to first get their approval and this is harder than it sounds. If you don’t get the approval, your work might be wasted or even worse – it could lead to contract compliance problems. Second, how do you enforce your contract terms? For example, talent might have the right to kill 60% of their images. What if they email you and tell you they are ALL rejected? There is also a latent third problem. How do you prove that a talent approved a photo? If they come back in 6 months when the publicity photos are released don’t like an image, how do you defend your operation? Now, imagine that you have multiple celebrities in your project, all with different terms, and several different sets of publicity photos. All of the sudden, getting talent approval doesn’t seem as easy as it first did. How we tackle the problem Talent Approval is a common use of our platform (watch this short video to learn how we do it). I’ve had the luxury of seeing how multiple production companies, development labs, and agencies tackle this problem. This has helped us for our best-in-class approval workflow. To simplify this discussion, I’ve broken down the process of creating an efficient Talent Approval machine. Enforcing the contract Let’s say that Jean-Claude Van Damme has a contract that allows him to kill 50% of the images we present to him. His agent and your company have agreed to the terms and now you have the first round of unretouched publicity photos for him to review. To easily enforce the agreement, I setup a ‘Kill’ Gallery in globaledit. A ‘Kill’ Gallery is like a specialized lightbox. It allows you to take a group of images and set an approve/kill ratio. Once the kill ratio has been set (at say 50%), the recipient is only allowed to kill UP TO 50% of the images. They cannot select more than half of the images in the gallery. This makes the decision clear and forces the correct number of assets to be selected in the process. Getting images in their hands Tracking down Jean-Claude and getting a contact sheet in his hand with a red pen is challenging. You could always FedEx images and hope they get to the right place and are sent back in a timely fashion. Alternatively, you could email him the images but then you have a problem if he responds ambiguously like “Kill the first and third one” instead of “Kill photo2345.JPG and photo2315.JPG”. The better way to do this is to send the gallery to Mr. Van Damme or his publicist. By sending them the approval gallery – all they need is a computer or a smartphone to get to work. When the gallery is sent to a mobile phone, a thumbnail list of images is displayed. He can then tap on images to kill them and a running counter shows how many images are remaining before he reaches his quota. When Jean-Claude is done looking with the gallery, his decisions are recorded and the process is complete. You know unambiguously which photos were rejected, you know you are compliant with your contract, and you have the list of ‘killed’ images instantly. Centralize decision list Since we used a gallery to get the list of images to ‘kill’, we always know which images were rejected. These ‘kill’ (or approve) decisions live with the metadata in globaledit. This means that your retouchers, if they are using the globaledit platform, will never accidentally work on the wrong image. Audit Lastly, all of these ‘kill’ or approve decisions are stored in our database. Among many other things, we keep track of: 1) who sent the ‘kill’ gallery 2) which images were ‘killed’ 3) who ‘killed’ them and when This provides you a traceable record of a photograph from the time it was taken to the finished image. Each step of the process generates notes in our asset notes log. Hopefully you never have a dispute with talent but if it happens, you have a strong record of the approval. Pulling It All Together By using the globaledit platform, we simplify and clarify the process with talent representatives, ensure talent approval rights compliance, and give you the tools to audit the entire process. While doing all of this, we speed up the creative flow by both instantly sending approval requests and giving you instant feedback. For your talent, we make it as simple as using Facebook. The key to the process is our Approval Galleries. They are a purpose-built mechanism to capture approvals or ‘kill’ decisions. All of the talent input is recorded in the database and lives with the asset alongside the previews, markups, and high res images.

For the third installation of our Creative Ops Breakfast Series, David Plavin, Creative Applications Service Manager at Resources IT, and Irene Yoo, Photo Manager at Food Network & Cooking Channel, discussed the specific tools and technologies that make professional creative production kick. From Capture One to DAM to Dropbox and Photoshop, panelists shared the indispensable tools that their teams use to get work done. What key solutions for creative production toolkit today How to evaluate your current tools and technology What upcoming technology to look into/for to improve your workflow Watch the full panel: The Creative Ops Breakfast Series is the breakfast lecture series for creative production and operations professionals to network and learn as well have a delicious breakfast. ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKERS David Plavin Creative Applications Service Manager Resources IT, a Publicis Groupe company David has been at the Publicis Groupe for over 20 years and currently serves as the Service Manager for Creative Solutions. He works with the Groupe’s North American creative agencies helping them become more productive by supporting a suite of applications. David has a strong background in production and creative development, which enables him to better understand the need of his clients. He migrated from publication design to technical support in a period of 35 years. Irene Yoo Photo Manager Food Network and Cooking Channel Irene is responsible for still photography production and asset management for Food Network and Cooking Channel shows and related entities. She has 7+ years of experience in the Digital Asset Management (DAM) field working with different brands and industries to streamline creative workflows. Matt Glueckert Host – Product Manager globaledit Matt uses his lifelong passion for creative technology to lead a development team define and design the creative production application of the future. Before joining globaledit, he was a creative technologist at Showtime where he managed the photo department, photographed boxing events, and developed DAM tools for non-geeks.

Written by Brian Stuckey, Senior Product Manager at globaledit. One of the books that has really shaped my thinking about creative operations is Eliyahu Goldratt’s The Goal. The basic plot is about a manufacturing plant manager faced with a failing organization and tasked with turning the operation around or the plant will close. The book is commonly used to teach introduction to operations classes and provides intuitive and practical examples on both how to measure and how to improve assembly line style work. Not everything in the book has an analog in a creative operations world but most of the basic concepts apply. Creative operations isn’t an assembly line in the manufacturing sense but there are clear parallels. You have raw goods (camera files), you have to do something to them (retouch them), you have to QA them (approvals), and you have to ship the product (the final images). The process of creating a creative asset is just that – it is a process with a series of distinct steps. Through that lens you can start to identify ways to create a high performance Creative Operations team. Your goal is to ship more assets. The first step (and the focus of the rest of this post) is to answer the question: “How is my team performing?” Quantifying Success I want to be explicit here: the intent of this measurement is not to create some sort of employee review metric. The intent is to help you understand where your team is and if your changes are having a positive or negative impact. We want to analyze the team as a whole, not the individual participants. I’ve bucketed a few different metrics into two different categories: those which measure the whole team and those which measure individual steps. 1. Team Metrics: Asset turnaround time Your team is charged with producing something. Therefore, one of the most basic measure is: How long, on average, does it take from the time an order is placed to the time that it is completed? This measure is an easy-to-understand metric that should drastically change with an improved process. If an average time drops from 7 days to 5, you’re made a huge improvement. Who doesn’t want to get their results faster? It is an intuitive measure for tracking success. To calculate this: Look at all of your jobs for the last week. List each job in Excel, one per row. Now, in new column, add the date you received that job. Lastly, add the date the job was completed in a third column. For simplicity, I calculated this to the nearest day. You may want to do hours or weeks. The right level of resolution is highly dependent on the nature of your work. A B C D 1 Job Name Start Stop Duration 2 Job 1 1/1/2015 1/2/2015 1 3 Job 2 1/3/2015 1/7/2015 4 4 Job 3 1/3/2015 1/4/2015 1 Average (μ): 2 Days . Now, calculate how many days each job took and take the arithmetic mean (=AVERAGE(D2:D4) )  of the them.  Repeat this week after week and plot your weekly values for turnaround time. Standard Deviation in Turnaround Time This is a super useful metric that takes a just little bit more effort to compute. It shows you that the average turnaround time is 7 days (+/- 2) days. This metric is important because it directly measures those times when you’re overworked and the times you have a light workload. The more you fluctuate between those two states, the higher your standard deviation is. You want to move towards (+/- 1) day instead of (+/- 3) days. A high deviation from the average means that your team is having very busy days and very light days. This game is about endurance; you want your team to work consistently for a long time, not in short bursts. Constant bursts wear out your team and reduce predictability in deadlines. To minimize the deviation, you need a well-defined process, clear responsibilities, and mechanisms to identify who is overworked. This means that there should never be a question about “who needs to work on this?” or “what do we do next?” A simple diagram showing how the asset moves from start to finish and who is responsible for what will go a long way. To calculate this: Good news! If you did the above work, you’re 99% done. In addition to average, in a new cell calculate the Standard Deviation of a Population (=STDEV.P(D2:D4) ). Don’t try to do this one by hand, it will be tedious. This should give you the average deviation from the average for that week. Remember: lower numbers are good. One note on the above function – I am assuming you included every job in your calculations. If you did a sample of them (say every other one) then you should use the Standard Deviation of a Sample (=STDEV.S() ). A B C D 1 Job Name Start Stop Duration 2 Job 1 1/1/2015 1/2/2015 1 3 Job 2 1/3/2015 1/7/2015 4 4 Job 3 1/3/2015 1/4/2015 1 Average (μ): 2 Days StDev (σ): 1.4 Days . In the above example, the average job will finish in 2 days. About 80% of all jobs will finish between 0.6 days and 3.4 days. (70% comes from a Normal Distribution table) Throughput This is slightly different than the turnaround time. This answers the questions “How many jobs did we complete this month?” This helps you better understand how much work you can take on. Of course, you want this metric to grow over time. There will be a natural limit to how much work people and your team can do. What is important is that it grows following your new process. This metric is also useful for capacity planning. If you can constantly handle 50 jobs per month, and you project things to grow to 100 per month a year, then you need to think about hiring or outsourcing some of your steps. To calculate this: This is the easiest to calculate. Just count how many jobs you did in a week and you’re done. Write this number down somewhere and plot it week after week. 2. Individual Step Metrics Utilization If you use the mental model of an assembly line, then all of the above metrics track the system as a whole. One last data point worth tracking is the utilization of each step of the process. If everything happens in order, then the most overworked step of the process is your bottleneck. As any fan of Eliyahu Goldratt’s The Goal can tell you, the bottleneck is what limits the entire system. By tracking WHERE this is (and there will likely be one next time) you know where to add support. (Hint: The bottleneck will be the team with the large inbox and the light outbox). One note on this metric: it isn’t a critique of any step. There will ALWAYS be a bottleneck and it may move. Not every person or step takes the same time to do something. The value is knowing where this is so you can add employees to help where it matters most. To calculate this: This is actually best solved by walking around the office instead of using Excel. You need to figure out who is slowing down the process. Who has the most work to do and who are other people waiting on to finish? p.s. As good of a message as The Goal has, the plot is pretty abysmal. The updated version only exacerbates this. If you buy a copy, make sure you don’t buy the updated version. p.p.s. This isn’t just creative operations. This concept has been applied to Software Engineering for a long time too.

Lauren Philson, Digital Assets Manager at The Rockefeller Foundation, specializes in enterprise system deployments in both the private and public sectors. Lauren views Digital Asset Management (DAM) as a dynamic keystone in any organization’s technology suite and has driven strategic integration projects with PIM and ECM platforms. Championing efficiency and overall effectiveness, she emphasizes process and change management alongside technical considerations in order to craft the best possible user experience. Lauren is currently rolling out a new DAM for The Rockefeller Foundation as part of a larger digital enhancement to evolve the esteemed philanthropy’s message through storytelling and compelling media. Previously, she implemented DAM and a suite of creative tools for e-commerce leader Gilt.com. Lauren recently shared with us tips and advices on how to seamlessly implement a new digital asset management system in an organization. Watch the full interview:

What are the key visual assets that your brand should focus on?  Vanessa Holden, independent consultant and former SVP, Creative Director at West Elm, shared with us the main creative assets that every brand should always have available. First and foremost, before even thinking about producing visual content, brands need to know and understand who they are, with Holden reminding us that “The core of communicating any brand is being very clear on what the heart of your brand is.” This clarity in the message you want to deliver to the public and to consumers will guide you first set of brand visuals: Create visual assets that are directly related to your brand’s core and that showcase your brand’s key differentiator on the market. These assets will seek to “bring to life your story the most”. Only then can you turn your attention (and budget) to more experimental visuals and content pieces. Burberry is a great example of this creative production strategy, according to Holden: “They identify their heritage, as an inclusive and exclusive brand, then boldly step forward to a very different media landscape”. Watch Vanessa Holden’s full answer:

Written by Brian Stuckey, Senior Product Manager at globaledit. Most people don’t find metadata or file formats sexy. It’s all of the data around the image without any of the nice visual appeal of a photograph. So, launching into the realm of the esoteric, I wanted to take a moment to talk about XMP files. XMP files are awesome. XMP files allow you to transfer your image metadata, ratings, tags, keywords, geolocation, and other attributes about the image outside of the actual JPG, CR2, or other file. The XMP format is a standard way of recording these data so that other programs can carry all of the additional data you added to your images. This is super useful in practice. Most creative work doesn’t live in a single piece of software. You might start by capturing images in Capture One. There you might do your quick selects, add job information, and other relevant data. Next, you might organize the files using Adobe Bridge. From there, you might pass the RAWs off to a retoucher and get back a finished TIFF file. When you to import this into your DAM – the TIFF file may no longer contain the job information, photographer, talent, or the other metadata you meticulously added earlier. This is where XMP files save the day — when you import them into your DAM, your software can read the metadata and append all of the missing information to the asset. (One technical note: XMP content is frequently embedded in images such as TIFFs, JPEGs, and a few other formats. For the sake of this document, I’m focusing on sidecar file format. This is the kind where you have a file named SOMETHING.XMP in the same folder as SOMETHING.CR2.) How XMP files work in practice A single photograph might have several different associated files. For example: image_2345.CR2  (The camera raw) image_2345.JPG  (JPEG preview) image_2345.TIFF  (High resolution retouched photo) image_2345.XMP  (Sidecar file that contains all of the shoot information) XMP files typically have the same name as the photograph and live in the same folder as all of the other assets. Most software (Bridge, Lightroom, Capture One, Media Pro, etc.) are smart enough to understand the relationship and automatically recognize the data contained in them. Example One: My vacation Earlier this year, I went to several countries in Europe. I took nearly 7,000 photographs across three devices and was faced with a challenge: How do I tag my photographs, select the good ones, and come up with the Facebook album version? The big problem is that Lightroom is meant for a single user. Two people can’t work on a library simultaneously.   I started by uploading all of my JPEG preview images to globaledit. JPEGs are smaller and the transfer time was short. This allowed my wife and I to see all of the images and to collaborate on them. I culled the 7,000 photos down to 500 and she picked out the final ~50. At the same time, we bulk-edited photos to add the city information and for a few key photographs, we added additional information (the name of a landmark, who was in the photo, etc.) This distributed approach allowed us to quickly comb through thousands of images at the same time and be always in sync. I worked on my desktop and she worked on her iPad. When we were done, I downloaded the XMP files which only took a few seconds and added them to my Lightroom collection. Now, Adobe Lightroom had all of my keywords, subject information, location, ratings and selects. I appended this to the RAW files and I processed the final 50 images in Lightroom. Because I was able to quickly transport metadata in the XMP files, I could distribute my workflow without fear of losing valuable information about the images. I didn’t have to transfer tens of gigabytes of information to just make a few decisions. Example Two: Backing Up Adobe Lightroom is my go-to package for my personal photographs. I’ve spent thousands of hours adding information about people, places, geotagging, and categorizing my images. What if I want to switch to, say, Capture One? What if my library becomes completely corrupted? Adobe Lightroom allows you to actually write all metadata to XMP files in addition to their library. It slows the software down a little bit but this gives you a new level of security. As long as you back up the XMP files with your images, you’ll never lose any of your metadata. Example Three: Migrating content between applications Most of my RAW processing for casual images is done in Lightroom. However, I prefer the look and options that Capture One affords me and so my workflow is split primarily between these two applications. I really like the organization tools that Lightroom provides. The face identification, geo-tagging, and keyword management tools are second to none for a home user. I use Lightroom to tag ALL of my images, regardless of whether I process them in another application. To enable this mixed-environment approach to handling images, I use XMP sidecars to transfer the metadata I’ve curated in Adobe in to Capture One. Capture One reads the XMP sidecar files and all of my people tags are instantly recognized. I can process my images like I prefer and rest assured that I can always find my images by metadata regardless of the software I used to render the final image. Everything Else: The XMP format was created by Adobe to standardize how metadata is stored and transferred. It is now managed as an ISO standard and free for anyone to use. For more information about XMP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Metadata_Platform http://www.adobe.com/products/xmp.html

Many brands have spent the past few years rushing to every new channel that pops up, without a clear purpose or goals. Today, brands are refocusing on their core message and looking at the channels strategically in terms of the audience and message they want to get across. Jim Zdancewicz, Head of Creative & Content Production for eBay Enterprise, recommends that brands “pick the channels they feel have the best chance of exposing their brand in the right way and expand that from there”. For Zdancewicz, there is a risk in thinking that every single channel is relevant. “Don’t go too broad too early, you risk watering down your message or losing control of your message”. Watch Zdancewicz explains the importance of choosing the right channel(s) for your brand:

Globaledit web platform: Read about the November 2015 Software Update. We released a new update to our iOS app this morning and users on iOS 9 with iPads and devices with 3D touch will appreciate the new touches. Additionally, we’ve made it easy to share lightboxes right from within the application to make collaborating easier. New: Share lightboxes from within the iOS app New: Support for 3D Touch New: Support for split screen Enhanced: Intercom integration NEW: Share Lightboxes You can now share lightboxes right from your iPhone and skip the main application. To share a lightbox, tap on a lightbox and click “share lightbox.” Enter in your recipients, select your permissions, and click share. We support the most common sharing permissions: download restrictions, rating restrictions, and collaboration restrictions. NEW: 3D Touch Next- we’ve added support for Apple’s 3D Touch. If you have a new iOS device, you can hard-press on an image and see the full resolution version without having to navigate into a lightbox. This allows you to quickly look through images and improves the overall browsing experience. NEW: Split screen In addition to 3D Touch, we now support the split screen view on iOS. This intelligently lays out the interface to support globaledit side-by-side with other applications. ENHANCED: Intercom Integration Lastly, we have enhanced our Intercom integration. Intercom is a messaging service we use to publish notices and to communicate directly with users. Now, you can use the service to chat with our support. To message us, click on Settings > More. There is a new option to “Contact globaledit” that will message our support department.

Written by Brian Stuckey, Senior Product Manager at globaledit. One of the perks of my job is that I get a deep view into the creative operations process for our clients. We are intimately woven into the fabric of some of the largest fashion brands in the world and are granted access to their inner workings. Likewise, we work with potential clients and prospects to understand how we can fit in their process. Because of this access, we can learn, study, and define best-practices across verticals and improve our client’s processes. Creative production headaches are not unique and their causes are more common than not. This puts us in as much as a consulting role as it puts us in the software support role. So what have we learned? Well, it turns out that the most successful clients have a documented process. There are clearly defined roles, artifacts, deliverables, and handoffs between participants. A well-structured process forces your teams to operate predictably and efficiently. I’ve spent a lot of time reading client notes, talking to clients, and trying to synthesize best-practice templates for our core industries. The one I want to talk about is an eCommerce creative operations workflow. eCommerce creative operations process is about scale Creative operations is more about operations than it is about creative. eCommerce typifies this by the sheer size of their needs. Let’s talk about what it takes to get a photo of a new dress for Stuckey Co’s website. There are 5 colors of this dress, and 5 different sizes per dress. Most clients want photos of: Front, back, and sides 3 on-model photos 2 close-ups Now, to get the final image, let’s assume that there are 15 shots of each. That means that the client will need to manage: (4 angles x 15 shots) = 60 images (3 on-model x 15 shots) = 45 images (2 close-ups x 15 shots) = 30 images = 135 images * 5 colors = 675 images (or >1,300 if JPEG + RAW) 675 images – assuming that they are only shooting one size. If this is going into a PLM (product lifecycle management) system, they may do this for EACH unique SKU. This means nearly 7,000 photos could be created FOR ONE DRESS. What happens when they sell a dozen different variations? What if they want distinct photos of each size? It should be apparent by now that this is a scale problem that quickly becomes intimidating. But wait, there is more. Retailers will typically add SKU, season, color, and style information to each image’s metadata; they have to simply keep track of everything. And the images have to be sorted, rated, and culled down to the few approved images. Then they get to be retouched, have the retouching work approved, added to the DAM, PLM, and sent to Scene7 or their CMS. And how are you shipping these around? If you’re using a hard drive, how do you know you have the latest versions? That’s a lot to manage for a single dress Here is a diagram that I’ve been working on to abstract the typical eCommerce creative production workflow. We find that many of the clients in the most pain have some sort of an ad-hoc process that has grown organically and uses consumer tools. This certainly works to a degree but it has a distinct pain: Output is unpredictable, highly variable, and the team members are stressed. The solution is straightforward – but it requires some effort There are two parts: The process and the tools. Part 1: When we engage clients, we like to start with a diagram like the one above. We customize it based on client feedback and try to name who is responsible for what, how they get their work done, and who is next in line. Many clients haven’t done this exercise and we find that just getting people to spell out how they work has value. Inefficiencies stand out. People disagree. Sub-optimal choices become apparent. Part 2: Our software is the other half of the solution. We found that a huge amount of time is wasted when people have to track down decisions. For example: Was an image approved? By whom? We address this head on by keeping a running log and filtering tools so a team member can see “all of the new approved images that have been marked up” and need to be retouched. Second, we keep all of the assets in a single location. We can intelligently manage JPEG, CR2, XMP stacks of images so that all of your assets are intelligently consolidated on one platform. This means that if you have an iPhone, you have access to the version of the image that was updated 5 minutes ago in a different state. Lastly, we manage all of the metadata. We can compile photographers to upload key information during their work (SKU, Style, etc.), then give you the tools to bulk-edit these. This metadata lives with the assets and is exportable when you want to ship the finished assets to your DAM or PLM system. So, what’s in it for me? I’m biased, I’d love everyone to use our platform. The platform is only part of the solution. Just the act of documenting your workflow, asking WHY you operate like you do, and being open to refining the process is a huge win for most teams. If you’re starting a new season and looking at the prospect of producing tens-of-thousands of new assets, taking a little bit of time to reset and reflect on your process could save your sanity. Check out the webinar “Ramping Up your eCommerce Production Workflow” with Jim Zdancewicz, Head of Studio Services at Industrial Color Studios. Learn more about our products here: PIM: The Advantages of Using a Product Information Management System

Omnichannel marketing is reshaping creative operations teams, noticed Vanessa Holden, Independent Consultant and former SVP, Creative Director at West Elm. Vanessa was part of a panel discussion titled “The impact of omnichannel on creative operations” presented by globaledit, on September 22nd, 2015. She shared with us her thoughts and insights on the evolving role of creative and production teams on set. 1. Integrated production: the new normal Today, creative teams are becoming more integrated to produce and serve every channel of the marketing mix. The multiplicity of channels forces production teams to leverage every photo shoot to produce a large variety of visual content (photos, behind-the-scene photos and videos, etc.) in a minimum amount of time and budget. Typically, the main photo shoot with models for print and catalog becomes an opportunity for brands and organizations to create low-budget visual content, such as behind-the-scenes photos and videos, which can be leveraged on a multitude of channels. 2. Building hybrid creative and operations teams This new integrated approach requires creative production teams to develop a new skill set: “An art director mindset in a creative ops space”. Creative teams become hybrid as they need to understand all the moving and visual parts involved in the campaign creation, the connection, continuity, and complementarity of each piece. 3. Mastering the visual vocabulary of a brand “The fluency and confidence in the visual vocabulary of a brand throughout the [creative production] team is going to be more of a differentiator”, said Vanessa Holden. With reduced teams on set and shrinking budgets, everybody on set needs to know the brand’s values and objectives, and identify in real-time the perfect moment, image, video, format that will best convey the brand’s story. A successful brand will be able to get the right tuning of the visuals it needs and it creates on set, especially with distributed creative teams. Watch what Vanessa has to say about the new creative production team in an omnichannel world:

Building and maintaining brand consistency across every single marketing channel is incredibly challenging. How do you provide the best brand experience everywhere your customer is? During a recent Creative Ops Breakfast at globaledit, Vanessa Holden, Independent Consultant and former SVP, Creative Director at West Elm, and Jim Zdancewicz, Head of Creative & Content Production for eBay Enterprise, shared their insights into building a successful brand platform in today’s complicated omnichannel world. 1. Define a clear brand identity & message Marketing 101: At the foundation of any successful company is a clear brand identity and message, attached to a compelling story. “The core of communicating any brand is being very clear on what the heart of your brand is”, says Vanessa Holden. Identify your key differentiator and what makes your brand unique and relevant in today’s competitive marketplace. 2. Let the creative follow from there The brand message should always come first, then creative assets can follow the brand’s story. What visuals should a brand generate? For Vanessa, the key is to create “A balance of content”. First and foremost, brands should create a visual storytelling that relates directly to their core message and values. As Jim Zdancewicz reminds us: “The most important thing is to be on message and on brand, and make sure you stay true to that”. For Jim, the message dictates how you produce these assets – an iPhone to shoot a behind-the-scenes video, a drone, etc. A brand should experiment in new formats or new emerging media only once mastering the core visuals. For Vanessa Holden, that means being “super flexible and responsive in surprising ways”. Burberry is a typical example of successful brand that have been able to identify its heritage, and then boldly step forward to a very different media landscape. 3. Stay true to your brand Be honest: Not every single channel will be relevant for your brand. Pick carefully those channels that bring your brand story to life and resonate the most with your audience. “The most successful brands are the ones that have figured out their core values, and their core channels”, explains Vanessa Holden. After selecting those core channels, make sure you optimize them constantly to be “relevant and vibrant”. Once you’ve learned the best practices, you can start propagating them to new channels. As Jim Zdancewicz advises: “Don’t go too broad too early, you risk watering down your message or losing control of your message”. 4. Know what success looks like before you start Everyone on your creative production team should be very clear about the business objectives and calls to action: Should customers watch, share, or buy? Agreeing on the goals and then measuring the results will help you tune your message and get the best results out of your creative efforts. 5. Master your brand’s visual fluency Whether on set or in the office, your creative production team needs to understand the brand’s message, objectives, and master the brand’s visual vocabulary. Why? Vanessa Holden explains: “while the brand is in motion, [they can] identify those great moments that are going to become parts of a bigger brand ecosystem”. On set, behind-the-scenes, literally anywhere, anyone on the creative team should be able to spot the photo, video, GIF, etc., that should be created for a channel, while reinforcing the brand’s story. “An art director mindset in a creative ops space” could make all the difference between creating just another visual and creating a compelling piece of content that successfully reaches your audience. Watch the full recording of our breakfast on “The Impact of Omnichannel on Creative Operations”:

Companies are being asked to get higher quality results out of creative efforts, while at the same time having fewer resources and time as they had in the past. Those challenges, coupled with the inherently chaotic nature of creative production, have forced creative professionals to try to bring order to disorder so that they can achieve those goals in an ever-competitive marketplace. What is the progression of the ideal workflow? How do we move from an ad hoc, chaotic environment, to an efficient creative production machine? Who are the right people to manage each phase of the workflow? What is the best allocation of roles and responsibilities for maximizing results? In the second edition of the Creative Ops Breakfast Series (Oct. 22, 2015), Stephen Hunking, Director of Studio Services and Asset Management at Showtime, Wiesia Mancewicz, Principal at High Touch Studio, and Lauren Philson, Digital Assets Manager for The Rockefeller Foundation, joined us in our TriBeCa headquarters to share their experience in building creative operations processes and workflows, taking them to the next level, and discussing the challenges they faced, from internal obstacles to managing external and internal technologies. Watch the full panel to learn more about how to build the perfect creative production workflow: The Creative Ops Breakfast Series is the breakfast lecture series for creative production and operations professionals to network and learn as well have a delicious breakfast (the last event featured Crepes By-Suzette!) ABOUT THE GUEST SPEAKERS:   Stephen Hunking Director of Studio Services & Asset Management, Showtime Stephen has been working in the media industry for over two decades. He oversees the Studio Production and the Digital Asset Teams at Showtime Networks. These departments are responsible for everything from print to in-house photography, mobile apps, and the entire digital asset catalog for the company. Wiesia Mancewicz Principal, High Touch Studio Wiesia is a seasoned executive with over 15 years experience in eCommerce and web technology. She currently runs her own retouching company, High Touch Studio, specializing in image post-production for retailers and photographers. Wiesia previously worked as Director of Imaging at macys.com where she supervised operations and image post-production for one of the most successful web retailers in the U.S. Lauren Philson Digital Assets Manager, The Rockefeller Foundation Several years in creative production and operations led Lauren into DAM, where she now specializes in enterprise system deployments in both the private and public sectors. Lauren is currently rolling out a new DAM for The Rockefeller Foundation as part of a larger digital enhancement to evolve the esteemed philanthropy’s message through storytelling and compelling media. Previously, she implemented DAM and a suite of creative tools for e-commerce leader Gilt.com.

Vanessa Holden is a creative leader with an established track record of creating, launching, extending, and growing global brands. As the former SVP, Creative Director of American lifestyle brand West Elm, Vanessa oversaw the creation of a completely integrated omnichannel brand experience, leading the teams who created all facets of the customers’ brand experience. Vanessa has focused on the art of storytelling through images and words throughout her diverse career in publishing and design. As Senior Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Martha Stewart Living, Vanessa oversaw the creative and editorial direction of the award-winning magazine and married its visual style with the brand’s media and retail segments. Vanessa recently sat down with us to discuss content consumption, successful and impactful visual storytelling, and changes that affect today’s creative operations teams. Watch the full interview.

Jim Zdancewicz is the Head of Creative & Content Production for eBay Enterprise, and contributes his over 25 years of content production expertise, operational management, and creative producing to the eBay Enterprise team. Jim has grown the eBay Enterprise studio business with an ever-expanding roster of top fashion and eCommerce clients. His passion for creative imagery, video, and technology is a key driver in eBay Enterprise’s delivery of multichannel content across all customer touch points. Jim recently sat with us to discuss content creation strategy, omnichannel marketing, and measuring success. Watch the full interview:

As brands and retailers are embracing new omnichannel strategies, the demand for product photography and visual content is exponentially growing. How do omnichannel strategies affect brands and their creative operations? What challenges are they facing? How do they (plan to) adapt to this new environment? In the first edition of the Creative Operations Breakfast Series (Sept. 22, 2015), Vanessa Holden, Independent Consultant and Former VP Creative Director at West Elm, and Jim Zdancewicz, Head of Creative & Content Production at eBay Enterprise, joined us in our TriBeCa headquarters to discuss how the multiplicity of marketing channels have impacted brands and organizations’ creative operations. As new channels and devices are constantly emerging, companies and creative production teams are trying to produce the best content that fits their brand identity and messaging. After years of rushing for new pop-up channels, Vanessa and Jim have noticed a change in companies’ marketing and creative production approach: Brands are now putting more strategic thought into their creative assets, focusing on producing core assets, while constantly innovating by experimenting with a multitude of asset types, formats, and channels in order to test and learn. This reality-check is mostly due to stagnant or shrinking creative production budgets, especially for experimental assets. Creative teams themselves have also evolved: Because creative teams and operations are more condensed, they also need to be more versatile. On set, every single link of the creative operations chain needs to be clear about the company’s identity, objectives, and key messages to be able to shoot, pick the right edit, and properly edit the appropriate assets for each channel. They need to understand the nuances of each channel to make better creative decisions on-the-go. Watch the full panel to learn more about the impact of omnichannel marketing on creative operations: The Creative Operations Breakfast series brings together leaders in the creative production and operations community for a casual breakfast.   Globaledit is a cloud-based platform that empowers creative professionals to manage visual production at scale. Globaledit launched the Creative Operations Breakfast in 2015 to address key issues and challenges faced by creative production and operations professionals today.  

Reviewing assets while on-the-go is about to get easier. The latest update to our iOS app makes it easy to filter and sort images so you can very quickly find and review exactly the images you need to see from your iPhone or iPad. To get to the new feature, enter a job and load the grid view. Next to the grid view icon, click on the funnel icon to load the Filter and Sort options. Filtering suppresses all images that do not match your criteria. The numbers on the right side-show you how many assets in view are approved, selects, starred, etc. Click on the filters you want to apply and the grid view will update automatically. Sorting is similar. But instead of hiding assets you rearrange them based on name, ratings, and other common metadata. Clicking on the arrow allows you to swap between ascending and descending order. Retina Support Also new in this release is support for full Retina quality on all images if you have a retina display iPhone or iPad. This allows you to have pixel-perfect images and should improve the overall image quality in the app. We’ve also made a few other tweaks to the UI to better support the iPhone 6S and Plus. The result is a better looking application with improve usability. Mobile Uploads One last huge improvement – you can now upload images directly from your iCloud account. If you’ve moved lots of images into iCloud to save space, or want to upload a photo from year ago – you can now do so seamlessly as if they were an image stored right on your phone. Simply select the thumbnail you want imported into globaledit. For more details about any of these improvements, check out the full release note. If you have any question about these features or want to schedule a demo, contact us.

As brands and retailers are shortening their supply chains and embracing omnichannel retailing and marketing, the demand for product photography and visual content is exponentially growing. Today creative production and marketing teams are constantly facing the challenges of producing more visual content (e.g. product photography, editorial), for a larger number of on- and offline channels, and in a shorter period of time. Finding technological solutions to these growing pressures has become critical for creative production professionals and their companies in a highly visually competitive market. Scale & agility are key in this new creative production environment. During a DAM Meetup about “Product Photography & DAM”, Deanna Bedoya (Lafayette 148 NY), Sara Mitzner (swimsuitsforall), Nikki Schiwal (J.Crew), and Jim Zdancewicz (eBay Enterprise) shared their creative production volume and process, as well as the solutions they are using or considering to produce more content better, cheaper, and faster.  More visual content than ever before Top brands and retailers like J. Crew, Lafayette 148 NY, swimsuitsforall, and eBay Enterprise capture more products and lifestyle photography than ever before: J.Crew shoots around 10-15 different looks a day, 50 to 300 images for each look; Lafayette 148 NY shoots 1,500 images per month; swimsuitsforall produces approximately 2,500 images month per month; and eBay Enterprise shoots from 3 to 4,000 images for their clients from different sets all across different locations. That’s just the beginning. Once photographed, in-house creative production teams have to review each individual shot and make their selects for eCommerce websites, catalogs, social media, and a myriad of other channels. As Jim Zdancewicz from eBay Enterprise put it: “I don’t envy being an art director these days when you’re looking at three or four times the images they used to, a couple of years ago, because the content channels are so immense (…)”. At Lafayette 148 New York, Deanna Bedoya mentioned shooting “about 1,500 images per month… we make 150 selects per web shoot (that’s 50 SKUs 3-ways), for catalog shoots it’s usually 120”. Sounds like a lot? It is. Some creative production professionals estimate that 10 times more visual content is being produced today when compared to five years ago. Why visual content is crucial to brands and retailers There are more products to sell. Sara Mitzner, Content Director at swimsuitsforall, mentioned: “the biggest change for us has been volume because we’ve grown so much as a business. When the company started out, they only had about 10 styles. Now we have close to 1,100 styles per season”. Customers are requesting more details about those products. For Deanna Bedoya from Lafayette 148 NY, “the expectations for eCommerce are only getting larger, not smaller”. As eCommerce is maturing and eCommerce customers are becoming more sophisticated, they tend to have higher expectations when it comes to the products featured online. In the past, companies used to shoot front and back of the product featured online, and that was it. Today, customers are looking for detailed photography for each individual item (zipper, buttons etc.), videos for each product, and more. To appeal to their online customers, more and more brands and eCommerce websites are now shooting each product from every angle, and zoom in on small details. The rapid growth of consumer channels. The proliferation of social media has encouraged brands to create dedicated imagery and campaigns for these platforms. According to Nikki Schiwal, J. Crew now does about 25 shoots per month for social media only – that cover everything from J.Crew, Madewell, and Factory. Deanna Bedoya from Lafayette 148 NY mentioned creating dedicated images for each social channel, such as original imagery for Facebook ”because it is not as cut and dry as eCommerce”. Technology solutions to produce more, faster, cheaper To increase their efficiency and productivity, brands and retailers are looking to leverage technology solutions to scale their creative production. A digital asset management software or a workflow platform is typically the first step to keeping media assets organized and the process flowing. Teams can store and distribute files quickly, track and control access and usages of each of their assets. Swimsuitsforall currently uses globaledit as their DAM system: “[We] have the image database on globaledit. That’s where all the final imagery lives (…). We actually have two offices as well, so using globaledit really helps in that regard”. Outside of digital asset management systems, brands are increasingly looking for cost-efficiency. At Lafayette 148 NY, Deanna Bedoya mentioned eying technology solutions to cut the production load and lower its costs. This leads brands to explore platforms like Looklet, for example, where you can “shoot all of your clothing on mannequins and have the company clone it on to models”. While these solutions are not quite there yet, brands are keeping an eye out for the latest and greatest technology to improve their processes in a very competitive world. These quotes were taken out of the NY DAM Meetup about Product Photography & DAM that was hosted by globaledit on Tuesday, July 14, 2015. Watch the full recording to learn more about product photography & DAM.

At globaledit, we’re constantly leveraging today’s tools and technology to make your creative production process seamless. This month, we’ve released a bunch of great features and new upgrades. You can now enjoy: now live! upload images directly from your iPhone/ipad You requested it, we did it! You can now upload images directly from your iPhone/iPad camera roll to your globaledit account. Found a great inspiration or a template on-the-go? Send it directly to your globaledit library using the iPhone or iPad app. Your images can then be rated, commented on, marked up, and shared just like any other asset. Read the support article.   How can I upload images from your iPhone/iPad to my globaledit library? 1. Navigate to a job 2. Click on the globaledit logo in the middle of the menu strip 3. Click upload and select your images from the camera roll 4. Et voilà! Your image is automatically added to your globaledit library   make your talent happy with mobile-friendly Approval Galleries Approval galleries are now in a mobile-friendly format so that your talent can easily & securely review them from any mobile device – no need to download an app, no extra steps. This keeps your process moving and your talent happy. Read the support article.   ALLOW Guests to upload to globaledit Invite guest users to upload files to your globaledit library without setting up an account for them. Your photographers, vendors, or other collaborators can now very easily share files with you using Uplink. No more WeTransfer, Hightail, or Dropbox nightmares. Simply invite them via email and they can begin securely uploading to globaledit right away. Read the support article. Find our more about our latest upgrades and improvements in the full release note. If you have any question about these features or want to schedule a demo, contact us!

You’ve got your creative production under control – if not, here are three ways to get your creative operations on track, now time to take a creative break! Here are 6 inspiring exhibits to check out this month: 1. “The Rise of Sneaker Culture” (NYC) The first exhibition that includes approximately 150 pairs of sneakers, looks at the evolution of the sneaker from its beginnings to its current role as status symbol and urban icon. Brooklyn Museum July 10 – October 4, 2015 Hours: Thu: 11a.m.-10p.m. Wed & Fri-Sun: 11a.m.-6p.m. Entrance: $16 suggested contribution 2. “Emerging” (LA) All about new, upcoming artists who are bringing “a fresh perspective and creative techniques to professional photography.” Get ready for some unfamiliar names and jaw-dropping images. Annenberg Space for Photography Jun 6, 2015 – September 20, 2015 Hours: Wed-Sun: 11am-6pm Free Admission 3. “Light, Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography” (LA) Center stage at the Getty Center’s latest exhibition. Rather than focusing on the final image, this retrospective will spotlight the canvas on which the photo was printed and how that affects the end-result. J. Paul Getty Museum April 14 – September 6, 2015 Hours: Wed–Mon 10a.m.-5p.m. Free Admission 4. “Zoe Leonard: Analogue” (NYC) This ambitious project made up of both color and black-and-white photos was created over a ten-year period, and takes its cues from Eugène Atget’s iconic documentation of ancient Parisian neighborhoods disappearing under the onslaught of modernization. MOMA – Museum Of Modern Art June 25 – August 30, 2015 Hours: Thu-Fri: 10:30a.m.-8p.m. Sat-Wed: 10:30a.m.-5:30p.m. Entrance: $25 5. “Sarah Charlesworth: Doubleworld” (NYC) Charlesworth, photographer and pioneer of the “Pictures” aesthetics, used newspapers, magazines and other sources as her palette, isolating image fragments against lush monochromatic backgrounds to deconstruct how we are manipulated by mass media. The New Museum June 24 – September 20, 2015 Hours: Thu: 11a.m.–9p.m. Wed & Fri–Sun: 11a.m.–6p.m. Entrance: $16   6. “Folk Art and American Modernism” (NYC) Stylistic borrowings from outsider art have become something of a vogue among contemporary painters. Self-taught artists have long exerted a pull on Modern Art, especially in the United States, where folk traditions have played a large role in the nation’s cultural life. American Folk Art Museum July 18–September 27, 2015 Hours: Tue–Thu: 11:30a.m–7:00p.m. Fri: 12p.m.–7:30p.m. Sat: 11:30a.m.-7p.m. Sun: 12p.m.–6pm. Free Admission

We’ve all been there: Trying to make the most of our time by using production shortcuts that can save our schedule. But when your company or client starts producing high volume of creative assets for their multi-channel retailing and marketing strategy, the ‘quick & dirty’ fixes that worked for small scale teams or creative production no longer work. Inefficient habits can have a long-term impact on your team’s productivity, their morale, and your business. When your team needs to deliver a high volume of assets in a short period of time – production cycle times are constantly shrinking – you need to bring your A game. Centralize The worst thing that could happen to a creative production team is to be physically and virtually disconnected from their assets. The two most common mistakes are: On set: Uploading all the files to a hard drive and shipping it to the in-house creative team or advertising agency. In this case, teams can sometimes wait for days before they can start working on the assets. On set or at the office: Uploading files to the FTP server or using consumer tools like Dropbox, WeTransfer, Google Drive or HighTail to share the assets with the rest of the team. Here’s the truth: These tools are not powerful enough to quickly upload and share terabytes of files in no time. The moment you start using these tools, your creative production is already delayed – by a few hours or a few days. Since creative teams are more and more distributed, centralizing your assets on a cloud-based platform is key to get your creative production on the right track. It also provides one single source of truth accessible anytime, anywhere. It removes all doubts and frustrations right from the beginning. Simplify Scattered communication is the evil of our time. Teams email each other for everything and anything: Share files, chase approvals, provide feedback, etc. Mistakes or errors are common – if not the rule. From retouching the wrong file to missing a key information in an email spread, sometimes teams spend more time correcting their mistakes than actually getting the production moving. Review & approval should take minutes, not hours. Giving and receiving feedback should be a matter of seconds. You shouldn’t have to frown every time your client or Creative Director emails you their feedback. Marketing and sales departments know it, and you know it more than anyone: An image is worth a thousands words. Emails interrupt the creative production workflow. To control and simplify it, start by connecting your feedback to your creative files: Ratings, selects, approvals, notes, and markups need to be attached to the asset your team is working on, in one centralized place accessible from anywhere. Don’t let emailing slow down your creative production. Automate Creative operations, especially when producing huge libraries of product photography or lifestyle images, come with repetitive and time-consuming tasks. Some of them are unavoidable, but many of them aren’t. Remember that contact sheet that took you so much time to put together and shared with your team? It can now be automated. That email recapping all the markups you’ve made on a photo or a video? Automated. Finding all the assets that have been approved by your talent? Automated search. Use technology to your advantage by automating all this time-consuming tasks, and focus on what you do best. Creative production platforms like globaledit offer a simple and easy way to centralize your library, simplify your communication to avoid mistakes, and automate your most tedious tasks to save time. All in one platform – not three or five different tools or platforms. Selecting the right platform will give your team the freedom to focus on what they are really good at: their creative input and expertise.

Globaledit had the pleasure of hosting a DAM Meetup NY about “Product Photography & DAM” featuring a great panel of experts and professionals who joined us to share their experience and best practices: Deanna Bedoya, Director of Creative Services, Lafayette 148 New York Sara Mitzner, Content Director, swimsuitsforall Nikki Schiwal, Senior Digital Archivist, J. Crew Jim Zdancewicz, Head of Global Content and Creative Production, eBay Enterprise With the rise of multi-channel retailing and marketing, product photography is booming. Today’s organizations are documenting, photographing, and videotaping every single item and SKU for various purposes. This results in extremely high volumes of assets generated, and creates growing challenges for companies when it comes to storing, tracking, reviewing, retouching, and sharing all those assets while managing time restrictions. Learn more about the challenges big retailers like eBay Enterprise, J. Crew, Lafayette 148 New York, swimsuitsforall are facing everyday when it comes to product photography, and the best practices they’ve put into place to solve them. Watch the full video:

Once a month, we meet with one of our software developers to get to know the team behind the technology. Meet our Aussie Software Engineer, Matt Callahan, who ensures the scalability of the globaledit platform for future developments. What do you do at globaledit? I am currently a software engineer at globaledit. I build out some of the core features and ensure the system architecture translates into code properly for successful scalability. So every time a new feature comes out, I oversee it to make sure the code structure is clean, secure, stable, and scalable in the long run. Also, because the application is available for iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Desktops, I focus on building out our API, which globaledit platform is utilizing more and more. What is your role in the feature development process? When the team comes up with a feature request, we’ll do a proof of concept to come up with possible solutions and technical recommendations – keeping in mind the existing code structure and future developments. For every new feature, we think about: What the customer wants, how the changes are going to affect the customer and the existing features, and how we can build on the system architecture without affecting future releases. It’s a trade-off: Sometimes the best technical approach might not solve customers’ needs, or a great new feature might have a huge impact on the system. What’s your professional background? My previous role was a Software Consultant in Melbourne (Australia). This involved working with different clients both remotely and on-site, and sometimes with multiple ones at a time. My clients would range from SMB to huge enterprises in finance and banking. I liked the team aspect, the negotiation and discussion. Eventually I moved to New York, and I was working remotely for the same consulting company. It was a great experience, in the aspects of freedom and setting your own schedule. After some time, communication became very challenging with the different time zones, and I missed working with people and building things. That’s when I decided to join the globaledit team. How did you get into engineering? I grew up on a dairy farm in Australia. Most of my siblings have an engineering mindset, but more hands-on. I guess that’s why it comes naturally to me. By the age of 10-12, my parents got a computer with Windows 3.1, and my father bought revolutionary farming software to manage the farm. I helped him setting it up and digging into it, that’s how I started understanding the file system. Eventually one day I was tinkering the computer and accidentally deleted everything. That’s how I learned the importance of backups! Later on, I moved to Melbourne to get a Computer Science degree, which opened so many doors. What do you like best about working here? What I like about my job is that we can be involved and have a direct impact on the product by incrementally improving it. A lot of little things allow us to be strategic and acquire big clients and it is very satisfying. In my previous job as a consultant, I had to deal with lots of variety (bank, plumbing, trading), which I really enjoyed. But there was no continuity of seeing the product evolve. I have been at globaledit for two years now, and I can definitely see how the usage has improved today vs. back then because we acknowledge product feedback from our customers. What are your favorite sources of inspiration? I listen to a lot of ‘nerdy’ podcasts for developers and engineers, especially on my commute: Full Stack Radio, Javascript Jabber, .NET Rocks!, The HanselMinutes Podcast, and the Software Engineering Radio. It helps keep up with the technology, consider different approaches to a problem, or give tricks and tips, etc. Also, I like building experimental websites and systems on the side. Technology is constantly changing, so you have to challenge yourself to stay on top of it. Working with new systems is a great way for me to keep my mind open to new approaches. For example, I developed a platform that could predict results of sporting events. By analyzing the different betting markets, the system would try to find a combination for a guarantee win. It didn’t really work, but I still learned a lot from building it. Do you have any hobbies? In Australia I loved watching Australian Rules football and cricket – I still watch it but the time difference can make it complicated. Since I moved to the States I’ve started following the American Football League, which means I have now 12 months of non-stop sport to watch! Also, my wife and I love to travel. I have been traveling since I was 18. I went to Japan for 3 months, got the travel bug, and went backpacking all over Asia. I love New York City, but I try to travel at least once a year overseas.

Time to take a break and feed your creative mind with these inspirational TED Talks: 4 lessons in creativity – Julie Burstein Radio host Julie Burstein talks with creative people for a living — and shares four lessons about how to create in the face of challenge, self-doubt and loss. Hear insights from filmmaker Mira Nair, writer Richard Ford, sculptor Richard Serra and photographer Joel Meyerowitz. Watch now. Fashion and creativity – Isaac Mizrahi Fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi spins through a dizzying array of inspirations — from ’50s pinups to a fleeting glimpse of a woman on the street who makes him shout “Stop the cab!”. Watch now. Capturing memories in video art – Gabriel Barcia-Colombo Using video mapping and projection, artist Gabriel Barcia-Colombo captures and shares his memories and friendships. At TED Fellow Talks, he shows his charming, thoughtful work — which appears to preserve the people in his life in jars, suitcases, blenders, etc. Watch now.  Taking imagination seriously – Janet Echelman Janet Echelman found her true voice as an artist when her paints went missing — which forced her to look to an unorthodox new art material. Now she makes billowing, flowing, building-sized sculpture with a surprisingly geeky edge. Watch now. Your Elusive Creative Genius – Elizabeth Gilbert Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk. Watch now.

June was a busy month for the development team at globaledit. We’ve improved performance, increased security, squashed bugs, and added a few powerful functionalities to help you gain more control over your creative production. We’re excited to introduce our latest features and newest improvements! Markup Editor now supports PDFs – You could already mark and annotate your photo and video files in globaledit to easily collaborate with your creative team. Now, you can also markup layouts or any multi-page PDF! Just upload your file, switch to our Markup Editor, and go. Discover what you can do with our Markup Editor.   ‘Smart Search’ now has additional fields – A few months ago, we introduced two new ‘Smart Search’ fields: In advanced search, you could search your ‘rated’ assets by user(s) and/or date range, a great way to simplify your review & approval process. We’ve gone one step further: Now ‘Smart Search’ fields also apply to markups and uploads! Look for all the assets that were marked-up or uploaded by a certain user and/or during a specific time frame. Read the support article.   Image load time improved – We’re all about embracing mobility and removing all physical barriers for creative teams. That’s why we’ve reduced image load time for galleries and lightboxes throughout the world, for a better user experience. Read the support article.   Share your photo or video markups directly from the globaledit iPhone or iPad app – If you already use our powerful Markup Editor on the iPad and iPhone app, you’re going to love this: Now you can also email to your team a PDF attachment containing all marks and annotations – directly from your iPhone and iPad! Update or download the globaledit app. Idle time session expiration – We know you’re sometimes dealing with highly sensitive assets and campaigns, so we’ve added an extra layer of security to our system. Admins can determine the time that will log users out of their globaledit account after a period of inactivity. Read the support article. If you have any questions about these new features, please contact our client services team!

For eCommerce, advertising campaigns, or editorial features, retouching is an essential part of every creative production process. Both photography and retouching go hand-in-hand to create the most beautiful and compelling imagery to a reflect a product, a brand, and a creative vision. We’ve met with Katie Ryan, Account Director at retouching and CG super-boutique, Impact Digital*, to learn more about their workflow—and how they integrate globaledit into the retouching process. At Impact Digital, we’re constantly against the clock producing hundreds upon thousands of images for clients. And when you’re retouching for top international brands and photographers, you have to ensure every photo is of the highest caliber. This is why we have a refined, tried and tested process to produce excellent images. 1. Creative kick-off Before we even touch the photos, it’s important that we sit down with the client and explore his or her vision of the shoot. What ‘story’ do they want to tell? Do they have any reference pictures? We ask these questions to get the images right from the start—saving the client time and reducing the amount of retouching rounds down the line. 2. Processing and organizing  Organizing hundreds of reference images, RAWs, JPEGs, and metadata can be very tricky at times. We use globaledit to centralize all our assets right at intake. This simple step can be a life-saver when a client wants to shift conceptual directions or when we’re creating composite shots. Rather than digging through folders or hard drives for the right images, our retouchers can pull them from the cloud into Photoshop straight away. 3. Initial retouching Prior to presenting to the client, we actually prefer to have several internal rounds of retouching in-house. During the rounds, the account manager, production manager, and the retouchers get together to assess if the image correctly matches the client’s vision. In the visual world of retouching, it’s all about first impression! 4. Client presentation This is where we present first round of retouched images to the client and receive constructive feedback. Whenever possible, we also like to have in-person meetings to facilitate healthy discussion about the photos. Sometimes a client might say “make this element pop more,” but this might actually mean “up the saturation” in Photoshop lingo. Having our account and production managers present really helps when translating the feedback to our retouchers. 5. External rounds After our initial meeting, we then enter a cycle of external retouching rounds. We retouch the image again, send them through a lightbox, a virtual folder that we create and share via globaledit, and then eventually receive new feedback from the client directly in globaledit. Clients can review, leave notes and comments, and mark images with the Markup Editor. This phase can take some time depending on the number of images we are retouching or possible changes in the client’s vision, but using the right digital collaborative tools make it so much faster! It considerably reduces the number of emails you have to track in your inbox and eliminates miscommunication. 6. Q&A and proofing Once the final image is approved, our whole team thoroughly inspects for errors and hard lines for maximum visual integrity. For photos that need to be printed, our prepress department processes the images and creates proofs for the client. This ensures that colors remain accurate across web and print ads. We share the finalized files with the client via a secure lightbox, to prevent any leaks from happening. If they themselves have a globaledit account, they can decide where to store it in their library, and how to share the final files with their team (asset and user permissions, watermark, etc.). 7. Release At this point, our images have finally reached the end of their little journey, and the client is happy. We begin to see our work in magazines, posters, or on the web—a moment that’s always amazing. *Impact Digital and globaledit are sister divisions and part of Industrial Color Brands, a family of integrated creative production companies.

Happy 4th of July! We know you’re constantly looking to feed your creative work. If you’re staying or visiting New York City this weekend, here are 5 must-see exhibits and activities that will boost your creative thinking: Aperture: Photographs ‘Aperture: Photograph’s is an exhibition that tells the story of Aperture, through a display of photographs from its print and fundraising programs, from over fifty years. A retrospective of all the great photographers that shaped the industry. Aperture Foundation June 29 – September 18, 2015 Hours: Mon–Fri: 8:00a.m.–6:00p.m. Entrance: Free Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks The first major exhibition of the Brooklyn-born artist Jean-Michel Basquiat’s notebooks, ‘Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks’ features 160 pages of these rarely seen documents, along with related works on paper and large-scale paintings. Brooklyn Museum April 3 – August 23, 2015 Hours: Wed: 11a.m.–6p.m. Thur: 11a.m.–10p.m. Fri–Sun: 11a.m.–6p.m. Entrance: $16 suggested contribution American Folk Art Museum: ‘When the Curtain Never Comes Down’ A sprawling cacophony of objects, audiotapes, photographs and films is here orchestrated into a curatorial marvel. Strange and wonderful in numerous ways, the show sheds new light on the performance aspects of much outsider art. American Folk Art Museum March 26 – July 5, 2015 Hours: Tue–Thu: 11:30a.m–7:00p.m. Fri: 12:00p.m.–7:30p.m. Sat: 11:30a.m.–7:00p.m. Sun: 12:00p.m.–6:00 pm. Mon: Closed. Please note the museum will be closed on Sat., July 4. Entrance: Free Whitney Museum of American Art Whitney’s new building increases the Museum’s exhibition and programming space, offering the most expansive display ever of its unsurpassed collection of modern and contemporary American art. Hours: Mon, Wed, Sun 10:30 am–6 pm, Thu–Sat 10:30 am–10 pm, Tue Closed Entrance: $22 14th New York Asian Film Festival Back with 54 feature films, 18 international filmmakers and celebrity guests traveling from Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the U.S. will attend the festival. Walter Reade Theater at Film Society Lincoln Center and SVA Theatre June 26 – July 8 and July 9 – July 11, 2015 Entrance:  $14 or $17 (depending on event)

Today, online creative collaboration looks like this: “Where is his/her email?”: One project or one asset (image, PDF, video) can generate thousands of back-and-forth emails. “In which email did I read this?”: When you scan emails all day long, it can be difficult to search for the exact comment or note, especially on iPhone or iPad. “Who said it?”: With several stakeholders involved, you vaguely remember someone sending a comment about a specific asset, but who and when? “Did he/she give his/her feedback?”: It’s hard to track who did or did not review the assets in time. “What changes need to be made?”: Collecting all the feedback is time-consuming, and mistakes are common. “What is he/she talking about?”: You’ve got the message but you’re still trying to figure out how to read between the lines. Using digital markup tools is an easy way to communicate clear directions to your team. By directly drawing and commenting on the image, PDF, or video file, your team saves time, avoids mistakes, and eliminates endless rounds of review. Here are 3 reasons why you should start using digital markups and annotations to communicate with your creative team: 1. Move the conversation… …from your inbox to your assets. Gathering all your assets in one single ‘place of truth’ is the first step to better collaboration. If you add the possibility for people to provide their feedback and comment directly on the asset (image, PDF, video) they are reviewing, you’ve already cut down ⅔ of your emails and the time spent searching for them. 2. Track your creative team’s feedback Each time your teammates leave a comment or a markup, know exactly who requested the changes, reviewed the images, PDF document, or videos. 3. Show don’t tell By using digital markup tools (shapes, colors, notes), feedback are more accurate and the work gets done faster. Decide on a color-code with your team to quickly estimate the amount of work or the team involved in the changes. Globaledit has an integrated digital Markup Editor that enables creative production teams to quickly communicate and share their feedback and comments on photos, PDFs, and videos. By using the Markup Editor on their desktop, iPhone or iPad, our clients noticeably reduce their retouching, editing, and rounds of review with their team (video, eCommerce, marketing, etc.). Watch how the Markup Editor for images & PDF works and how you can accelerate your video review with video commenting at time frame.

Save the date! Globaledit will be hosting the next DAM Meetup about Product Photography & DAM on Tuesday, July 14, 2015. Many organizations photograph their products to market them online (eCommerce platforms, affiliated websites, social media) and/or in stores. The high volume of items photographed and, as a result, of photos taken makes it very challenging for brands to keep track of their assets. Using a DAM system enables them to keep the best photographs and helps with multi-channel distribution. A talented panel of experts and professionals will be sharing their experience and best practices in product photography & DAM system: Deanna Bedoya, Director of Creative Services, Lafayette 148 New York Sara Mitzner, Content Director, swimsuitsforall Nikki Schiwal, Senior Digital Archivist, J. Crew Jim Zdancewicz, Head of Global Content and Creative Production, eBay Enterprise When: Tuesday, July 14, 2015 from 6.30PM to 9PM Where: Industrial Color Brands / Globaledit, 32 Ave. of the Americas, 22nd Fl., New York, NY

Stay on top of industry news & trends with our top 5 must-read stories of the week! Here’s what you should read this week: JPEG Compression Test: Google Photos vs. JPEGmini (via PetaPixel) How to reduce the size of photo files without changing the perceptual quality of the images? PetaPixel ran a series of tests to compare the photo compression performance of the newly released Google Photo vs. JPEGmini. Get Ready for Social Media’s Big Event Trends (via Freeman XP) From Twitter’s Project Lightening to Snapchat’s Our Stories to Instagram’s Search & Explore, social media platforms are capitalizing on customer- and brand-generated content shared during live events. Adobe Has Entered the Stock Photo Market, Competes with Getty and Shutterstock (via Resource Magazine) The market for stock images is massive, coming in at over $3 billion. That’s why Adobe just launched Adobe Stock, which lets consumers buy and sell creative content (images and graphics) directly through the Creative Cloud interface. Twitter Gets More Shoppable With Product Pages And Collections (via Techcrunch) Slowly but surely Twitter moves into eCommerce, releasing two new products this week: Product and Place Pages and Collections. This means more eCommerce channels to manage, and new opportunities for brands. Comedy Central in the Post-TV Era (via The New York Times) The network is in the middle of a creative renaissance and a business-model crisis. What does a television network do when its bread-and-butter demographic, young, piracy-fluent, glued to phones, stops watching television? Do you have an article to share with us? Reach out on Twitter, we love hearing from you: @globaledit.

After being rewarded “2015 Best Redevelopment Project” by the Los Angeles Business Journal, our sister company, Smashbox Studios has received LABC’s Los Angeles Architectural Award of Excellence in Interiors. Congratulations to the whole team at Industrial Color Brands, Gensler and Howard Building Corporation for making this incredible project possible! When the renovation project started a year ago, it was a huge undertaking with very tight deadlines. The team was split between the East Coast and the West Coast of the United States, making it harder to communicate and work together. Find out how design and architecture firm Gensler and all the stakeholders leveraged globaledit to remove barriers of time and location, and avoid expensive mistakes. Read the article.

In this edition of Tech Talk we sat down with Nick Balsamo, one of our talented software developers who’s dedicated to making sure our platform runs smoothly. Read more below! What is your role at globaledit? I’m currently a software engineer with focuses on our backend development and on crafting our automation frameworks. What this means is that I work with our QA team to build the tools they use to write tests that check if globaledit is healthy and working optimally. These tests will  run each night and perform a variety of scenarios. This also means I work on building out our APIs and services for the iOS app and website. In many ways, my position requires me to straddle between QA and development; I’m pretty much a “liaison” between the two. Whenever the QA team needs tools, I build them! What is the most challenging part of your position? When I was hired about a year ago, I actually didn’t have any experience building testing frameworks. As a result, I had to do a lot of research. We were just starting to automate our tests, so I looked extensively into QA tools—what would work for us and what was most cost effective. Since then I’ve worked with the QA team to build up our automation framework from scratch. What’s your approach to solving a problem? Start out by defining the problem and its variables. What can and can’t you control? From there, it’s all about taking incremental steps. You never want to just dive in and attempt to tackle a problem in its entirety. Modularize it: Divide it into digestible segments, start with the first part, and work your way on to the next one. What do you enjoy most about globaledit? I used to work for an investment bank in developing software that tracks the performance of a client’s investments. After a few years there, I decided it wasn’t for me. Now that I’ve joined globaledit, my work environment is much more uplifting. Everyone takes ownership of their work and we all take pride in building together a product that is constantly improving. One of the most enjoyable aspects is the atmosphere and work vibe around the office. Having a relatively small team in comparison to a huge company means that you get to work one-on-one most of the time, and there’s an individual touch to everything. Everyone has their hands in the pot, whether it’s database work, API building, or front-end development. We’re not limited to just one role, which leaves a lot of room for growth. What are your favorite apps? I’m actually a big runner so I really enjoy Nike Plus. It tracks how fast you’re going and your mileage. I find it pretty interesting since I get to visibly see what affects my running. If I went out the night before, I’ll obviously be running slower than normal. If I ate something pretty energizing in the morning, I’ll see how effective it is. As far as work apps go, I created a tool that captures the state of the website as the system runs through our automated tests. It’s incredibly useful because you get to see exactly what’s happening when something goes wrong. Not to mention, it feeds into a dashboard that summarizes the results and progress of a running test. Definitely a time-saver. What do you enjoy to do outside work? I really enjoy traveling around the country going to the “big games” and visiting different stadiums. In the last few years I’ve been to the Super Bowl, the College Football Championship, a few Stanley Cup Finals games, and 15 different MLB stadiums. The best part has to be the tailgating and how each city has their own culture and their own traditions. These trips aren’t the most traditional types of vacations, but they’re a great way to see the country!

Q&A with Marketing Producer, Julia Foresman of Industrial color brands We’ve been talking a lot about the gallery exhibit going on at our headquarters in TriBeCa over the past month.  As Jean Jullien’s installation comes to a close at the end of May, the Industrial Color Brands team shared with us how they’ve leveraged globaledit to manage content creation for its four divisions: Industrial Color, Fast Ashleys Studios, Impact Digital, and (of course) globaledit. How do you leverage events for marketing purposes? As a brand we’re entrenched in creative production on all levels, so being able to curate a creative endeavor ourselves is essential.  An exhibit like our recent collaboration with Jean Jullien offers huge opportunity to engage with the community about something aside from the services we offer.  Practically, this also means creating a lot of promotional content about the exhibit, the artist, and putting on an event for the opening. What is your role in the process? I’m responsible for curating all of the raw content and distributing it on our websites through blog articles and social media. Because I work for all of the Industrial Color Brands divisions that means managing four websites and 16+ social media outlets, each with original content that aligns with their specific  ‘voice’. How did you manage all of the assets produced in promoting an event like this? Part of what has made my job easier in promoting globaledit as a platform is that I legitimately use it every day to manage all of our photo and video assets. With four divisions under the Industrial Color Brands umbrella, we’re producing a wide variety of content every day that isn’t specific to one division.  Events are unique in that we’re promoting across all divisions simultaneously, so we have four times the amount of distribution all at once. What is the biggest challenge with managing event photography? Event photography like a photo booth can be a monster of a task. Time is of the essence when it comes to leveraging the post-show buzz and all of the photography captured during it. By the next day people want to see the photo booth collection and share the photos themselves, and of course we want them to as well. Thanks to the team at Industrial Color we have a custom photo booth set-up that people get super engaged with at our events.  In fours we’re talking upwards of three thousand photos.  The challenge here is being able to quickly pare down 3,000 some images into multiple galleries to share by the next afternoon.  How do You get from 3,000 photos to the few you want to use? Once in globaledit I use a star rating method to quickly pare selects down to a few hundred and then separate out 25-50 unique photos for each division. I put each division’s photos into a separate Lightbox, download them and get to work on distributing.  By the afternoon I’ll have created four Facebook albums, four blog articles and who knows how many additional social posts cross promoting and linking them all together. Usually, I’d start this process by getting a drive from our photo booth Tech and uploading all the assets first thing the next day.  However, this event was our first time using the new ‘globaledit desktop’ feature for the booth, which was hugely beneficial. How was globaledit desktop used in this case? The globaledit team set up a ‘hot folder’ at the capture station so that every single photo taken in the booth automatically uploaded into a folder in globaledit right on the spot.  No drive to upload the next morning. And both RAW and jpgs were accessible immediately.  I was able to start making selects that night, cutting down the turn-around time to distribution even further. This was also great for the Industrial Color Tech who handled the photo booth set up.  He didn’t have to manage handing over files the next day or creating a backup because it was all done for them automatically. What is the biggest benefit from your experience incorporating globaledit desktop at the event? Definitely how much time it saved, especially being under the pressure of a hard deadline.  Between cutting out the back and forth to get my hands on a drive and the time of doing a mass upload, I saved three hours before even walking in the door the next day. That time makes a huge difference when you still have your general day-to-day tasks to get done. Any advice for people managing event photography? It’s really important to come up with an efficient rating & filtering system that makes sense to you.  For the first pass you really can’t be too precious with each photo.  I’ll scroll through everything one time quickly and uniformly give a 3 stars to all ‘usable’ photos.  Then I filter out anything that isn’t 3 stars so immediately the photos are pared down to a more manageable selection.  With a more limited collection, I can then go through and use color labels to indicate which division or outlet it should be used for. So I know that green is Industrial Color and red is Fast Ashleys Studios, etc… Once that’s done, again I quickly filter by ratings and add to individual Lightboxes.  I download those and have four perfectly organized (& unique) collections to draw from. For more behind-the-scenes from Jean Jullien’s exhibit at the Industrial Color Brands gallery, you can watch an interview with the artist and check out (all four) of the photo booth galleries here, here, here and here.  Learn more about globaledit desktop in the short video below! Automate your uploads with globaledit desktop from globaledit on Vimeo.

Stop searching for a needle in a haystack with globaledit advanced search! We’ve just released two new search criteria that will improve your review & approval process for good: You can now search your ‘Ratings’ by user(s) and/or date range. Here are 3 use cases to take advantage of these new features and boost your productivity: Talent approval: How do I look for all the photos ‘killed’ by my talent? I want globaledit to show me all the killed photos by talent A. Expand  advanced search, select ‘Ratings’, then ‘Kill’, and click on the user icon.  Once that modal expands, begin typing the talent’s name. Now when you run your search you will see the list of assets  killed by talent A. How do I look for all the assets rated by a collaborator during a specific period of time? Your Creative Director (or another collaborator) emailed you on May 20th to let you know that she’s selected the photos for your next Fall campaign. You don’t know the file names. To avoid having to go through all the selected assets (other team members may have selected some of them too), you can now add your Creative Director’s name, and even a date range, to your search: ‘Ratings > Select > Creative Director > Between May 10 and May 20’. You went from 500 photos to only 20 in just a matter of seconds. Date range is also great to find all the assets that have been rated, killed or approved over a specific period of time, on one single project, or your entire library – perfect for those monthly reports. I keep searching the same assets over and over. How can I automate my search? If you are used to running the same search over and over, why not save it? With the new search criteria, it means you can now easily find it one single click: All the assets killed by your talent; Your weekly report of approved photos; Or anything that helps you keep your creative production track. Save your time. Have a question, another use case in mind, or just want to share your workflow? Contact us and we’ll be happy to help or publish your use case on our blog.

Video review & approval is a tedious process that often means endless emails, confusing feedback, and unpredictable outcomes. To avoid confusion and simplify your communication, we just rolled-out a powerful new video feature that will bring your video review to the next level: Frame accurate video commenting. In this session, Product Manager Matt Glueckert will show you: How to instantly review your video from any device (web, iPhone, iPad) How to generate an exportable pdf including all of your feedback Best practices for reviewing your videos in globaledit Have a question or want a free demo? Contact us!

How do you deliver all your video content and keep all your projects on track when you are constantly on-the-go, in-between shoots, and working on multiple projects? Here are 4 tricks to make the most of globaledit’s video commenting on your iPhone and iPad—and review all your videos from the tip of your fingers. 1. PINPOINT AN EXACT FRAME TO COMMENT  Tapping on the left/right of the video frame will move back/forward one frame. Perfect for navigating to the exact frame you want before making a comment.     2. REVIEW COMMENTS AS VIDEO PLAYS While watching the video, comments will automatically be highlighted when the video reaches its specific frame. Turn off this functionality by tapping the gear in the bottom right hand corner then switching off ‘Comment Auto-Tracking’. Quickly review all video comments as you play your video.     3. WATCH YOUR VIDEO FULL-SCREEN  View your video fullscreen in landscape mode to enjoy the full video experience and better spot the changes you want to make. Get edge-to-edge video viewing by turning your phone to landscape mode. You can still access frame controls and add comments. Then turn it back to portrait to review your comments.     4. SWIPE TO REVIEW YOUR NEXT VIDEO! You can also swipe left or right on the video frame to move between videos. Great if you need to review multiple videos at once and get your projects moving.

  Video review & approval is a tedious process that often means endless emails, confusing feedback, and unpredictable outcomes. Video teams all around the world are constantly facing this problem, so we at globaledit came up with a solution: Frame accurate video commenting. You can now provide or get precise feedback to or from your collaborators by adding comments on video at a specific timecode, selecting a frame, or manually entering the timecode. With video commenting in globaledit, your team can: Instantly review your video from any devices (web, iOS) Provide or receive frame-by-frame comments on a video Centralize all feedback on a video into one exportable pdf To get started, open your video using the globaledit Markup Editor mode. Now, you’re all set to review & comment your video! Visit our dedicated support article for a full review of video commenting in globaledit, or contact our dedicated team of User Champions.

We’re back for another round of our ‘Tech Talk’ series with Sam Sandoval, QA Engineer at globaledit. Find out how we sniff and snuff out bugs in our platform, Sam’s exciting career as a professional gamer, and his new found interest in salsa dancing. What is your role at globaledit? As a QA Engineer at globaledit, it’s my job to run the application through various tests to ensure that each new update and feature that we release is as bug-free as possible and that they have been implemented correctly. This includes more manual front-end testing of the UI, automation of said testing, and API level testing on the back-end. As QA, we’re the last line of defense between a new update to the app and our clients, so we do absolutely everything we can to ensure that globaledit is in a polished and workable state before it reaches their hands. What’s your approach to building and improving globaledit? When you have a product that’s as complex as globaledit, testing for all of the possible scenarios can sometimes be a challenge. There are a seemingly countless of interconnected features that affect each other in ways that aren’t always obvious. It’s pretty easy at times to forget how even a small change in one feature can impact another one. This is why we do our best to create detailed test plans before each new feature released, so that nothing is overlooked. Fully identifying what needs to be tested beforehand helps immensely when targeting and testing certain aspects of the platform. We then go in, execute the test cases, validated the features, smoketest the release, and give it our thumbs up if all goes well. What is the most challenging aspect of your position? Probably keeping up with the rapid release cycles. When we push out a new update to globaledit, the expectation is that the product should be very stable and bug-free. Finding that balance between working quickly and being more calculated and methodical is what allows us to put out these quick releases while meeting the quality standards. Luckily, we have a great QA team to divvy up the testing and reach our goal. 🙂 Why did you choose globaledit? When I was initially looking for a new QA job, I wanted a challenging position with lots of room for personal growth. I wasn’t disappointed when I decided to join globaledit. So far I have added multiple new tools to my QA repertoire, many of which have helped in testing globaledit. Not to mention, the team is full of really smart people – I feel like I can learn a lot from pretty much everyone that I work with. Your favorite globaledit ‘Hackathon’ project? I actually use our monthly Hackathons as a time to learn new tools more than anything else. I pick a new tool, run at least one test with that tool, and add it to my skillset. Not only does it help with my own personal portfolio, but it has directly benefited my testing of globaledit as well. One of the coolest tools I’ve learned was Sikuli, a QA tool centered around GUI components. Because globaledit is flash-based, it can be difficult sometimes to automate some of the tests that we want to perform. Sikuli recognizes the pixels on the screen based on a screenshot you take of the UI element you’re trying to find, finds it on the screen, then moves the cursor to that location and clicks the button. It definitely became a huge time-saver in testing the application. How did you get started in QA-ing? I actually started out with game design in college and was determined to make it in the game industry at the time. I created a company with some colleagues/friends of mine and worked on some iPhone games. They were pretty solid apps—nothing too complicated or fancy, but it was a lot of fun. Somewhere along the way, in-between jobs, I picked up a QA gig. I enjoyed it and discovered that I was pretty good at it, and so I just kind of ran with it. Fast forward a few years and now I’m a QA engineer at globaledit! But you still enjoy video games, right? Do you have other hobbies? Yeah, of course! For a couple of years, I was a pro-gamer for the massively multiplayer online game, World of Warcraft. It was like being a sports athlete… except for a computer game. I practiced with my team, got flown out to tournaments, and was even sponsored. It was an amazing experience and gave me a pretty solid excuse to visit new countries and experience different cultures. Nowadays, I’m not competing professionally, but I still enjoy gaming as a daily part of my life. Aside from that, I picked up salsa dancing last year, and it’s been a pretty positive change so far. I practice several times a week and have performed at several salsa dance events. I also have a salsa dance iOS app in the works right now.

Thanks to everyone who came out for last night’s Industrial Color Brands gallery opening!  We celebrated artist Jean Jullien‘s installation ‘In Case of Ubiquity’, illustrations overlooking New York City from 22 stories up in air.  The French artist concluded his 6 month residency in New York by creating a visual diary with the city skyline as his canvas. The finished work is a clever, insightful narrative on the nuances of life in the Big Apple. Check out a few choice pieces below and the full gallery from the event’s photo booth here. The exhibition runs through May 1st at the Industrial Color Brands gallery in TriBeCa. Email gallery@industrialcolor.com to come by!

Smashbox Cosmetics partnered with House Leopard Productions to renovate and operate their legendary Culver City studio. The NYC based executive team worked remotely with the LA based design and construction teams to bring the project’s vision to life under an extremely tight deadline of 9 months. Remote collaboration From concept to construction the project deadline was half of the industry standard for an undertaking of its scope – with major infrastructure upgrades, complete gut renovations of two adjacent buildings and numerous high-tech and AV innovations. The ambitious project required constant, detailed collaboration among many stakeholders across multiple geographic locations to review and approve the design and daily construction progress. The team involved top suppliers, including the Newport Beach Gensler team, Gardiner & Theobald project management, ARC Engineering, Howard Building Corporation and the Smashbox Studios teams in NYC and LA. A project of this scope and deadline required a new way to work and communicate. By implementing globaledit, the teams were able to upload and share photos and drawings in real-time from anywhere 24/7. This removed barriers of time and location and gave immediate access to the project and removed guesswork. From design concepts, mood boards and renderings, to original site photos and landscaping references, globaledit was the primary communication platform between the client and Gensler. Its use was also paramount during construction, allowing the teams to communicate instantaneously and make constant real-time decisions. “Referencing actual in-progress photos was a huge benefit to the project. Conference calls, drawings and meetings are one thing, but photos are real – they clarify and align the team. Smashbox Studios uploaded around 50 site photos per day. Because of their diligence prior to and during construction we were able to see every detail, prevent mistakes and make approvals instantly. It was an amazing resource that I’ve never had before.” – Gareth Jones, Associate Director, Gardiner & Theobald. Real-time feedback In addition to major infrastructure upgrades that included electrical, seismic, fire sprinklers, plumbing and HVAC, the team was also tasked with designing custom features including state-of-the-art color controllable LED hair/makeup stations, world class café and commercial kitchen, modern AV systems and premium VIP lounges and mezzanines to create their vision of the “studio of the future.” “Globaledit was critical to ensuring every custom feature and detail was executed perfectly. The cloud-based application allowed team members to visualize and identify any issues instantly and work together to find quick resolutions to stay on track with our fast-paced schedule.“ – Ashley Brewer, Designer, Gensler A simple workflow was quickly established to streamline the team’s review and approval process. Photos were uploaded to globaledit at the end of each construction day. The NYC team was then able to review the photos in the late afternoon and make comments, markups and approvals. The vital feedback was reviewed and integrated into the next day’s construction updates. globaledit was also critical in both discovering construction conflicts ahead of time and establishing immediate solutions that avoided costly delays – the team never missed a beat. “With globaledit we all referenced the same images during construction. I might notice one detail, while our project manager would catch something else. In one instance we caught an issue with the sprinkler install that would have cost well over $100,000 in abortive work.  Catching all of the details adds up to huge cost and time savings. More importantly, it’s about building an amazing studio. With globaledit we achieved our vision and mission. The team and project exceeded our expectations, which is rare in construction.” – Steve Kalalian, CEO, Smashbox Studios “In the end, it only took 9 months from concept to construction for Smashbox Studios to re-open its doors. Usually a project like this takes around 15 months, but we were working on an extremely tight timeframe. We did a load of things in parallel that are usually done one after the other, so we condensed everything schedule-wise.  We simply couldn’t have done that without globaledit.” -Gareth Jones, Associate Director of Gardiner & Theobald. Smashbox Studios re-opened its doors on schedule and immediately welcomed high-profile photographers and celebrity clientele. The Gensler and Howard Building Corporation team was able to create an exceptional space that delivered on the client’s mission of creating a modern, user-friendly facility. The team is proud to have earned Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2015 Best Redevelopment Project award, and an upcoming feature article in Interior Design Magazine’s April 2015 issue. Be sure to check out Smashbox Studios’ website for a closer look at the results. Construction Credits Architect: Gensler, Newport Beach – James Young, Ashley Brewer, Anne Bretana, Eric James & Michael Robins Construction: Howard Building Corporation – Steve Segel, Mike Thompson Project and Cost Management:  Gardiner & Theobald – Gareth Jones MEP: ARC Engineering – TK Wong AV & Cabling: Tekworks – Joshua Montana and Dave Novak Security: Enterprise Security – Keith Trainer Landscape Architect: Place – Victoria Pakshong and Anne Buttyan Read & print the full story. *globaledit is a division of Industrial Color Brands, operator of Smashbox Studios.

Looking for innovative ways to optimize your creative production? We are too! This is why we brought you globaledit desktop, a tool to upload your assets to the cloud faster than ever. Join Product Manager, Tommy Lionelli, for a quick 20-minute training session that will automate your uploads for lightning-fast transfer and real-time collaboration. In this session, you will learn how to: Get started with globaledit desktop at the office or on set Automatically upload photos and videos to shared lightboxes Best practices to use globaledit desktop in your worfklow

Renowned illustrator and graphic designer, Jean Jullien, will be bringing his signature style and humor to the the Industrial Color Brands gallery in TriBeCa. He’ll be creating a one-of-a-kind painting on the gallery windows that interacts with the New York City skyline from 22 stories above ground. Schedule an appointment to stop by!

When your photographer is on location in LA, your retouchers are in Hong Kong and your marketing team is in NYC, working together on the same creative project can be extremely challenging. Join Product Manager, Matt Glueckert, to discover how globaledit can tie your whole creative production workflow together, and boost your remote collaboration efficiency. In this session, you will learn how globaledit helps you to: – Centralize communication by keeping your ratings, comments, markups, and files together – Control access to your assets with powerful and easy sharing tools – Accelerate large files upload and transfer  

This week, we chatted with Senior Software Developer, Christian Saide. Join us as we take a closer look at the code crazy, ocean-loving programmer who’s keeping our cloud afloat.  What is your role at globaledit? I’m currently a software developer at globaledit with a focus on running and optimizing our servers. What this normally entails is working with our systems team to build the server and application code and of course, test it over and over again. This can range from low-level tweaks and changes, to big projects spanning hundreds of virtual machines. In the end, it’s all about getting more people on our cloud and transferring data faster than ever. I work to build a nimble, seamless user-experience ‘behind the curtains’ or in the other words, the back-end side of things. It’s a job that has a lot of little nuances and challenges, but it’s definitely rewarding. What’s your biggest accomplishment so far here?  As I mentioned before, our work sometimes involves a vast array of virtual machines. When people think about storing large amounts of digital data, they usually think about physical storage—like terabytes upon terabytes of hard drives or server rooms. Eventually, we decided to move our infrastructure to virtual emulations of PCs. This gave us an edge when developing and testing new features. There was no need to replace physical hardware, provided more environments to test iterations of features on, and ultimately, just made our team more agile and flexible. It was a great change that speed up our development cycle tenfold. What’s your approach to building and improving globaledit? globaledit is clean and simple, yet powerful and deceptively really, really big. Users are constantly pulling large amounts of data from our servers, uploading high-resolution pictures and videos to our cloud, and editing these huge files. It’s a really intricate process that focuses on one point: speed. With that in mind, we look at routing calls from the user interface, reducing latency, and moving caches into the cloud. I aim for a robust globaledit that’s incredibly responsive and always reliable. Why globaledit? I’m not going to lie, the view was amazing when I first visited the office. Aside from that, it was really the nature of the work and the team that drew me in. When you’re faced with the sheer size and breadth of a cloud-based platform, it’s a difficult job. Right now, we keep 9 separate environments functioning, well-oiled, and working perfectly. It’s great to constantly learn from and evolve with a product, especially one that’s complex. As for the software development team, we’re a pretty tight-knit group. Though we’re always working on different things, the end goal is to make all the pieces fit neatly into each other. It’s in the same vein of start-ups: a healthy mix of autonomy and teamwork. It’s exactly what I enjoy in a working environment. What are your favorite apps and tools? For work, it’s all about Sublime Text, literally the best text editor in my life. The rest relates to server back-end helpers like Bash and Visual Shell. On my phone, I’m actually not a big app user. I only have Tetris, and I currently can’t beat the 16th level. How do you approach problem-solving? It’s sometimes impossible to solve a complex problem just in one shot. You have to think deeply about it, explore the possibilities and angles, and then attack it. But the most important part is, don’t get stuck. Move on to something else and then come back later—with lots of coffee. How did you start programming? I had a computer ever since I can remember and during my childhood, I was always the IT guy. Funny thing is, I actually majored in Mechanical Engineering in college. However, after I graduated, I started working in a nanotech lab, ran simulations, and eventually started developing the simulation software. At that point, I fell in love with coding and started creating my own video game hacks. I did that for a long time and even got paid to play video games. I eventually shifted my focus to web applications, what I think is the future of software development. What keeps you busy aside from work?  I love keeping my skills sharp by making apps and contributing to GitHub every now and then. I dabble in whatever interests me, like genetic programming (code that rewrites itself as it runs), 1080p screen-capturing, and FTP replacement servers. For me, it’s all about making every iteration better than the last and constantly improving. Outside of coding, I’m actually a really big longboarder and surfer. I love the ocean. As for why I don’t live in California—trust me, I’ve thought about it, but college just put me on the East Coast for now.

Looking for innovative ways to optimize your creative production? We are too! This is why we’re bringing you globaledit desktop, a new tool to upload your assets to the globaledit cloud faster than ever. globaledit desktop automatically uploads your assets from your computer to your globaledit account. Watch Tommy Lionelli, Product Manager at globaledit, introduce this new workflow tool: Start using globaledit desktop now! Visit our dedicated section or our Support website to get started today.

  Handling talent approvals can be a huge headache. For over 10 years, globaledit has been providing the industry standard talent approval system. This streamlined tool is used every day by top media companies and advertising agencies, making sharing assets a breeze and approving them even easier. Join Product Manager, Matt Glueckert, to explore how TV networks and movie studios use globaledit to manage and speed up talent approvals for some of the biggest names in Hollywood. In this session you will learn: – How to share Approval Galleries in just a few clicks – How to use Approvals on-the-go with your iPad or iPhone – How to keep track of Approvals with our Asset Status feature Check out the recording below! https://vimeo.com/121185498  

In this week’s ‘Tech Talk’, we chatted with Vice-President of Engineering, Ameet Doshi. Join us as we discover his approach to building globaledit, love of start-ups, and brief stint as a NYC bar owner. What is your role at globaledit? As the Vice-President of Engineering, I’m responsible for overseeing the progression of globaledit. Contrary to the title, I don’t do much programming anymore, but rather, I guide the product and development teams on the ever-lasting quest to improve our platform. We brainstorm, test, and implement ground-breaking features or the littlest of UI changes to create a better product. It’s a complex process that requires us to be mindful of security, our client’s needs, the market, and our goal to stay above our competition. In a nutshell, I bring together the vision of globaledit and its execution to bring a concrete, working platform that’s always evolving. What’s your approach to building and improving globaledit? When creating a product like globaledit, a solid grasp of analytics is absolutely key. We choose to align our vision with internal data because it reveals important insight into our user base. For example, we may think our clients want XYZ, but data collected may show they want an upgrade of an already existing feature. In the end, it’s all about harmonizing your endeavors with analytics—striking a good balance between direction and data. What is the most challenging aspect of your position? When you’re evolving the overall product, the challenges change and shift according to your daily focus. In a sense, it’s fun because it breaks up the monotony and constantly keeps things moving forward. It’s also productive because we like to carve out time to reimagine our platform from different focal points, eventually combining each iteration into a new feature or upcoming concept. But as far as an actual challenge? It’s always time! There’s never enough hours in the day. Did you always know that you wanted to work in the tech industry? Nope! I actually started off with biomedical engineering to reconcile my love of math and my dad’s desire for his children to become doctors. At first, I loved it—I met wonderful professors, was genuinely interested, and even secured a job after graduating. It was a research and development position that had me in charge of my own project: take raw collagen, purify it, strengthen it, and make a natural ACL replacement. From just a raw concept, I designed about a thousand prototypes before eventually submitting the idea for studies and testing. At that point, though, I was 22—very young and restless—and I couldn’t wait around for 2 years for the findings to be released. I resigned and started looking into technology. (My idea eventually got patented!) How was the transition? It was actually nothing too new to me. At school, I took core classes in programming and around the dot-com bubble, all the companies were hiring like crazy. With a biomedical engineering degree, it was a bit difficult to convince interviewers at first, but once I got my first position—they never regretted it. I held the most amount of raises and promotions in my company and even the longest awake session in development (42 hours straight)! From there, I went into digital marketing, the product world, rebuilt a webmail platform, and even started my own consulting firm. What is it about the “startup culture” or process that you enjoy? A lot of the companies that I joined, like 360i, were reasonably small but definitely growing by leaps and bounds. And it’s something about the passion and heart that go into a budding business, that’s absolutely inspiring. In companies similar to Google and Facebook, there’s a lot of slow, methodical action. You never really get to test your wings at fast-paced speeds. At globaledit, we have a team that’s nimble and ready to make a big splash. There might be growing pains here and there, but it helps a lot with making the day-to-day grind more dynamic and lively. How do you maintain a healthy work-life balance? As a consultant for start-up companies, some of my work-life balance actually begins in work! Having had two great mentors in life, I see my legacy as not ‘what I did’ but ‘how I helped others grow’. I love mentoring when I can, and I make it a point in my life to encourage and push others to realize their potential. In the end, it’s all about creating a family with the people you work with and fostering a healthy environment with plenty of room to grow. As far as outside of work, I’ve got my wife and two daughters who I never want to miss out on. I always try to be home before their bedtime and create precious time for them on the weekends. Though my professional career is important, I like to stay rooted with my family. It’s rewarding and the balance keeps me more energized in my daily life. We hear that you once owned a bar? How did that happen? During my days as a young programmer in my mid-20s, I decided to do something completely different and buy a bar. I managed people, made connections, and fostered my communication skills—something not easily done in front of a computer and keyboard. It was overall an experience that prepared me for consulting and managing a team of thinkers and developers. When you’re directing or working with large groups of different people, you’re also collaborating with their personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. It takes a certain finesse to pull them all together and create something great.

Last year IBM reported 1.5 million monitored cyber attacks in the United States. Passwords, credit card numbers, and other valuable information totaling billions of dollars were exposed on the web. Now is the time to safeguard your precious photos and videos. Start out with these 5 ways to protect digital assets and keep your company work secure. 1. Manage what your users can and cannot do Not everyone should have universal rights to access, create, edit and delete digital assets. Ensure that your users only have the tools required to complete their jobs. There’s nothing worse than losing assets to human error. 2. Balance safeguarding your digital assets and user experience Requiring your team to change their passwords periodically  can be a pain, but it is necessary from a security standpoint. Communicate with your collaborators to create a healthy harmony between security protocols and workflow. Setting expiration dates and company watermarks are easy ways to protect your assets without sacrificing time. 3. Know your most valuable assets Cyber crime costs businesses up to 575 billion dollars annually. Avoid the risk by knowing your security architecture is secure. If your work involves sharing pre-retouched photos or unedited videos, consider using tools with transport layer security and data encryption for safe sending. 4. Layer your security One common misconception is that attacks solely originate from outside sources. However, around 35% of breaches occur from within or third-party vendors. Protecting your files and data from unauthorized outside access is crucial, but you also want to safeguard servers, networks and digital assets from internal mishandling. 5. Test your tools In a post-Sony hack world—It’s not if you’ll get hacked, it’s when you’ll get hacked. Only use tools that are audited by renowned third-party security organizations to minimize your risk. You can find a list of certified Qualified Security Assessors evaluated by the PCI Security Council here. For more about protecting digital assets, take a look at our ‘Implementing Enterprise Application Security’ Snackinar with Ted Harrington from Independent Security Evaluators. We explored some of the concepts here, as well as the relationship between security and the creative realm.

We hosted the Advertising Production Club’s ‘Integrated Media’ panel last night to learn what makes a good integrated campaign work and why. The outstanding panel discussed what drives a brand, how media is distributed and how the creative process travels from concept to consumer.  Check out the some photos below and the full album on our facebook page.

Collaborating and sharing content has never been easier, and the demand to do so quickly, never greater. In this Snackinar, we continued our new series focusing on the craft of digital photo and video production. We interviewed top talent from across the creative industry to learn how they use their skills to create top-notch visuals for their audiences. For our second edition, join us as we take a closer look at the creative workflow behind the making of iconic images. Our guest Katie Ryan, Account Director at retouching & CGI super-boutique Impact Digital, joined us to share: The evolution of digital photo retouching The challenges faced by retouching teams Tips and tricks for a smooth retouching workflow Katie has over 8 years of fashion industry experience in retouching, both on the client side and the agency side. Impact Digital is a high-end retouching & CGI super-boutique based in New York City, embracing all types of projects ranging from editorial work to global advertising, in-store and e-commerce campaigns. Find out more about the Art of Retouching in a new series: “Anatomy of a Super Boutique”. Check out the recording below!  

We had a great time at LeBook’s Connections Los Angeles event yesterday.  Hosted by our friends at Smashbox Studios, we got to rub elbows with the best in creative production at an incredible facility. We joined sister divisions Industrial Color, Fast Ashleys Studios and Impact Digital to present Industrial Color Brands and cheers at the after-party. Check out the gallery for a peek into one of the highest caliber industry events in the biz.

Collaborating and sharing content has never been easier, and the demand to do so quickly, never greater. But with great flexibility and speed can come poor security. So how do you keep creative workflow moving while maintaining a secure environment? Security Expert Ted Harrington from Independent Security Evaluators (ISE) joined Product Manager Matt Glueckert to discuss today’s at-risk situations and best practices to protect your assets from external attacks – and internal mistakes. In this session you will learn: Secure design principles: How you should think about security. Know thy enemy. Where they are, what they want, and what you can do. Performing security evaluations for products, platforms, and services. Ted Harrington drives thought leadership initiatives for ISE, the elite American organization of security researchers and consultants. He is a sought-after speaker and a contributing author on security topics across a wide range of industries. Check out the recording below!  

We’re excited to announce our latest release: @mentions. In the Asset Notes panel, just type the @ symbol followed by the first letters of your contact’s name, then select his/her name, and voilà! Your contact(s) will automatically get notified in their inbox and see a notification in globaledit. By using @mentions, you can easily: Save time by drawing your teammate’s attention to a note or a comment you’ve made on an asset. Assign tasks, clarify responsibilities, and ensure your teammates are on the same page. Keep you project on track by cutting down the response time and increase productivity. To find out more about @mentions in globaledit, visit our support website or contact us for a free demo.

Join us at LeBook Connections Los Angeles next Thursday, January 29th! We’re excited to present at the show hosted by our partner, Smashbox Studios, in Culver City.  We’ll be sharing a booth with sister divisions Industrial Color, Fast Ashleys Studios & Impact Digital.  Hope to see you there! LE BOOK Connections January 29th 11:30am – 7:30pm Smashbox Studios 8549 Higuera St. Culver City, CA 90232

We’re ringing in the New Year with a brand-new ‘Tech Talk’! Join us as we chat with Andrew Cho, an iOS developer at globaledit, and learn about the nuances of iOS programming and his humble beginnings as a kid coder. What is your role at globaledit? In a nutshell, I’m responsible for globaledit’s ever-improving iOS platform. Optimizing user experience is a key tenet of our product team so my job is to create a seamless transition from our web client to on-the-go production with an iPad or iPhone. We make sure globaledit is optimized across all platforms—from markups to approvals and selects to sharing. What recent project have you worked on? Was it challenging? We recently pushed a new and improved markup editor to both the web and iOS platforms. With new colors, different shapes, and stroke sizes, globaledit more accurately mimics the markup process in real life, in only half the time. As far as what was challenging, probably all of it! Creating a mobile application requires lots attention to little nuances, like connectivity, crash logging, and beta testing. We have to watch out for scenarios like losing service or accidentally closing the app. Ultimately, iOS development is a tricky field that requires a lot of testing and QA. How do you brainstorm new ideas and features for globaledit? From our everyday conversations to discussions with the product team, we’re constantly throwing new ideas around and trying to innovate. Sometimes it’s just a sudden flash of inspiration, and other times it’s the result of hours and hours of coding at our monthly ‘Hackathons’ (24-hour sessions of taking concepts to working prototypes). And it’s honestly a never-ending process. Once you have your assets in the cloud, the possibilities are limitless in terms of collaboration and sharing! What are some of your favorite tools or apps to use? A lot of the apps that I love are related to my job. (I would say that I’m definitely a workaholic.) Xcode: I use this software to design and build the globaledit app! Definitely my bread and butter of developing for iOS. Crashlytics: A beta testing platform and crash reporting tool tidily wrapped up in one app—it saves a lot of time and headaches. Network Link Conditioner: It’s a great tool that simulates various connectivity scenarios. Overall, it helps a lot in testing apps’ performances in real life situations. How did you start programming? It actually all began in elementary school when I first flipped through a programming magazine. It showed me all the amazing things you could do with code, like make web apps or create your own video games. To an 8-year-old like me at the time, it was absolutely mind-blowing. From that point onward, I spent lots of long nights hovering over my computer creating my own games. However, at the time, I didn’t think of it as a potential career path. It was more of a hobby than anything else. It wasn’t until college and during internships that I realized that programming presented a lot of opportunities for me, in terms of making people’s visions and dreams a reality. What kind of apps have you created, and which one is your current favorite?  I’ve actually been all over the place in terms of creating apps. I’ve developed apps for the financial services, education, and health industries. My favorite out of all of them? It might be cheesy to say, but globaledit is my favorite because it’s my best work so far. What hobbies or interests do you have? For someone who has stuck to a computer for most of my life, nature has actually been one of my favorite topics to explore. When I’m home, I try to tune to nature documentaries and play with my cat, Coco. And when I get to travel, hiking through amazing places is my passion. I’ve managed to trek through the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Kauai, and every moment was breathtaking!

We kicked-off the New Year with an upgraded photo markup editor in globaledit. We rebuilt our cutting-edge markup tools to bring you finer control and easier commenting – anywhere, anytime. Enjoy sharper annotations, faster turnaround, and easier team-wide collaboration with our easy-to-use markup interface. Join Product Manager, Matt Glueckert, for a 20-minute tutorial that will take your markup skills to the next level! In this session you will learn: New shapes and new commenting Switching between markups on web and iPhone/iPad Keyboard shortcuts to mark your photos in a breeze How to become a markup pro! Check out the recording below!

We’re very excited to kick off 2015 with our latest release: A new and improved photo markup editor.  We’ve rebuilt this popular feature to bring you finer control and easier commenting in an easy-to-use interface. You can now enjoy a brand new markup experience in globaledit markup editor: New look, improved performance, and expanded functionalities on both Web and iOS platforms. What’s new: REVAMPED MARKUP EXPERIENCE: New shapes, crisp drawing, and easy commenting in a user-friendly interface. SIMPLIFIED MARKUP LAYERS: Marks and comments together at last. SPEEDY SHORTCUTS: Swap shapes, adjust brush sizes, and create new layers with handy keyboard shortcuts. AUTO-SAVE & UNDO: Everything auto-saved and un-doable. CTR Z to the rescue. UPDATED iOS APP: Make markups on the go with the updated globaledit app for iPhone and iPad. Don’t forget to update your app! Check out the complete list of new markup tools for Web and iOS on our support website. And feel free to contact us for a demo or a quick training session. We hope you’ll enjoy the upgrade!

We’re back with another exciting round of ‘Tech Talks’ with the newest addition to the globaledit team, Account Manager Christiana Rifaat. Join us as we explore her unique position, as well as her love of food and travel. Welcome to the globaledit team! How do you like it so far? I love it! Everyone is hard-working and dedicated, and the atmosphere is really inspiring. Not to mention, it’s been incredibly easy to adjust because we’re such a tight-knit, welcoming community. And we work with a ton of amazing clients, so it’s very rewarding to be part of this team. Describe your role as an Account Manager. I’d like to say that we’re “User Champions” or in other words, the crucial link between clients and globaledit. Workflow consultation, customer support, or training: You name it, we do it. And we always provide a “tailor-made” experience to our clients. We talk to users and create customized manuals for their unique workflows or keep them posted on new features that are relevant to them. We’re also the proud messengers between our clients’ needs and the development team. We work together with both sides to constantly enhance globaledit. What have you learned since becoming a globaledit team member? It may not seem that big, but working in an open-office layout was an eye-opening experience. I actually used to do freelance work before, and it was a very private and isolated work experience—a “my work is my work” sort of thing. At globaledit, it’s great to be able to walk over to a coworker’s desk and brainstorm ideas. I can literally head over to the marketing department, the developers, or the CFO for open collaboration. What did you do before joining globaledit? I was (and still am) a photographer! I have a special connection to art, and I love a photo that’s engaging. It’s like listening to a good song and having it speak to you. It’s for this reason that I tend to photograph my family a lot. I started by taking pictures of my younger brother, and it’s stuck with me ever since. Not to mention—my inspirations, Larry Sultan and Harry Callahan, also started out by photographing their families. What do you like to do when you’re not working?  Traveling. And if I had any life advice to give, I would say: Go out there and travel if you can! I took a two-month long backpacking trip with my sister in Southeast Asia last year, and it was absolutely mindblowing. I had never done extensive traveling before this trip so it was my first time exploring other ways of life outside of the U.S. It’s one thing to see culture, but it’s a completely different thing to experience it. What was a highlight of your trip? I took a cooking class in Thailand, right in the middle of the jungle outside of Chiang Mai. Actually, it was more of an adventure than a “class.” They took us to a farm, and we pulled vegetables straight from the ground. Afterwards, we went to a bustling market where we navigated the shops to pick out fish and other ingredients, like ginger and coconut. We ended up making five different Thai courses throughout the day, and they even gave us a cookbook of what we made to take home! So is cooking another one of your hobbies? I cook a little bit, but I’m actually just the kind of person that likes to watch people cook (I love Mind of a Chef!) or go out to eat. You know those rebels that never follow a recipe? I’m one of them, and sometimes it turns out great… and other times, it’s inedible. It’s a bit of a gamble. There’s this place in Brooklyn called Chuko’s. It’s a ramen bar, and their food is amazing. Scratch that, it’s the best. View Christiana’s photography here. And stay tuned for our next ‘Tech Talk’!

Content creation is speeding up. The pressure is on for brands to produce more and more visual content in less time. Creative decision makers are often overseeing multiple photo shoots at a time, and their ability to be on set is limited.  How can you keep up? Corrie Zaccaria, globaledit Account Manager, recommends uploading directly to the cloud from your photo shoot . Here are 4 key benefits of uploading to globaledit on set, and get ahead of your competition. 1. Speed up your time to market A cloud-based system enables your team to quickly access images and start making selects, ratings and markups in real-time – wherever they are. So all those folks who couldn’t make it out to shoot on location in Fiji…still have an eye on production. Learn more about:  Uplink, Aspera 2. Collaborate in real-time Get immediate feedback and direction from your creative team off set.  Potential errors can be caught and fixed during the shoot, avoiding costly re-shoots or retouching. This allows your team on set to make quick changes and ensure they get the right shot. Learn more about:  collaborative markups, notes, comments, notifications 3. Save TIME & money Moving to the cloud means eliminating the redundant hard drives in your life. You can finally stop throwing away money on purchasing extra hard drives and shipping them around the world. Here’s another big saver: No more overtime charges from the studio or your crew for additional file processing time. You also cut down duplication of effort in the production process since reviewing assets and making selects is centralized. Avoid the time sink of making selects on a hard drive or server and having to transfer onto other platforms. Learn more about:  Lightboxes 4. Organize at ingest Applying detailed metadata directly from the shoot ensures your photos are properly tagged and easily searchable. It is particularly important when dealing with multiple products or talent. And with Adobe & Capture One ratings support, the team on the ground can rate while they shoot, and their work is preserved at ingest saving you time down the road. Learn more about:  Metadata, XMP, Capture One/Adobe Bridge

In this week’s Snackinar, we begin a new series focused on the craft of digital photo and video production. We’ll be interviewing top talent from across the creative industry to learn how they use their skills to create top-notch visuals for their audience. Our first guest is Todd Schweikert, VP of Capture Operations at Industrial Color Productions, who joined us to share: The history and evolution of digital photo capture The challenges faced by creative photo teams on set and on location Tips and tricks for smooth digital production Todd Schweikert has over 15 years of digital capture experience and is known for his workflow architecture expertise in both digital still and video production. Industrial Color Productions is recognized as the premier digital capture company in both NY and LA, always at the forefront of digital capture technology. Check out the recording below!

There’s a fine line between open collaboration and a free for all. Managing a media library of thousands of assets is hard. Managing access to all of those assets is even harder. How do we separate access for internal vs. external users? Who can view what? And what can be distributed when? globaledit puts the power in your hands to determine all permissions for viewing, downloading, and editing assets and their related data. Whether you need watermarked, date-based restrictions or full rights within specific folders, globaledit has the user rights combination for your workflow. In this session you will learn: Setting up basic user rights and permissions in globaledit How to enable the powerful asset rights system Creating user groups to bulk assign job permissions How to check existing permissions and update on the fly Best practices to secure and deliver large assets to external vendors, international teams, and partners Join Product Manager, Matt Glueckert, for a crash course on user roles, permissions and rights management in globaledit.

We’re back for another round of ‘Tech Talks’ to learn more about Director of Engineering, Alessandro Catter-Martinez. The fearless leader of our development team constantly strives to turn great ideas into reality. Join us as we go from past to present, exploring his unique childhood and early aspirations to be a cartoonist to his experiences at globaledit today. We hear you have quite the international background. Can you tell us about that? My parents were both born and raised in Peru but eventually met and married in Florida. By the time I was born, they relocated to Burbank, California, where I lived until I was 7. At that point, my parents decided to move back to Peru to live a simpler lifestyle on a family-owned chicken farm. The best school in area happened to be a Japanese international school, so I ended up going there. My childhood was certainly a colorful experience! So are you tri-lingual? I used to be trilingual, I’ve lost the ability to speak Japanese. Lack of practice. But at the time I could speak it, read it, and knew two out three alphabets. Did you see yourself ending up as a techie in TriBeCa? Actually, no! On the contrary, I used to be quite artistic as a little kid so I wanted to become a cartoon artist. In Burbank, we lived near the Warner Bros. studio so all of the giant movie and TV-show posters made quite the impression on me. With a creative career in mind, I gravitated to computers and CGI. The turning point was when I took a programming class in high school with some friends on a whim. Everything managed to come so naturally, and I easily aced the class. Then and there, I found my calling. What brought you to New York City?  It was really a mix of the cooler weather and the amazing energy of the city. Despite having lived in places like Peru and Florida, I never got used to 80 degree days, sand getting everywhere, and the humidity. I visited New York City a few times and instantly knew I wanted to live here. Describe your role as Director of Engineering at globaledit. Put simply, my role is to lead our team of engineers and ensure that we create software that is user friendly, secure, and top quality. This involves collaborating with the product team to continually brainstorm new features and improvements, from bugfixes to user experience. In many ways, my job is all about turning great ideas into reality. How long have you been at globaledit, and how has it changed since you’ve been part of the team?  I started in the summer of 2012, a little over two years ago.  When I started, the application and team was a lot smaller. Since then, we’ve internally rebuilt globaledit from the ground up, reshaping it into the industry-leader it is today. The team has shifted a lot as well. We’re constantly growing so there have been quite a few talented additions. At the same time, we still have our fundamental core of developers—the “tent poles” of our team—who have stuck with globaledit since the very beginning. It’s a great mix that creates a truly collaborative culture. There’s not a lot of weight behind hierarchy or titles, so from testers to engineers we openly share ideas, do monthly hackathons, and go out for drinks after work. It’s a fun environment full of creativity and teamwork that I’m proud to be a part of. What has been the most challenging aspect of your position thus far? As I said before, globaledit started out small so we’ve gone through some growing pains. The demand of globaledit surged so we had to focus on improving the hardware that ran the software. It was a big challenge to keep everything running seamlessly while making big infrastructure changes. People depended on globaledit for their day-to-day needs so we couldn’t have any downtime. It was tricky, but we managed to do it in the end. What keeps you motivated in your day-to-day? It’s really mix between the guys I work with and my growing family. It’s really inspiring working with team and bouncing ideas off of each other. Discussing the merits and shortcomings of our ideas leaves a lot of room for growth and development. At home, I have a 1 year old daughter going on two in February and a new baby coming in January. They’re huge motivators for me, and I want to be a good inspiration for them. Who has been the biggest influence on your life? What lessons did they teach you? I would without a doubt say my parents. One way or the other, they both showed love and endless perseverance—especially by uprooting themselves and moving from one place to another several times. It’s not the easiest thing to do, and it showed a lot of courage on their part. One of my biggest life goals is to be like them and teach my children the same lessons they taught me. Being the best husband and father I can be is my ultimate goal, everything else is tangential.

  Good news! In globaledit you can now select multiple folders within a job or multiple Lightboxes to move them to a different location. How to do that? Just the way you’re used to doing on your desktop: Hold Shift/Control while selecting all of your folders or Lightboxes Drag/drop them in the job or folder where you want them to be saved And that’s it! Now you can manage and rearrange your large collections of assets in no time.  

You have the metadata basics down. Now your workflow and library need to take the next step. With a more demanding workflow and a growing library comes a greater need to harness the power of metadata, drive advanced automation, and optimize search-ability. Special guest, David Riecks, joined us again to show you how to take advantage of both standard and custom metadata types and elevate your creative production. Named as a “Pioneer of Digital Preservation” by the Library of Congress in 2009, David has been involved in many recent digital image standards and is founder of ControlledVocabulary.com. In this session you will learn: Effective metadata field types How to apply metadata templates and use keyword sets How to create and use custom panels How to create and use custom schemas Best practices for .XMP sidecars Listen to Product Manager, Matt Glueckert, and Metadata Guru, David Riecks, in this advanced metadata Snackinar and take your metadata skills to the next level. Additional Resources: Working with metadata in globaledit IPTC Core mapped fields (.pdf): chart which maps the IPTC Core Schema to the various field names used in popular photo editing applications Tutorials on how to use Metadata Templates with: Adobe Photoshop Adobe Bridge Photo Mechanic Expression Media/Media Pro Metadata 101 for a detailed explanation of the the various Photo Metadata Schemas Metadata “Field Guide”, which lists and defines the most common used fields in key metadata schema and popular software (IPTC Core and Extension schemas)

Tired of going back-and-forth from your globaledit account to your inbox? We heard you. And we’re stepping up YOUR game, so you can now directly reply to globaledit emails to create comments within globaledit. How does it work? Respond directly from your inbox to a Lightbox share notification or a Lightbox comment email, and your new comment is automatically created in the Lightbox. Respond directly from your inbox to a shared markup pdf email, and your comment is automatically created in your Asset Notes. Communication with your team is even more seamless. And way faster. Check out the support site for more info.

Resource Magazine included a piece on our parent company Industrial Color Brands in their Fall Issue. We’re proud to be featured alongside our sister divisions Industrial Color, Impact Digital, and Fast Ashleys Studios. The article covers the full range of services offered by the four companies and the evolution of the Industrial Color Brands family. “What’s remarkable about the Industrial Color Brands’ story is that each division arose organically out of the need for new solutions in creative production’s shift to digital… Today all the divisions work together and independently to continually innovate and provide solutions for creatives.” – Billy Murray, Resource Magazine Check out the article below. You can also pick up a free copy at Fast Ashleys Studios or our TriBeCa headquarters.  The digital version of the issue can be downloaded from the iTunes store here. Resource Magazine included a piece on our parent company Industrial Color Brands in their Fall Issue. We’re proud to be featured alongside our sister divisions Industrial Color, Impact Digital, and Fast Ashleys Studios. The article covers the full range of services offered by the four companies and the evolution of the Industrial Color Brands family. “What’s remarkable about the Industrial Color Brands’ story is that each division arose organically out of the need for new solutions in creative production’s shift to digital… Today all the divisions work together and independently to continually innovate and provide solutions for creatives.” – Billy Murray, Resource Magazine Check out the article below. You can also pick up a free copy at Fast Ashleys Studios or our TriBeCa headquarters.  The digital version of the issue can be downloaded from the iTunes store here.

On October 16, 2014, the Advertising Production Club of New York hosted a panel discussion on ‘Mobile Mayhem’ at Parsons The New School for Design. Product Manager Matt Glueckert joined representatives from Google, Adobe, Drawbridge, and AKQA to present the globaledit iPhone app to the crowd of creatives. https://vimeo.com/109867396

During creative production your team is constantly moving and sharing a massive amount of assets in order to collaborate. With so many cooks in the kitchen, maintaining access control, search-ability, and asset history is critical to a creative teams’ workflow efficiency. Learn how successful creative teams structure their cloud-based media libraries, and the new features in globaledit that can help you clean up a messy library in a jiffy. In this session you will learn: Effective library templates for different creative industries (agencies, fashion brands, production companies and more) How to setup a media library in globaledit How to control access to your media Power tips for cleaning up a messy library Check out our latest Snackinar for 20 minutes that could save you 20 hours and get your library together!

As creatives we want everything to look good. We accomplish this through thoughtful design. Managing your production process should be no different.  Before jumping into building out your cloud-based asset library there are a few key questions you need to ask yourself to make sure it’s “designed thoughtfully” as well.  We asked globaledit Account Manager, Corrie Zaccaria, for best practices when setting up an asset library to ensure that it’s organized, secure, and fits your workflow. Here are a few questions to consider when building the blueprints of a new asset library: 1. What does your current server look like? What works and what doesn’t about the folder structure? This is the first opportunity to learn from your mistakes and fix organizational problems in your production workflow. Identifying the key issues that don’t work is the start of creating a foundation for a new asset library.  For example, are too many people accessing a folder on your server so files get moved and misplaced? Are you able to share the right files with the right people on your team?  Can you currently manage confidential or restricted files? 2. Who needs to access particular files, jobs or folders?  And who should be restricted? This is where we evaluate the dynamic of how people work together in their current workflow.  Some teams are small and open with access to everything, whereas other teams are extremely secure with permissions due to legal or confidentiality reasons.  Asking about the current pain points of file access is key.  Is the marketing team accessing visual assets before they’re finalized and going to print with the wrong resolution? Or does the Creative Director only want to review final photo selects without having to see all of the raw images?  Once you understand each person’s function and the access they should have you can put them into buckets of user groups.  From here you can create a blueprint of a new folder structure to ensure you have the proper rights management in place before you upload anything. 3. What kind of access do different team members need? The next part of rights management is identifying and assigning the specific rights of each of the user groups you’ve put into buckets.  This varies from team to team, so there are no hard and fast rules. This step is an exercise in teasing out the nitty-gritty of your specific workflow.  It takes some time, but the deeper you dive the better your folder structure will be from the get-go. 4. What do you want to prioritize: Workflow or Content? Most digital asset libraries are based around either workflow, final content being produced, or a mix of the two. Workflow: This type of folder structure is typically job based, with a sub folder for each step in the production process.  So you might start with a folder with all of the assets from the photo shoot, then have a sub folder with selects, followed by retouched selects, followed by final usable assets. Content:  Content based libraries are focused on the final outlet.  An organization might be more concerned with where assets need to go e.g. in-store, catalogue, web, etc. Within each of those folders is where the raw, retouched, finals, etc. live. 5. How long are you keeping images? Do you need a long-term DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT (DAM) system? Before you finalize your library, think of the long term.  The best asset library management systems take the full life cycle of an asset into consideration.  Are you going to archive assets after a certain amount of time?  Do you need access to the archive or can it be stored elsewhere?  Whether you’re using globaledit to archive your assets or not, defining a system before you have a folder structure can save you a ton of time down the road. A few extra tips: 1. Don’t use emoji’s or symbols in the names of your folders.  Unusual characters can cause problems in downloading and uploading files. 2. Take the opportunity to standardize your file naming convention.  Though it takes a little wrangling, standardization is hugely helpful when searching for assets and being able to know what a folder contains by the information in its name. Taking the time to answer these basic questions is vital to creating a well-structured media library.  You’ll save time, work more intelligently and streamline your creative production workflow.  Keep in mind that it’s equally important to maintain that structure through standardization and compliance after the system is in place.  Stay tuned for tips and best practices for ongoing digital asset library management coming up on the blog. Need help on organizing your digital asset library in globaledit or need a creative production workflow audit? Contact our support team or request a demo with our workflow specialist!

Special guest, David Riecks, joined our most recent bite-sized webinar to discuss best practices for managing metadata. Named as a “Pioneer of Digital Preservation” by the Library of Congress in 2009, David has been involved in many recent digital image standards initiatives and is founder of ControlledVocabulary.com. In this session David shares with us: Metadata management 101 Advantages of standard vs. custom metadata schemas Most effective photo metadata fields Best tools for manipulating metadata Check out the recording featuring Product Manager, Matt Glueckert, and Metadata Guru, David Riecks, in this Snackinar and get your assets tagged and bagged.

  Have you ever spent hours looking for a specific image or file? You remember saving it in a specific folder, or under a specific name, but suddenly it’s nowhere to be found. And all you need is that one useable image?  This is where metadata can save you a huge amount of time and a major headache. Photo production and creative workflows are driven by metadata from capture to finish- from file names and ratings, to more detailed information like location, talent, etc. Choosing metadata that is right for your workflow has to do with findability: what you are looking for, at what stage, and how you are going to find it later.  Used the right way metadata can make sifting through thousands of images secured in your database as easy as a google search. We recently invited David Riecks from ControlledVocabulary.com to do a deeper dive into ‘The power of metadata’ via webinar.  Named as a “Pioneer of Digital Preservation” by the Library of Congress in 2009, David has been involved in a host of recent digital image standards initiatives. David shared with us some of his best practices for metadata management.  Here are 5 easy steps to get started with metadata and manage it efficiently.   Step 1 – Start with the end in mind Your end-goal and your workflow will dictate what is important to you and your company.  Ask yourself some basic questions: What’s your end-goal? Are you trying to narrow down thousands of images to one single final? What are you going to use these files and images for? (billboard, campaign, etc.) Who needs to review and access these images? How will you filter your files as the creative workflow goes on? What fundamental information do you want to know when you look at your images metadata? Product detail, photographer, location, date, rights management?   Step 2 – Always embed at the earliest point in the workflow Embed basic metadata in your files when you transfer from the camera, whether it be a hard drive, a DAM or work-in-progress platform. As of today, there are unfortunately no great ways of embedding custom metadata directly in camera. Check out the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) for free and low cost software for entering/editing metadata. Add as much of the basic information at ingest, with a standardized vocabulary to ensure that assets are searchable. The minimum details that your file should have: contact information, original file name, any other information that makes sense for your workflow (Again, what information do you always need to know?). Trick: embed the original file name into the file itself. Too many image users have a ‘nasty’ habit of renaming files, which can make it difficult (if not impossible) to find the image you want later. Make sure these basic metadata are embedded before the files are accessed by anyone else from your team or your clients.   Step 3 – Select the fields that make the most sense to your workflow Don’t be “paralyzed by analysis”. Don’t over-think it, you don’t have to fill out all the fields available for metadata. Look at your workflow and ask yourself which field would make the most sense to you and your process. For example: if you are always shooting in the same studio, “location” field might not be important. If you work in an enterprise environment, keep in mind that your company might already be using a controlled vocabulary or taxonomy to categorize the assets and files. The most popular fields are: author/creator copyright credit caption/description keywords title/object name location related fields (location, city, state, country, country code, continent) date created date updated original filename Write the ‘right’ kind of information. Use the fields in the way they were expected. Your files and assets are going to travel. If you are using the captions or description fields inconsistently, it might confuse your team members and clients down the line.   Step 4 – Automate your metadata Batch add these basic metadata at once. Trick: check out some free and low cost software for embedding and batch adding your metadata straight away. Check out ControlledVocabulary.com for some ideas on how to automate them.   Step 5 – Make sure metadata ‘sticks’ to your file For file formats like .jpg and .tif., metadata is automatically embedded and travels with the files. For proprietary raw image files like CR2 (Canon) or NEF (Nikon), metadata is separately stored from the image file in a .XMP sidecar. The good news is that .XMP files are very lightweight most applications can read and display the metadata properly. The down side is that they can be easily misplaced. Make sure to keep them with the raw file. Be careful: when you upload a file to online sites, some of them might ignore or strip out your metadata. Check out which ones preserve metadata.   Additional Resources: Photometadata.org Photo / Video Metadata Conference Plus – Picture Licensing Universal System Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines How can globaledit help you manage your metadata? Our powerful Metadata Editor allows users to upload or download assets with embedded metadata or XMP sidecar, export metadata as CSV, tag individual images by searchable keywords, using standard or custom schemas, force user metadata entry prior to upload, batch update metadata at upload, and even has an auto-complete feature that saves your entries and auto-populate when you start typing. Our improved external metadata support also translates ratings from CaptureOne and Adobe Bridge. Found out more about metadata and globaledit by requesting a demo with our workflow specialist!

By now you’ve heard of a vulnerability in the Bash shell application within Linux/Unix systems (also known as “Shellshock” and “Bash bug”) that was made public last week. We want you to know that globaledit’s core application does not run on public-facing Linux or Unix servers, and was not impacted in any way. As a preventative measure, all internal globaledit computers and servers running Linux/Unix have been protected against this vulnerability to ensure security is not compromised.   Security is hugely important to us, and as you may recall we also weren’t affected by the Heartbleed vulnerability that made headlines back in April. Further information on the ‘Shellschock’ / ‘Bash Bug’ can be found in the links below: http://digg.com/video/the-shellshock-bug-explained-in-about-four-minutes http://www.forbes.com/sites/jameslyne/2014/09/25/shellshocked-vulnerability-why-you-are-at-risk-and-heartbleed-3-0b/

Remember when getting in touch with a colleague or client meant finding a payphone and trying to find loose change? How about having to send multiple emails because of file size limitations? Or shipping a hard drive to your business partner? Thanks to innovations in technology, today’s workflow has improved and evolved dramatically. Data accessibility is no longer a roadblock to workflow. You can now access a nearly unlimited amount of data right from your phone or tablet with cloud and mobile technology. Today’s most innovative tools leverage that technology to improve workflow and collaboration. globaledit’s cloud-based software enables teams to work faster, smarter, and from anywhere – moving you ahead of the competition and delivering creative success. Digital workflow tools are faster, smarter and more mobile than ever.  Are you? Check out our infographic highlighting just how much has changed over the years and how far we’ve come.

We stepped away from the development side of the globaledit team in this round of our ‘Tech Talk’ series to focus on the front lines of customer support.  We chatted up Account Manager, Carl Sison, to find out more about what he does and to give you a little more insight into the person on the other end of the phone.  And between his unique career path and his covert life in the military he couldn’t be more qualified to answer the call when you need help. How did you first hear about globaledit?   I was actually a client.  At the time I was a project manager at a well known photo representation company, which had a web start-up component.  We used globaledit as our content management system to receive imagery from photographers all over the United States. We also used it as a central repository for all imagery and as a way to send high res files to clients, publicists, and PR firms. As a user what stood out for you compared to other similar products in the creative industry? The account management team. No other web based content management or work in progress system offers the same support. A lot of these platforms have a support tech line, where you never know who you are talking to each time you call. So how did you end up joining the team? I called globaledit with a support question and Phil, one of our account managers picked up the call.  He invited me over for a training session and breakfast one morning at their headquarters.  So I went and met with the team and they were more than helpful, teaching me tips and tricks, in addition to taking me on a tour of the office space. In passing Phil mentioned that he was going to be moving out of state soon. I was so impressed with the company culture and environment that within a month I applied for his position. I have now been working here for 18 months. Now that you’re on the other side, how do you describe your role as an Account Manager? It might sound cheesy, but my goal as an account manager is to be a customers best friend. Our clients have our direct line and we are directly involved and invested in their projects. I try my best to break down the wall of just being general tech support and be seen as more of an expert that they can rely on, someone who is an actual integral member of their production team. If a client feels as though I am part of their team and consults with me regularly for advice and for help with their projects I know that I am doing a good job. Overall, I ensure that their day-to-day workflow is running smoothly and all production work is on time and exhibits the best quality to ensure that clients are happy. Do you have a stand-out example of when you’ve been able to do that? In one case Industrial Color Productions actually sent us over an emergency situation one of their clients was in.  The photographer they were working with had a crazy deadline and urgently needed to get a hard drive full of Hi-Res images from New York to Paris by sunrise the next day.  All the cloud based services he tried would have taken over 12 hours to process between upload and download time.  He was about to put someone on a plane and fly them overnight and hand carry the hard drive to the creative agency before the offices opened.  It took only four hours once we put it in globaledit, and we were able to upload low res previews simultaneously so the creative team could start working while the high resolution files were uploading. All the images were downloaded and ready in Paris well before sunrise. I have the feeling that we saved that shoot! What’s your favorite part of the job? My favorite part of the job is the company culture.  As I mentioned before, this is what initially attracted me to working with globaledit. I also love working with our development team. And its cool to be in the same space as our sister divisions. Every day I walk by the retouching team at Impact Digital and see the amazing work they’re doing. Or I’ll come in one day and Industrial Color Productions is doing a camera test in the the middle of the office.  There’s a lot going on which keeps it interesting. Speaking of interesting…You have another important role outside of globaledit. Can you tell us about that? I’m a First Lieutenant in the New Jersey Army National Guard and serve as a Military Intelligence Officer for a Light Infantry Battalion based out of North New Jersey. Balancing between the two lives of being an account manager at globaledit and a member of the National Guard has been interesting as I have to serve the state whenever they call for my service.  We’re trained to support civilian and state issues, such as natural disasters and civil disturbances, as well as foreign threats. Have you brought back any applicable skills that help in your day-to-day? Definitely, especially when it comes to crisis management and the ability to handle multiple, severe instances at a time and still retain a level headed posture. I like to think that I respond quickly and remain unphased. This comes in handy on a daily basis while giving all of our clients an equal and fair amount of attention and resolve whatever issues arise immediately. Where have you traveled to on duty? The National Guard has taken me to all corners of the Continental United States, from Washington State, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, and Virginia just to name a few. The coolest place was Arizona, by far. What is the most memorable moment of your service?   Hurricane Sandy was one of the biggest operational missions that I’ve had to deal with. I was stationed at the command and control center in North Jersey where we were supporting humanitarian aid missions. We were able to have soldiers on the ground working with first responders and EMS within the minutes of the Governor’s orders. We worked heavily in Hoboken and Mantoloking, two of the most heavily hit cities. My job was to facilitate risk management by liaising with local law enforcement, EMS, and FEMA. The most difficult aspect was pulling large amounts of data from different agencies, conducting analysis, and immediately distributing it to our line commanders. Outside of globaledit and The National Guard, what do you do in your spare time? I am pretty outdoorsy and love to hike and camp whenever I can get out there. I have been fortunate enough to have hiked a variety of trails including the parts of the Appalachian Trail, the southern parts of the Rocky Mountains, and the terrain of Southern Arizona. Requisite final question- Any hidden talents? I can tie 13 different kinds of knots. I also kick ass at Jenga. And run a 5 minute mile. Impressive. Thank you so much, Carl! Stay tuned for our next interview in the series. Click here for more Tech Talks.

File sharing has become a fundamental part of creative collaboration. However, allowing all of your team to access entire project files can lead to compromised security and confusion in your workflow. globaledit developed a host of security features to offer a solution with the flexibility and control that creative production demands. In this session you will learn: User roles and permissions settings How to manage rights to assets and Lightboxes How to limit downloads and set expirations How to easily use watermarks without having to reprocess your images How to share assets while increasing tracking and security Join Product Manager, Matt Glueckert, in this Snackinar recording and get your assets covered!

Panelists from luxury brands Estee Lauder and Tiffany & Co. joined Mathieu Champigny, VP of Sales & Marketing at globaledit, to discuss the benefits of managing a large brand’s digital assets — and the difficulties that come with it. Check out the video below to gain sharper insights into the big picture of Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems’ implementation, the importance of metadata, a well-structured taxonomy and more. Panelists Abigail Meisterman – Metadata Architect, Tiffany & Co. Melissa Pandolfi – Manager /  Archivist, The Estee Lauder Companies Mathieu Champigny – VP of Sales & Marketing, globaledit DAM and Luxury Brands from globaledit on Viemo. This event was part of the DAM Meetup Group in NYC.

Tagging Metadata The Metadata Editor feature in globaledit allows users to mark individual images by searchable tags. Users can then filter jobs by these tags and create saved searches of images which they can share as Lightboxes or send to talent as approval galleries. Images can be tagged with information such as talent names, image captions, whether it is a group, still or single shot and whether it is a gallery or episodic shoot. Information such as the photographer, copyright, episode and series name can be applied to entire folders or jobs. Users can tag the images before they upload them to globaledit using various tools: Using their preferred processing software. Marking selected images on set by adding a (+) at the beginning or the filename – this typically ranges from a single (+) to five (+’s), which would automatically be translated into Star ratings viewable in the image library. Inputting the data within Metadata Editor on globaledit. INGESTING METADATA If users already tagged their assets using other industry programs or .XMP files, they can now easily ingest them into globaledit:  globlaedit supports several rating functions, such as Star ratings and color tags from CaptureOne; and Star ratings and specific labels (Select, Second, Approved) from Adobe Programs (E.g. Bridge, Lightroom, etc.) – so ratings prior to ingest will appear in globaledit. globaledit allows you to pair your .XMP files with their appropriate source files upon ingest. Searching Metadata Once the images are tagged, users can create saved searches under the Search tab. Searches can be filtered by criteria such as metadata schema, field and specific tag(s). You can also search in combination with ratings; for example you can find all selects made for a certain actor.   If you run the search from the Search tab, it will search for those tags within all of the jobs in your Library. If you would like to search only within a specific job or folder, you can go to that folder in My Library and select the saved search from the Filter tab. Exporting Metadata Another feature in Metadata Editor is the ability to export reports on certain schema and metadata fields. Within Metadata Editor, just go to the Edit dropdown menu and select Export data for current selection to .CSV or .XMP sidecar. You can then select which metadata fields you would like to export and it will export the report to your computer as a .CSV or a .XMP file. Copying Metadata Users can also copy metadata from one image to another by selecting Copy Current Record from the Edit dropdown menu and then selecting the image or group of images they want to copy this data to and then selecting Paste from the Edit dropdown menu. You can specify which metadata fields to copy if you don’t want to copy everything in that record.   Saving Metadata Metadata Editor also gives you the option to manually save changes each time you make them or you can select the Always Save Without Asking feature and anytime you navigate away from an image you have made changes to the system will automatically save these changes. If you ever navigate away from an image you are working on by accident and the changes are automatically saved you can always undo your last save in the Edit drop-down menu. For more information on managing your workflow you can visit our SupportWiki or contact us at support@globaledit.com. Keep checking for more tips and tricks to help streamline your workflow.

We know your type. You’re smart. You’re savvy. You’ve got an arsenal of tools you’ve brought together to create your photo production process. But cobbling tools together doesn’t create a streamlined workflow. Find out how globaledit replaces FTP, spreadsheets, emails and other non-enterprise tools. In this session attendees will learn: How to share files more efficiently How to cut down on your email exchange How to run reports and track assets in no time Why creative collaboration doesn’t have to be a pain Check out the Snackinar recording below and whip your workflow into shape! Snackinar: The 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective Workflows from globaledit on Vimeo.

We’re always working to make globaledit even better for our users and their creative production workflow, so we’re pleased to announce a new batch of product updates out now! Capture One and Bridge ratings compatible – We now support color ratings sync for Capture One and select/alt/approve ratings for Adobe Bridge at ingest and export. Check out the support article here Transactional email overhaul – We’ve completely redesigned globaledit’s emails to be prettier to look at and easier to understand. XMP Metadata import – Now you can upload your .XMP files to import metadata into globaledit making uploading RAW files even easier. New sort and filter options – We’ve built better and more intuitive options to sort and manage your assets including ‘date modified’, ‘date uploaded’, and the ability to filter zero stars. Feel free to reach out to our Account Management team at support@globaledit.com to make sure you get the most out of these new features.  

We’re excited to announce the release of our most recent iOS update with loads of new features to streamline your workflow. New notifications, easier asset selection, improved job navigation, and an updated info panel make working between the web and your mobile devices that much more seamless. Check out the full details below, and see the powerful new updates in action here. New and Improved Notifications – The dashboard now includes several new notifications including job, lightbox, and approval gallery access/expirations, new assets in a Lightbox, and more. You’ll receive push notifications outside the app and a drop-down notification inside.  Tap the notification on the dashboard to be directed to the actual activity. HD Video Streaming – The app now supports lightning fast, retina ready HD video streaming. Faster Asset Selection– Select multiple assets by simply sliding your finger to rate or comment on them all at once. Easier Lightbox Management – You can now add assets to a Lightbox from any job or Lightbox and remove assets from a Lightbox within the app. You can also create a new Lightbox from the “add to Lightbox” screen. Updated Info Panel – The info panel now lists the entire asset history. Improved Job Navigation – Switch between jobs easily by navigating folders Jobs>Tab>Account>Jobs>Subfolders. As always, we are happy to walk you through how to incorporate these beneficial updates into your workflow. Feel free to contact us at support@globaledit.com.  

For our second round interview in our ‘Tech Talks’ series, we spoke with Senior Software Engineer, Dan Fusaro, about his time here at globaledit. As the longest-running member of the development team, Dan has been with us from the beginning.  So we wanted to find out how globaledit has changed as a product and as a company in the last eight years. We also learned about his passion for hot sauce, why he’s known as ‘Lunch’saro, and about his preteen cameo in a well-known indie film (.gif included below!). You’re known as Dan ‘Lunch’saro around the office. Where does that come from? I’ve been here a long time so I know all of the good lunch spots.  Finding good places to eat that won’t break the bank is a bit of an art form, especially in Tribeca.  It’s amazing what you’ll find with a little digging though. What are some of your other talents? I love to cook to the point where some would call it an obsession.  I would say 85% of the photos on my phone are things I’ve cooked.  Presentation is key.  And I’ve “performed in” four hot sauce eating challenges in my life- three of which yielded free t-shirts. Can you cook anything for us? I cooked for our “Taco Night” here a few years ago.  There were two pork shoulders, rice, beans, and lots of guac.  The most challenging part of that exercise was carting 50 lbs of grub down the 1 Train. How has globaledit changed in your time here? Since 2006, we’ve gone through three major versions. When I started they were just releasing version two of globaledit, and it was pretty basic photo selection. I was brought in as their first in-house developer to build something called “Image Editor.”  It was a detail-view of photos and provided the ability to rate them, use the keyboard, insert metadata, among other things.  After a few months, we started hiring more talent and began to lay the groundwork for another major version, 3.0.  Since then, globaledit has taken on a life of its own and continues to grow exponentially.  Even in the last year we’ve doubled the size of our development team and features released. How about the changes in company culture?   We’re part of Industrial Color Brands, so we share offices with the other divisions of the company- Industrial Color and Impact Digital.  We’ve always been neighbors, but over the last few years departments have gotten more integrated with what globaledit is, what it does, who makes it, how the software process works.  Working side by side with our sister divisions allows us to collaborate and get feedback from the very best in the photo industry. We have an amazing product and development team and people in the companies use the software we build, which is helpful. What’s your favorite Industrial Color Brands company tradition? I would have to say celebrating the World Cup. This was my third World Cup at the company, and it’s always been really fun. We project the games on a big screen and have a pool going. What do you think has made the biggest difference in the creation of globaledit? I would have to say hands-down, GitHub, which is a cloud-based source control system.  Git enables everyone on the team to have their own local version of globaledit and freely develop what they specifically need to develop.  Once the dust settles, you commit your code to the cloud, and then more or less press a button and everything gets built.  It enables us to be creative and take chances, which can breathe life into any project.   We can shift and flow as we need in order to meet the needs of what we’re building. What has been the most challenging aspect of your position thus far? Just putting out an all-out quality product. I do primarily user interface. With user interface, it’s how people use software–how they click, where they click, their thought process. What are they trying to do with the software? globaledit is sort of like Photoshop, where there are a thousand ways to skin a cat. Some people use globaledit for markups, some people use it for metadata, some people use it to organize their photos, some people use it for talent approvals. There are so many different use cases and personalities using the software, you have to try to make everyone happy. I have to put myself in the role of different users- let’s say a Creative Director versus a Talent Agent, etc…in order to really think about it from the other side. It’s challenging. What’s a “Hackathon”? About once a month, we come up with a loose theme, like speed or collaboration, and spend a day building whatever we like.  Sometimes it’s globaledit related, sometimes it’s not.  The point is to have enough flexibility to be able to come up with ideas and take chances that you wouldn’t necessarily do at other times. It’s risky – things could not work out or things could be awesome. You give yourself a day, and you make something you feel that globaledit could use, something that you’ve had an idea about. It usually ends up being interesting, and it’s a way to let loose. We always have bagels- with lox!- too. Aside from developing the software, are you a globaledit user? Yes. I actually used it to review and approve my engagement photos. It was cool because we uploaded a ton of images and then could both access them separately.  We each went through and made ratings and selects at our individual offices and were able to collaboratively come to our top choices. You’re getting married? Congratulations! I am! In a week actually.  I’m going to have the wedding favors be my personally made hot sauce. We are going on our honeymoon to San Francisco, to Napa, and to Portland. It’ll be a cross between city and country activities for two weeks. What is the most fun or enjoyable part of your job? Thinking about how something should work, and then building it to work the way you envisioned it. It’s sort of like art – it’s creative.  I can look at every piece of globaledit and tell you a story about how it works. All those things involved in getting it to work- the language and programming structure and how all the data interacts. Every pixel on that screen tells a story. What do you think are some of the best/most interesting parts of working in the creative industry? It’s very fast-paced. A lot of people are trying to solve a lot of different problems all the time and those problems overlap. I also like being directly involved with what’s going on in the production industry.  For example, the talent approvals we host for The Walking Dead. We have the zombies from the show logging in and approving pictures in talent approval galleries, which is pretty cool. What are some of your favorite tools/apps to use? I use an application called Synergy, which allows me to use one keyboard and mouse for both MAC and PC. I’ll go on a MAC and have all my web browsing and chat stuff, and my PC for my programming stuff so I don’t have to use two different sets. I’ve been using it for a long time. I’ve got one monitor set up to code work in the middle, one on the left to do database work, and schedules and emails on the right. I’m always firing on all cylinders. I also love my standing desk. It’s adjustable so you can move it up or down whenever you want.  I’ve started a company-wide trend. I used to want to sit all day but I’ve done that long enough. What’s the future of globaledit look like? We’ll continue to focus on making our customers’ production process faster and easier.  Being bred from the creative industry, we’re able to forecast customers’ needs before they even know they have them. We have the products and the tools to be able to make it happen. So…Final Question. Your cameo in “Welcome to the Dollhouse”? I was 12, and my friend’s sister had acting as a hobby, so they were always going to these open castings to be an extra. I happened to stay over at my friend’s house that night, and they were going to this casting call. So I went, just thinking we were gonna hang out all day. Suddenly, the director chose me to be the jerk in the first scene, where the main character is walking with her lunch tray. I did all my interpretations of being a jerk, but the director kept catching me eyeing the camera. On my last take, I was wondering how to look at her without looking at the camera, and it’s this tiny moment of consciousness. And that’s the shot he used. It took a while to come out. It was almost two years, and when you’re in the 7th grade to the 9th grade, it might as well have been 20 years. Thanks so much Dan and have a great wedding!   Stay tuned for our next interview in the series.

The globaledit app for iPhone/iPad has made working on the go a breeze for users since it was released. Now we’ve taken it up a notch by adding a load of new features to make working anywhere from any device even more seamless. This update offers an improved user experience and the opportunity to get more done with your mobile device. In this new app release, more of the advanced features you use everyday on the web are now available on your iPhone and iPad. In this session attendees will learn how to use added features including: Mobile Notifications Updated video streaming and support Full asset history Multi Select and Batch Ratings Updated Account and Job Views Advanced Lightbox functionality Check out the recording below and see Product Manager, Matt Glueckert, show you how to get the most out of mobile in this Snackinar. Snackinar Recording Awesome App Updates from globaledit on Vimeo.

We’re happy to announce that we’ve just released new feature updates to globaledit that’ll make your workflow even more streamlined. Assets load faster, galleries and uplinks are easier to create, new real-time notifications make work speedier, and security is…well…even more secure. Faster Asset Loading – Jobs and folders with large asset counts will see a significant decrease in the time it takes to load assets. One-Click Galleries and Uplinks – We’ve streamlined the creation of galleries and uplinks into an easy 1 step option. Check out the support articles for more details: One-Click Uplinks One-Click Approval Galleries New Notifications – New real-time notifications have been added to cover additional use cases in globaledit. When a Lightbox comment is created When an asset in a Lightbox has been marked up When a job or folder expires Security Updates – We’ve also made some back-end updates to strengthen globaledit’s security to make it even more robust. Our account team is more than happy to walk you through how to incorporate these beneficial updates into your workflow. As always feel free to contact us at support@globaledit.com.

The Industrial Color Brands family gathered last night to host the opening reception for PDN’s “The Curator” gallery exhibit. We enjoyed hors d’oeuvres and drinks over some great photography from the six winning series.  Our guests and friends from Fast Ashleys Studios, Impact Digital, and Industrial Color took in the great views from our terrace and got a little silly in our photo booth. See some of the highlights below and check out the rest of the party pics here. The gallery is now open to the public through July 9th. Please email gallery@industrialcolor.com to schedule a visit.

Time is your most valuable asset so be sure to use it effectively! This Snackinar covers the Top 5 time-saving tips in globaledit that help our customers get work done in less time and with less hassle. Get out of the office sooner and enjoy more of your Summer with these tips! In this Snackinar you’ll learn: How to batch edit metadata and ratings How to save advanced searches How to run reports on user activity, uploads, downloads, and more How Notifications can dramatically speed up your work flow How to use one click Approval Galleries and Uplink Check out the recording below and see Product Manager, Matt Glueckert, show you how in this user fueled Snackinar. Stay tuned for our next Snackinar on our updated App for iOS on July 22nd 2pm ET.

We’re introducing a new series on the blog to get “up close and personal” with our dedicated team members who work every day to improve the world of creative production. In these interviews, you will learn what drives our dynamic crew, how they work together, and some of their quirks and interests.  At the end of the day, what makes them awesome makes our creative production awesome. First up – Product Manager, Tommy Lionelli. Prior to joining us from San Francisco, Tommy spent a few years building products for students and faculty at the University of Phoenix. Now that he’s landed in NYC, his interests include pizza, bagels, and listening to recordings of himself talking in his sleep (yes, there’s an app for that). Check out our interview below!   Q: Describe your role as a globaledit Product Manager. A:  To put it simply, I design and help create new features for globaledit, while serving as a hub between customers, sales, top management and the engineering department.  I help define what the strategic direction of globaledit is, and then come up with features that deliver that vision.  From there, I work on designing the features and collaborating with development to get it live. Creating the features involves solving complex problems and focus – both technically and creatively. I love what I do because I can utilize both my creative side (user experience/design) and the next minute brainstorm on how different implementations may be more technically straightforward. I get to define new functionality that has to be useful and intuitive without being so clever that it becomes confusing.   Q:  What is the greatest obstacle facing collaborative teams and workflow? A: When the photo production process first made the move from analog to digital, we gained days or weeks of time savings. But it’s becoming more difficult to make such drastic improvements in saving time. Now with the digital process having been established, shaving hours or minutes off can be really challenging but this is why our customers trust us and use globaledit. We have the people and the vision to keep up.   Q: Where does globaledit fit in among the creative and tech worlds? A:  globaledit was born as a result of an industry need for a review and approval tool. Our creative production DNA is what made us successful and what keeps globaledit on the cutting edge.  Our sister companies Fast Ashleys Studios, Impact Digital, and Industrial Color Productions give us direct contact with the best players and tools in the industry. I have first-class production professionals sitting two seats away from me that can help validate the product in-house before we ship anything. What I’ve been trying to bring is a next level of maturity to our software development process.  We drastically improved the frequency in which we ship high-quality products and features, and we are just getting started.   Q:  What challenges do you face in your specific role as Product Manager? A:  globaledit’s value is clear – we help professional photo/video producers make creative decisions, faster.  What makes my role difficult is that the creative process varies drastically from one organization to another.  Not to mention we serve a large group of production industries ranging from ecommerce, to fashion, to media and entertainment.  As you could imagine, boiling down features to offer solutions for everyone is hard work.   Q: What keeps you motivated in your day-to-day? A:  Positive user feedback is the best. To deliver a new feature and hear a customer say, “You just saved me so much time,” or, “You just made my life so much easier” – even to see how jazzed developers get when they hear that good feedback – keeps me super excited.   Q:  How do you see globaledit evolving in the future? A:   Being adaptive and agile is in our DNA. So big picture, I know we’ll continue to evolve along with developments in the tech/production sphere while adding innovation to our own product suite. More specifically, we’re testing some hush-hush features that I think will make globaledit synonymous with creative production.   Q:  What are some of the coolest tools you use? A:  One of my most leaned-on tools is Google Drive/Google Docs. Google Drive and other cloud-based tools (like globaledit) are changing how we all work.  ‘Save’ is nearly obsolete in my vocabulary and I dread using Microsoft Office. Drive has replaced Office, which seemed to be an irreplaceable tool for me. I also really like ‘If This Then That’ (IFTTT). It’s a great automation tool for my personal life.  It takes simple or tedious tasks and takes care of them for me.  I love their combination of design simplicity with powerful function. Stay tuned for the next candidate in our series!  

Last night we joined the rest of our Industrial Color Brands family to kick off the summer with a Monday Margarita Mixer. We mix and mingled with our teams from Industrial Color, Fast Ashleys Studios and Impact Digital for an evening filled with tequila, taquitos, a killer terrace and of course a piñata. Check out highlights in the rest of the gallery here.

Every project starts with a shoot. Your team needs to produce market-ready assets for various mediums that are perfect and on deadline. Working to beat the clock is not only stressful, but rushing can affect the quality of your end product. Our new workflow infographic outlines how moving your asset sharing & creative collaboration to the cloud can not only save you time and stress, but significantly impact your bottom line. Imagine completely eliminating the hours of labor spent searching for files, the cost of hard drives, and the expense of shipping and logistics. That is some serious savings. Check out the complete infographic below for a breakdown of the art of a cloud based workflow.

For over 8 years, globaledit has been the best talent approval tool available. Find out how TV networks and movie studios use globaledit everyday to manage approvals for the biggest names in Hollywood. In this Snackinar you’ll learn: • How to send Approval Galleries in a flash • How to use Approvals on the web, iPad and iPhone (even offline!) • How to track Approval Galleries using the new Asset Status feature Check out  the recording below and see Product Manager, Matt Glueckert, demonstrate power tips to make your next production a breeze. Snackinar Recording: Talent Approvals from globaledit on Vimeo.

globaledit has incorporated advanced HD Video streaming capabilities so you can upload, process and view high quality videos – and fast. With Akamai technology, videos are streamed at 720p regardless of which device you are using.  Upload videos onto globaledit from anywhere and we’ll intuitively adapt streaming quality based on your internet connection to ensure the fastest performance and viewer experience. Our updated video player is also sleeker and more user-friendly.  For more details and tech specs check out the support article here.

Notifications are here! We’ve developed the new globaledit Notifications feed so you can stay in the know and up to date as you collaborate.  This helpful new feature ensures that you’re always on top of where you are in your workflow. You know at anytime what is happening to your jobs and lightboxes. You will now know immediately when someone shares a job, approval gallery, or Lightbox with you, when they add or remove assets from a Lightbox, and when a Lightbox or Approval Gallery is about to expire. Notifications appear in the upper right hand corner of the web app, and as push notifications on your iPad or iPhone.  Check out a demo of the feature in our recent Notifications Snackinar here.

Last week’s Henry Stewart DAM Conference proved to be another great forum to engage with the Digital Asset Management ( DAM) community, see our industry pals, and meet new faces.  We also had the opportunity to present in one of the TECH LAB sessions during the show.  Product Manager, Matt Glueckert, took the stage to share our newest mobile and video features and discuss the future of workflow.  Check out the recording of his session below.  Matt also joined The Food Network, HBO, and Turner Broadcasting on a panel to discuss creative operations and the journey from ‘Cam’ to ‘DAM’. Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth and let’s stay in touch! globaledit TECH LAB Session at Henry Stewart DAM Conference from globaledit on Vimeo.

Check out the recording of this Snackinar introducing our newest feature release, Asset Status, and see how you can use globaledit to streamline the approval process. We’ve developed the new ‘Asset Status’ feature to make the approval process easy.  Now you can see whether or not an asset is or has ever been in an approval gallery, where it is in the approval process and mark final assets appropriately. Watch the recording below, and stay tuned for our next Snackinar on May 20, 2pm ET on Speedy Pro User Tips. Snackinar Recording: Approvals Made Easy with Asset Status from globaledit on Vimeo.

Staying in the know is tough when you’re collaborating.  That’s why we developed the new globaledit notification feed.  It keeps you in the loop not only when you’re on the web, but also when you’re on your iPhone or iPad.  In this Snackinar Product Manager Matt Glueckert covers how to use the new notification feature, what actions trigger them, and how to assign jobs and share Lightboxes. Check out the recording below to see how you can incorporate notifications into your workflow, and stick around for the dynamic Q&A. Stay tuned for the next Snackinar on May 6th, 2pm on Approvals Made Easy: Asset Status.

Security is important to us at globaledit and we have taken the discovery of the OpenSSL vulnerability known as Heartbleed very seriously.  globaledit does not utilize the affected version OpenSSL in any of our systems, therefore our customer data is NOT at risk.

Faster upload times and immediate sharing of approved assets is no joke. This April Fools’ Day Edition of our Snackinar series was all about Transport. Product manager Matt Glueckert presented the benefits of using this advanced feature that allows our users to work in the cloud while leveraging in house data centers and IT investments. Watch the recording below to see how easily you can automate your workflow using our advanced feature Transport! Stay tuned for your next invitation to the Snackinar on April 15, 2pm.

Last night we hosted the world’s largest DAM meetup group right here in our TriBeCa headquarters to discuss collaboration tools and digital asset management.  Our very own Product Manager, Matt Glueckert, was on the panel alongside Megan Re, Photo Director, Food Network and Shane Vella, Technical Solutions Engineer, North Plains. The panelists reviewed the ever changing workflow processes that Digital Asset Managers need to adopt, and the challenges faced in implementing solutions.  A productive and educational evening was had by all! View a recording of the panel discussion below. And if you’re in the NYC area, sign up to join the NYC DAM meetup group here. Working with collaboration tools and digital asset management How do groups and teams work together with digital assets today? Can you collaborate with others on digital assets today? How about after or even during a photo shoot? How about with video? What collaboration tools do you use along with digital asset management (DAM) today? How do these collaboration tools work with your DAM solution? Can you work remotely and still collaborate effectively? What about doing all this on mobile devices? Find out the answers to these questions and more during our NYC DAM Meetup panel discussion on working with collaboration tools and digital asset management. -Henrik De Gyor, Co-Organizer

Quickly navigate through growing assets and collections even faster, now with Lightbox Filters!  We’ve added new functionality to the Lightbox panel that allows you to quickly enter text and pare down your Lightbox list.  Now you can find what you’re looking for instantly, instead of having to scroll through all of your Lightboxes. This new feature is sure to add speed and agility to file distribution and talent approval management.  More details on Lightbox Filters can be found on our support page.  Or see it in action in the last Snackinar recording.

globaledit’s Product Managers, Matt Glueckert and Tommy Lionelli were in Austin this past week at the SXSW Interactive Festival to see the latest and greatest technology buzz the industry has to offer. The duo heard Google’s take on the New Digital Age, sat in on a conversation with Neil deGrasse Tyson, and had a chance encounter with the real Lucas from Venmo’s viral NYC subway ad campaign. The duo capped off their trip with an incredible experience at Pandora Radio’s send off party. With all that they saw at SXSW Interactive, the team can agree that there are some truly amazing technological changes erupting throughout the industry. globaledit is proud to be a part of it all!

Smashbox Studios Announces Re-Opening Summer 2014   The Los Angeles premier photo studio continues to innovate by partnering with Industrial Color Brands, the leader in high-end creative production services to create the ‘Studio of the Future’. Los Angeles – March 12, 2014 – Smashbox Studios, the legendary photography studio in Los Angeles, today announced its re-opening after a major renovation and described their goal to become the ‘studio of the future’ while celebrating their famed heritage.  Smashbox Studios also announced their partnership with Steve Kalalian of Industrial Color Brands. The iconic Culver City facility will open its doors again in Summer 2014. Davis Factor, along with his brother Dean, great grandsons of Hollywood makeup legend Max Factor, founded Smashbox Studios in 1990. Since its inception, Smashbox Studios has hosted world-class photographers who produced iconic visuals for top magazines, music labels, entertainment companies and global brands. In 1996, Smashbox launched Smashbox Cosmetics, a makeup line developed to meet the demanding needs of professional photo shoots.  For nearly 25 years, Smashbox Studios has been a leading force in the industry as the intersection of photography, fashion and celebrity culture with renowned events including Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Smashbox Studios. As Smashbox Studios began its renovations, the objective was to create the ideal studio space, which would not only feature the latest in technology but also unparalleled customer service within a refreshed environment. Keeping the needs of the client in mind, the new space is designed to enable the creation of remarkable work. Kalalian and Industrial Color Brands were identified as the ideal partner in the Studios given their leadership and trailblazing innovation in photo studio technology and management. “It was imperative to align Smashbox Studios with a partner who appreciated the quality, collaboration and customer service which have been key to the Smashbox Studios DNA. Our partnership with Steve and Industrial Color Brands will allow us to give the creative community in Los Angeles the highest quality service and most advanced technology available,” said Davis Factor, founder of Smashbox Studios and Smashbox Cosmetics. Smashbox Studios and Industrial Color Brands share a strong history, as the Industrial Color digital teams have worked with top photographers at the Studios for more than ten years and also have offices in Culver City. The partnership creates a platform to continue innovation as the industry evolves, as both companies share the same pioneering spirit and have an intense passion for photography, creative production and innovation. “Partnering with Smashbox to provide the most advanced technology and operate its Studio is a perfect fit for us,” said Steve Kalalian, CEO of Industrial Color Brands. “We see similarities between the Smashbox story and our own studios. Like Dean and Davis, we launched the first high-end photo studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn over 12 years ago and built Fast Ashleys Studios into the top brand in New York’s creative epicenter. We share the same passion for what Smashbox Studios stands for and are honored to have the chance help take it to the next level and operate the best studio on the West Coast.” Smashbox Studios was a pioneer of the growing creative hub of Culver City when it opened in 1990. The studios are centrally located in Los Angeles at the intersection of Higuera Street and Hayden Avenue. Additional details about the re-launch will be released later in the spring. For Smashbox Studios: Joann Gambino jgambino@industrialcolor.com (424) 220 3934 For Smashbox Cosmetics: Nina Van Arsdale-Berg Nina@smashbox.com (310) 558 1490 x 401 About Smashbox Studios Smashbox Studios is a premier photo and film studio in Los Angles that regularly hosts photo shoots, film shoots and events for photographers, producers and celebrities. Davis and Dean Factor, great-grandsons of Hollywood cosmetics legend Max Factor, founded Smashbox Studios in 1990. The enterprise expanded to include a photo studio, modeling agency and production company. Born out of the Studio, Smashbox Cosmetics launched in 1996. About Industrial Color Brands Originating in 1991, Industrial Color Brands is a family of vertically integrated creative production and software companies including globaledit, Industrial Color Productions,Impact Digital, and Fast Ashleys Studios.  Together they provide leading production, post-production, SaaS workflow and related services. The brands provide solutions for photography, advertising, retail, media and production companies worldwide.

Yesterday we broadcast our very first Snackinar from the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, TX.  Product Manager, Matt Glueckert took a break from all of the hi-tech festivities to introduce a few new features in the pipeline.  We’ve taken asset review to the next level with the introduction of HD Video Streaming – adding speed and quality to your viewing experience. Lightbox Filters and Elastic Search make navigating through growing asset collections easier and faster than ever before. Check out the recording to learn more about how to use these great new features that are sure to rev up your workflow! Stay tuned for our next Snackinar on March 25, 2pm ET to see our next big release.

A few lucky members of the globaledit team are on their way (literally!) to Austin, TX for the SXSW Interactive Festival. Product Managers, Matt Glueckert and Tommy Lionelli are headed to the largest music festival of its kind to mingle with the best in the industry and get a look at what’s next in the world of tech. SXSW’s take on this year’s event: “An incubator of cutting-edge technologies and digital creativity, the 2014 event features five days of compelling presentations and panels from the brightest minds in emerging technology, scores of exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders and an unbeatable lineup of special programs showcasing the best new websites, video games and startup ideas the community has to offer. From hands-on training to big-picture analysis of the future, SXSW Interactive has become the place to preview the technology of tomorrow today.” Matt and Tommy will be filling us in on their adventures along the way, so stay tuned for a play by play of all the Hi-tech happenings!

Tag Yourselves, Relive the Party Last week friends and industry peers of globaledit joined in a celebration. Together we sipped on our fabulous specialty cocktail “The Accelerator” and learned more about the journey we’re embarking on in 2014. The big theme of the evening was that we’re “ready” for what’s to come. We hope globaledit will make a difference in your 2014 adventure. Our team took some great footage during the event. Tag yourselves in photos in the Keynote facebook album. The following video is a recording of our Keynote presentation. You should also check out the footage from our celebration!

This week globaledit introduced the only tool that allows you to markup any image on your mobile device, anywhere. In this Snackinar Product Manager, Matt Glueckert presented the ins and outs of mobile markups. He also discussed the new Multi-Page PDF feature. Watch the recording to learn more about how to use these great new features. We’re sure they will transform your workflow with just the swipe of a finger! Stay tuned for your invitation to the next Snackinar on March 11th at 2p ET.

On the heels of globaledit’s much anticipated launch, we’re pleased to share with you an interview conducted by the Pro Video Coalition with some of our team leaders. CEO, Steve Kalalian, CTO, Geoff Brookins, and VP of Sales and Marketing, Mathieu Champigny, discussed the brand’s new developments, as well as the major impact globaledit is having on the modern creative production workflow. Not only is globaledit making major advancements on the product and development, but also with the user experience when interacting with the globaledit brand. “We’re carefully creating high-end production tools with globaledit, powering users to produce more in a much simpler way… It has been great because we’ve really helped our clients develop and move their business forward. It’s a huge hidden competitive advantage for our clients because success is so often contingent on speed to market, and that’s what globaledit is all about.” –Steve Kalalian, CEO “We’re really proud of what we’ve achieved in the last year on the development side to make the product move faster and smoother. On the brand side, we decided it was time for a face-lift for globaledit…[Additionally] we’re really proud of all of the fresh content on the new website.” – Mathieu Champigny, VP of Sales and Marketing Be sure to read the complete interview here.

ENTERPRISE CREATIVE PRODUCTION SOFTWARE IS REBRANDED TO IMPROVE USER EXPERIENCE THROUGH MARKETING AND PLATFORM ADVANCEMENTS NEW YORK, Feb. 12, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Industrial Color Brands, a family of vertically integrated software, creative production and post production companies, today announced the release of its Software Division’s new website and branding, along with the industry’s most advanced mobile application. The re-launch will provide creative teams within media and entertainment, retail, fashion, marketing and advertising industries a more valuable experience when engaging with globaledit. globaledit (globaledit.com) is the leading online photo and video review, collaboration and distribution tool for creative teams. The online workflow tool provides creative teams with the ability to move large volumes of digital assets (including images and videos) from capture to market in the cloud instantly, while supporting complex collaborative processes, tight schedules and geographically distributed teams. “With the brand re-launch, we’ve matched our new aesthetic with the innovative tech culture we’re known for,” said Steve Kalalian, CEO of Industrial Color Brands. “globaledit’s mobile and web products are about simplicity and powerful features that provide game-changing value to clients. We wanted our new site and brand to reflect what globaledit is all about.” MOBILE APPLICATION Designed to meet the growing need for review and approvals on the go, globabledit’s mobile application allows teams worldwide to work together in real time, whether on iPhone, iPad, Mac or PC. “In the last year, we’ve significantly increased our release velocity, built amazing iOS applications and received great feedback from clients as we continue to innovate across the board,” said Geoff Brookins, chief technology officer of Industrial Color Software. “We’re always inventing, and with our new iOS app for iPhone and iPad we are pushing the industry further by providing next-generation tools to manage the challenges of creative production.” The new globaledit markup editor offers advanced mobile capabilities. The updated iOS application brings useful functionality to markup photos anywhere, anytime, with its SuperZoom feature. Additional technologies are slated to release throughout the coming months. Some of which include professional mobile markup tools for video powered by our high-speed secure video streaming technology, which enables access to large volumes of videos and unmatched HD playback performance. BRAND & WEBSITE The updated globaledit website takes visitors through content quickly to show how globaledit improves creative workflows and the bottom line. Existing and new users alike can learn more about globaledit, view helpful support tips and globaledit videos, and download useful ROI infographics and whitepapers. We focused on improving the overall user experience while providing rich content dedicated to creative decision makers and users alike. “As creatives, we put a lot of energy into our new brand and website. We are excited about the new globaledit logo, which represents the direction we’re heading,” said Mathieu Champigny, vice president of sales and marketing of Industrial Color Brands. “We love pushing the limits of online collaboration for creative teams and releasing advanced features like mobile video markup. The new website is the perfect channel to communicate with our market and provide our customer base with product updates and industry leading news. We look forward to feedback and interaction from photo, video and creative teams.” globaledit will be hosting an exclusive launch celebration and keynote in its Tribeca headquarters in New York on February 20, 2014. ABOUT GLOBALEDIT globaledit was formed by Industrial Color Software in 2002 to address the need of managing digital photography effectively. The software was created to provide a simple, powerful tool to streamline the creative process from capture to archive. Creative teams can work in the cloud-based platform from anywhere and collaborate in real time to make markups, selects, talent approvals, and automate workflow. globaledit is the standard workflow tool for creative teams at leading brands across all industries including; Turner Broadcasting, Victoria’s Secret, Warner Brothers, New York & Co, Showtime, and NBC Universal. ABOUT INDUSTRIAL COLOR BRANDS Originating in 1991, Industrial Color Brands is a family of vertically integrated creative production and software companies including globaledit, Industrial Color Productions, Impact Digital, and Fast Ashleys Studios. Together they provide leading production, post-production, SaaS workflow and related services. The brands provide solutions for the leading photography, advertising, retail, media and production companies worldwide. SOURCE: globaledit

Amidst our teams shooting runway shows this New York Fashion Week, we also brought a presentation right into our own abode. Industrial Color Brands proudly presented Adam Selman’s FW14 collection. Selman worked with stylist, Mel Ottenberg and collaborated with headphone designer, Skullcandy to deliver an impressive sophomore collection. Our gallery was filled with some of New York City’s most creative including V Magazine, i-D, Interview, Style.com, Vogue, Amy Sedaris, Lauren Esersky, Ladyfag, Jeanette Hayes and more! To view some photos behind the scenes click here, and check out the personal interview with Mr. Selman himself above. Until next time #NYFW…

As the trend for 2014 continues to be content creation, our users are seeing a growing need for workflow efficiency, quick turn-around time and the ability to sort, search and locate assets for distribution. DAM/asset collaboration systems are no longer tools just for asset managers and production teams, but also for Marketing and Communications teams as well. Read more in DAM Coalition’s recent article titled What to Watch in 2014: How DAM Impacts 5 Key Trends in Digital Marketing. DAM solutions can no longer be looked as merely software that allows users to manage their digital assets from a single repository.  No longer is it only the digital librarian who needs a solution to the ever-growing number of assets to tag and store. Today, the near-simultaneous creation and consumption of visual assets is changing the role of DAM, as well as the people who need the solution. – Kirsten Foon Read the full article here

Our technology has always been cutting edge, so it was about time that our look was too.  We’re proud to announce that a faster, smarter, more beautiful globaledit is just around the corner.  In the coming weeks we’ll be launching a new globaledit website and brand.  “With the brand re-launch, we’ve matched our aesthetic with the innovative tech culture we’re known for.” said Steve Kalalian, CEO of Industrial Color Brands.  “globaledit’s mobile and web products are about simplicity and powerful features that provide game-changing value to clients.  We wanted our new site and brand to reflect what globaledit is all about.” Our focus has been on improving the overall user experience while providing rich content dedicated to creative decision makers and users.  So you’ll get better looking, more engaging content, more often.  “In the last year, we’ve significantly increased our release velocity, built amazing iOS applications and received great feedback from clients as we continue to innovate across the board.” -Geoff Brookins, CTO Additional groundbreaking technologies slated to release over the coming months include robust mobile markup tools for video, unmatched HD playback performance and more. Stay tuned for news on the launch keynote event on February 20!

When we say creative production is in our DNA, we mean it.  Our sister company, Industrial Color Productions, collaborated with director Nathan Brown to create the concert visuals for Jay Z’s Magna Carter World Tour.  They shot and edited the entire project right here in our Tribeca headquarters making use of the office’s industrial look- and even some of our own employees.  You’ll see one of our Exec’s transformed to look like Big Brother in the lo-fi surveillance aesthetic. The inspiration for the visual language of Jay-Z’s Magna Carter Holy Grail tour came from a collection of images of redacted government materials, surveillance imagery, and low-fi hacker culture – as if the entire time the show was going on – we were being watched by big brother and the information we were receiving was being recorded, audited, and censored. After the original references were collected – I spent eight days working 24/7 with Industrial Color to bring the ideas to life, working hand-in-hand with their production team sourcing materials for two-days of in-house shooting…. The entire project was a perfect example of vertical integrated fluidity – and the importance of utilizing multiple services under one roof. – Director, Nathan Brown When you work here, you never know- you might just end up on stage with Jay Z.  Check out more behind the scenes here.

It’s 2014 and we know professionals are becoming more reliant on mobile workflow tools than ever. We designed the globaledit app for iOS to meet the growing need for asset approvals on the go. globaledit users have been using our apps to connect teams all over the world and ensure that no production veers off schedule. The globaledit mobile markup tool is one of the most advanced and intuitive the industry has seen to-date. This new feature brings full functionality to markup photos on your iPhone or iPad. …and with the Super Zoom feature you can view and annotate your retina-ready images right in the palm of your hand to be sure no detail is missed. Check out the game-changing new feature in this month’s Snackinar here.  I also feature a refresh for a few important tools you may have missed – Collaborative Lightboxes and Uplink file renaming. They’re available in your globaledit account today. Stay connected for more big news from our team in the coming months.

Last night the Industrial Color Brands family got together for a good ol’ fashioned Holiday Hoedown!! We brought in 15 bales of hay and a four-piece Bluegrass band that brought the house down.  The folks from globaledit, Impact Digital, Fast Ashleys Studios, and Industrial Color captured the fun in our farm themed photo booth.  Check out the gallery here!

Thanks to all of you who attended our second globaledit Snackinar!  In this next bite-sized webinar Product Manager, Matt Glueckert, introduced the newest features of our native iOS mobile apps.  These include full library access, ratings, and hi-res images.  He also covers accessing your globaledit jobs, making rapid fire image selects, and how to use stars and notes – All from your iPhone.

Thanks to everyone who attended our first Snackinar! This bite-sized webinar series got off to a great start with insight into our new Super Zoom feature. Super Zoom replaces classic zoom with new controls, increased image resolution and browsing speed. See more of each image in more detail. Other features include Multi-Select and Download Assets, Downloading Metadata, and more Job Properties Detail. Check out the recording of this Snackinar here.

The globaledit team had a wonderful time at Ngage last week in Niagara Falls! Thanks to our partner, North Plains for hosting such a wonderful event loaded with industry leaders and thought-provoking sessions. Have a look at the video above featuring our very own Jody Martinez for a recap of the event as well as information about our partnership with North Plains.

globaledit  now has a SuperZoom feature which replaces the classic zoom with new controls and increased image resolution and browsing speed. Additionally, the updated zoom feature is integrated within the main interface allowing for review of larger images. The SuperZoom tool is located in the UI in the One Up and Two Up viewing options. Once you select an asset, you can then select the SuperZoom tool to view in greater detail the area highlighted by the viewing box. Additionally, you are provided with a slider to increase/decrease zoom as well as a Fit button to bring the full image back into view. The hand tool enables you to move the image around. Helpful keyboard shortcuts: Action Keyboard Command Active the zoom tool Z Activate hand tool H Move Image around Spacebar Zoom Out Option   Right Click Menu Another convenient way to access your zoom tools. Zoom Navigation Use this navigator window at the upper left corner of the panel to move around the image. Click-and-Drag Navigation Hold down the mouse then click-and-drag over the area to zoom.

If you enter metadata using globaledit, an .XMP sidecar option is now available to export along with the raw files. The .xmp file will be able to be downloaded from any asset. globaledit will now automatically create .xmp sidecar files based on the metadata in globaledit that users can download. This is useful because sometimes a user will bring low res jpegs into GE and make their selects and then add metadata. Once they get a smaller subset of selects, they will want to pull the information out of GE and associate it with their high res files outside of GE. Simply select the assets you wish to download and the download dialogue box that pops up will include the .XMP sidecar option to select. The sidecar file will comprise of the most up to date metadata included in GE, as the file will be generated when a user downloads it.

We’re excited to introduce our new Customer Insight Blog Series.  Here we’ll take a peek into various positions within several creative industries, and see how globaledit helps them better manage their workflow. Because who better to learn from than you, our users? Our first series kicks off with the Lab Technician. Who: Ryan Shanley, Head of Lab Services Where: Industrial Color Productions Use Case: Industrial Color offers full lab services including file archival and asset distribution. Ryan uses globaledit to streamline and slash production time for both her and her clients’ teams.   -So what are your responsibilities as a Digital Lab Technician?  As a lab tech, I am responsible for archiving all of Industrial Color’s clients’ digital assets to both an on and off-site backup tape. I utilize a program called Retrospect that allows management of multiple servers; techs can locate any file at any time and we can assure that all assets are backed up and secure.   Additionally, I coordinate all post-production for Industrial Color.  I work with art directors and individual photographers, to pull and deliver imagery, process selects, develop broad edits, print contact sheets and selects and develop an organizational structure for their assets.  I use globaledit to streamline the overall process for both my clients and I. Clients include NY & Co., Justice (Tween Brands), Victoria’s Secret (Direct, Stores and PINK Brands), NBC and more.  globaledit allows instant imagery uploads online so Art Directors can make selects, write imagery notes, and send groups of images called Lightboxes so there is no waiting on hard drives. Being able to share these images immediately cuts production time significantly and makes everyone happy. No more shipping of printed copies or lost hard drives!   -What is the process for a typical job? A fashion client finishes shooting Day 2 (in our world, Day 1 is usually a pre-light day, so not processing before Day 2…).  The creative team sends us a drive and we upload the Broad Edit Jpegs to a job folder in globaledit.  In globaledit the Art Director can then make selects from anywhere on their iPad, their computer or even a Light Table (which is basically an iPad, but the size of a table…so that’s pretty cool).  They then put their selects into a Lightbox and send that over to me.  After receiving an email notification I open the Lightbox using my designated IC Lab Tech login and all I have to do is click one button and ALL of the file names are copied.  I can drop this list in one copy/paste into a dedicated application and locate all of the RAW imagery in about 2 minutes.  The Lightbox tool and filename copy feature make my job as a lab tech so easy.  This saves so much time!  Without globaledit, I would have to go in and individually copy every file name into a Word or Excel document, then copy that list into one of my programs before I could even begin to search for RAW imagery.  I know by experience that clients that don’t use this kind of technology and don’t provide lists of imagery require this process and it really hurts their workflow speed.   -What challenges/obstacles do you encounter on a daily basis? Speed and accuracy are the two most important aspects of my job.  Clients always want their imagery right away.  They want to send a list of images and have them sent back to them immediately and securely.  Unfortunately, RAW files are very large and email has size limitations.  globaledit allows both JPEGs and RAW files to be uploaded into the cloud.  A client can then access selects and download for a retoucher to begin working immediately.  No one needs to wait to send images within 5 different emails, or compressing files to remain under file size limitations. The most critical to the process are speedy delivery, easy client access, file organization, and in-cloud editing. And globaledit provides it all.   -What are some of your other favorite workflow tools? In addition to globaledit of course, my favorite programs are Capture, EasyFind, BetterFinderRenamer, TextWrangler, PrintWindow, PhotoMechanic, and Lightroom.   Thank you Ryan!  We’d love to hear from you too! How do you use globaledit?  What are your daily challenges?  The team here is constantly working on making creative workflow even easier.  So tell us – What is your perspective?

Register today to attend our next webinar and receive our whitepaper “ROI & Business Benefits”. Wednesday, September 18, 2013 2:00 PM – 2:45 PM ET This webinar is all about ROI!  The world’s leading brands use globaledit to manage their creative production workflow. Find out how they’ve increased production speed, reduced errors, cut costs, and empowered their teams to create beautiful, winning content faster and easier than ever before. As a result of this webinar, attendees will be able to provide tangible insight to their organization, help speed up production and get to market faster. During the webinar creatives will learn how to: Improve communication through real-time collaboration and unified workflow processes. Save time and money wasted on disorganized search processes, dysfunctional storage media, and eliminating internal hardware, IT and data center costs. Slash production time by automating processes and distributing production content at high-speed Keep your organization safe and secure with audited system security, activity tracking and reporting. Eliminate risk of releasing unauthorized images. Save money and help the environment by reducing the use of prints and shipping hard drives. Register today.

Thanks to our customers’ feedback, we’re able to continuously provide even better features for globaledit users.  Here are a few new updates that you can start using right away!   Simultaneous Job Upload In an effort to save time and increase efficiency, users can now modify jobs during uploads. You can upload, append derivatives, create, move, rename, add & delete folders AND assets all at the same time! Learn more here. Name Change: “Dropbox” to “Uplink” In order to improve user ease and clarity, we are now referring to “Dropbox” as Uplink.  Uplink is a simple upload portal to send to anyone who needs to upload directly to a job or folder.  Check out a short demo here. globaledit & XINET Integration XINET allows globaledit users to take captured and approved images to final layout seamlessly.  Using the tools together just got even easier.  We’ve created custom field mapping for XINET metadata schemas.  Watch the webinar recording to learn more about our integration with XINET.  P.S.  We’ve also made globaledit’s search functionality more comprehensive- making it easier to find exactly what you need.  Search performance has improved and is returning even more relevant results to users every time they look.

Here’s a useful short cut guide for using keyboard commands within globaledit. Increase your workflow productivity by using Keyboard Commands to streamline making ratings and switching tools. Keyboard commands are available for a variety of functions within globaledit. Keyboard Commands Select All CTRL + A / Command + A Help Shift + ? Bookmark Shift + B Switch to Asset Notes Shift + N Switch to Metadata Editor Shift + M Switch to Markup Editor Shift + K Switch to Contact Sheet Shift + C Switch to Derivative Manager Shift + D Flag F Select S Approve Y Alt A Kill X Star Rating 0 – 5 Switch to Text Tool T Switch to Pen Tool P Switch to Hand Tool H Save Metadata CTRL + S / Command + S

Along with the heat, the summer brings a slew of new television series and seasons. globaledit took a look into the amount of photo production that goes into promoting a new season, or an entirely new show. globaledit’s clients are able to share everything from episodic images to key art visuals amongst their team for markups and approvals/kills. globaledit is processing over 150,000 assets for Media & Entertainment clients alone during the months leading up to a premier. The globaledit iPad app even allows talent to make approvals for themselves from anywhere in the world. globaledit’s ability to handle massive amounts of assets, as well as its global connectivity, has transformed this formerly tedious process into a much more manageable workflow for the entertainment industry’s top players. Below we highlight just how many images go into a series’ promotional campaign. We would also like to extend our “congratulations” to the following clients for their incredible work on these new series and seasons! Graceland: 26,303 via globaledit Copper: 11,188 assets via globaledit Dexter: 9,128 via globaledit Ray Donovan: 6,021 via globaledit

Industrial Color Brands’ CEO, Steve Kalalian sat down with the Pro Photo Coalition to talk about the evolution of the creative production companies Industrial Color, Impact Digital, Fast Ashleys Studios, and globaledit. 23 Years ago we started as a 2-person graphics team… We decided to focus on being a graphics design firm specializing in fashion and photography promotion… We really got the bug for high end retouching pretty quickly. That two person team grew into a family of vertically integrated companies that service each phase of creative production. A light bulb went off and I said we need to make it really simple for traditional photographers to transition to digital with a phone call.  So digital as a service was really invented in 2000.  In two rolling cases you could run an entire pre press powerhouse. To learn more about the inner workings of Industrial Color Brands, read the full interview here!

Thank you to everyone who attended globaledit: See it LIVE! For your convenience, you can view the recording here. In this webinar attendees got a behind-the-scenes view of how globaledit works and why it is so valuable – for all types of creatives. We will review the core globaledit features, walk through the most popular workflows, and take a look at how different types of users interact with the platform. Highlights included: Uploading at warp speed Simultaneous markup and file sharing Distributed metadata tagging Approvals on the go with iPad  

globaledit now has updated password features that will allow admins to enhance their security options. Admins now have the ability to set the frequency (in days) when user passwords expire per account. They will also be able to set the number of days before a user is prompted to change their password. Setting a Password Expiration Date Click on the “Accounts” tab under the “Admin” panel and select “Security” from the left-side menu. To enable password expiration, check the box to “Set Password Expiration”. Please note, this is turned off by default. You can then choose how often the password expires and how many days before the expiration date to prompt the user to make the change.

Bloomberg Business Week recently spoke with Sharon Carmel and Dror Gill, the founder/CEO and CTO, of Beamr (Tel Aviv-based media technology company). Beamr technology’s JPEGmini has teamed up with globaledit to utilize image compression technology that has the capability to reduce the file size of photos without damaging quality. To read more about this collaborative innovation in technology on Bloomberg click here!

Industrial Color Brands exhibited together at Le Book Connections New York in Soho last week. Representatives from all divisions, including GLOBALedit, Industrial Color, Impact Digital, and Fast Ashleys Studios were on hand to unveil new products and services and talk shop with the industry@f40s top creative professionals and brands. Thanks to all who stopped by our booth to learn more about our capabilities!

A Webinar featuring Matt Glueckert, Business Development Manager Part of the Insight Webinar Series Join us on Wednesday, July 10 for our next Insight Webinar. Matt Glueckert, Business Development Manager, will discuss globaledit features while walking through popular workflows as well as different types of users that interact within the platform. Hear how globaledit works from behind the scenes to discover the value of globaledit for all types of creatives. Highlights Include: Uploading at warp speed Simultaneous markup and file sharing Distributed metdata tagging Approvals on the go with the iPad July 10th, 2:00pm ET

XINET users have layout creation and processing covered. Some are still finding it a major challenge, though, to get through the entire production process seamlessly, and with fewer vendor solutions. There seems to be a @f37black hole@f38 in the creative process right after the shoot, causing delay for Xinet users to get access to selected and approved assets. North Plains partnered with globaledit to eliminate that black hole. globaledit is hosting this webinar for XINET customers to learn how Xinet and globaledit, when used together, can provide more value to the creative process. In this webinar, globaledit will show Xinet customers: -How to speed up the production process by having assets reviewed, selected and approved within globaledit , then moved into Xinet automatically. -How globaledit and Xinet work together to improve your team@f39s workflow and help you get to market faster. -A live demo of the globaledit platform while learning about real use cases from customers such as Turner Broadcasting, Publicis and more. For more information contact globaledit: info@globaledit.com.

You’re invited to attend The Customer Insight Series A Webinar featuring Georgia Christensen, Executive Creative Director, Neiman Marcus Join us on Tuesday May 7th for our next Customer Insight Webinar. Hear how one of the world’s leading specialty retailers, Neiman Marcus, uses their photo and video asset management system to increase productivity. Georgia Christensen, Executive Creative Director, will share how she manages shoots, images, reviews and approvals, and keeps up with the fast pace of production at Neiman Marcus. Click here to register! May 7th, 2pm EDT

We’re looking forward to another productive Henry Stewart Digital Asset Management Conference at The Hilton New York on May 2-3. We will also be hosting some informative educational sessions (see below). If you have not registered yet, click here and use the globaledit discount code GLOBALEDIT100 and receive $100 off of registration fees. Brand Workflows and DAM – The who, what, where, when, and why Friday, May 3, 3:20-4:00pm A panel discussion featuring Steve Kalalian, CEO, globaledit on what the future holds for creative operations; what is already on the horizon, and what is just over the horizon. Tech Track: WIP – Controlling Your Assets from Capture through Production Friday, May 3, 11:20-11:50am Matt Glueckert, Business Development Manager, globaledit, will discuss current customers’ success and performance factors for implementing a solid WIP platform.

Valued globaledit customer, Megan Re of Food Network, was interviewed by KM World. She spoke about how digital photos and videos are a crucial element of a brand’s web experience and therefore become crucial to manage properly across a growing brand and team members across the globe. Read the interview with Megan below, or head to KMworld.com to read the full piece. The Food Network, which includes a lifestyle network, website and magazine, is one such company. In today’s fast-moving media environment, it is essential to be able to find, select and distribute digital photos without losing them somewhere along the process, says Megan Re, photo director. She is in charge of digital photos for all of the network’s properties, including the website.The website team works in an environment that requires a constant flow of new digital photos, as well as other content for the numerous updates that are made every day. But when Re joined the Food Network a couple of years ago, no such system was in place to find and deliver the needed digital photography to the website team. Each department in the company had its own photo files, with little knowledge about what photos another department might have, what photos weren’t available anywhere in the network and what photos might be available if they could only be located.”There were no specs on the metadata, no specs on file naming, no size information. We had boxes of slides, transparencies, photos on hard drives, other images of DVDs and a lot of different silos,” Re recalls. “We had to develop a whole new workflow.”So Re looked at a number of providers that could give the Food Network a centralized repository of the photos, with full filing, tagging and identification capabilities. She talked with other photo professionals and other television networks and also spent 18 months determining a workflow strategy that would operate best for her and her team. It was also essential that the digital photos remain in a central repository rather than being removed (and perhaps lost).In early 2011, Re started using the photo and video platform of GLOBALedit, enabling her to manage the Food Network’s digital photos in the cloud. The platform enables authorized users to review, approve and distribute digital photos.”I’ve just loved it,” Re says. “This thing is great. It really solved our problem of sharing the assets and knowing what we had. We can easily send images to talent for approval and have everything tracked and organized.”In January, globaledit integrated the ICTV JPEGmini media technology, which reduces the size of digital images for transmission, enabling them to be distributed as much as five times faster than before. That is a critical new feature, particularly for the Food Network’s website team, because it will enable Re to share photos with them much more quickly, meaning faster updates and a better Web experience for users, she says.  

You ask. We listen. The globaledit team is focused on making the leading photo and video management platform even better. We constantly strive to make your life easier when it comes to Work in Progress (WIP) and creative production workflows. Check out these new feature updates, below. They’re available for you to use today. If you have questions or want more information on these or any other product updates, please contact us or call 212-792-2712. Batch Filename Search: Instead of searching for files by only one filename, now users can search multiple filenames at once, copy/paste a file list from an email or quickly rate or create a collection from a list of files created outside of GLOBALedit. Audio File Support: Before users could only upload audio files. Now you can upload , playback, pause, download, rate and share audio files audio files (WAV, MP3, AIFF) all within GLOBALedit.

Users will sometimes get a message when uploading assets to a job that says ‘This job is currently being updated. Please check the job processing monitor for more information.’ This message indicates that there is another upload currently processing in that job and that users either have to wait until that action finishes or stop the current action and upload their new assets. To check if there are any other actions processing within a job, simply click the Job Monitor under the Options drop down menu Here you can select the job name to open up the action and see the job status. If needed, you can also stop the current job in order to start your new upload by selecting the Stop button. If you have a GLOBALedit question you would like answered on the blog, email us at support@globaledit.com

Another DAM Podcast interviewed our client Megan Re, Photo Dept. Manager at Food Network. In this interview, Megan was asked about the different aspects of her current creative production process. She provided insight on how the organization managed food and cooking assets, her challenges and successes at the network, and how her team uses globaledit to manage workflow. Congratulations to Megan on her success in managing an efficient workflow at the Food Network! “…We instilled a workflow program globaledit, that we love…Helps with our selects, our instant viewing, our approvals and our markups” Listen to the short podcast here Listen to Megan Re on Audiobook // // ]]>

We are excited to present the GLOBALedit Interview Series! Over the next few months, we will be bringing you behind-the-scenes exclusive interviews with creative and marketing leaders. You’ll get the low down on how customers manage their creative production processes as well as learn how they utilize photo and video platforms, such as GLOBALedit, to enhance their workflow. This week we begin with a look at retouching super-boutique, Impact Digital, featuring Dana Francks, Vice President. How did Impact Digital get started? Impact Digital began as a two-person Graphic Design team in 1991, focusing on promotional materials for the Fashion and Photography Industries.  In 1996, Impact Digital moved to SoHo, NYC where it expanded to handle high-end retouching, CGI and pre-media.  We currently have 35 employees in Impact Digital and over 100 in Industrial Color, our parent production services and software company.  In 2006 we moved to our 30,000 sq ft Tribeca location.  Today we are one of the top New York City retouching super-boutiques and handle a wide range of clients including photographers, ad agencies, media and entertainment companies and international retail brands.   What is your background in retouching? I have a very artistic mother who always encouraged me at a young age to use art to express myself. In high school I focused on painting and then received a Bachelor’s Degree at The University of Pennsylvania, in Visuals Studies with a concentration in Art Practice and Technology.  I took a variety of studio classes such as photography, video editing, painting, and graphic design.  Coincidently Penn added Visual Studies as a major my first year of study – perfect timing!  I was able to help mold the curriculum for future students, which was very cool.  When I started working at Impact Digital in 2008, I realized there was much more to retouching than masks, color correction, and cleaning up blemishes.  I started out as a Production Manager, learning the ins and outs of different technical specifications in color profiles and proofing.  I then moved on to become a client Account Manager and later Account Director, making sure they were completely satisfied with our work and service.  I am currently the Vice President of Impact Digital.  I manage the studio, keeping the work-flow streamlined, supervising the creation of beautiful imagery, as well as keeping our team and clientele happy.   What aspects of photo retouching do you find the most challenging? The most challenging aspect of retouching is probably the extremely tight turnaround times.  Anything can be done beautifully with enough time.  The tricky part is making it beautiful with very little time.  Our senior retouchers are used to this challenge – it’s very common in our industry.  We are able to overcome this challenge with our efficient workflow and internal communication, as well as with the team’s amazing retouching talent.  We also have different shifts that overlap throughout the day so our team is delivering on client’s deadlines and can conquer the work without ever burning out.   How much direction do you typically receive from a client? It depends on the client.  Some are very hands-on and will give detailed direction on color, shaping, and clean up.  Other clients just let us use our judgment completely.  In some cases, we have several different people directing the same image.  We always find a happy balance to ensure that all parties love the end result.   How much time do you typically spend on an image? What is the longest amount of time spent? It depends.  A straightforward editorial image could take an hour or less to do some color moves and light clean up.  On the other hand, an image with lots of compositing, like a hair campaign beauty shot, could take up to 20 hours before we’re ready to show the first round to a client.   What tools if any have helped with your team’s job or retouching workflow? Over many years of working on high-volume campaigns with complex direction and tight deadlines, we’ve found a workflow that saves us time and keeps everything organized.  We developed an internal tracking system that keeps tabs on every image, their instructions, size, usage, schedule, and any other important details.  We try to have the same retoucher work on the same image for all rounds whenever possible, but because we do need to pass files around, our file structure is very specifically organized to make that super easy.  The clients who use GLOBALedit, the work-in-progress software platform for creative teams and marketing organizations, have a much easier time of providing us images and feedback.  It cuts the back-and-forth, and leaves little room for any miscommunication.  In the world we live in, everyone expects to be able to share things digitally with no fuss.  GLOBALedit gives the photo industry the ability to do exactly that.  If we still used hard drives or FTP to transfer files to and from our clients, there would be a substantial amount of wasted time…and I have to admit, I have very little patience for slow technology!   Impact Digital recently worked on the advertising images for Showtime’s latest seasons of Californication and House of Lies. How did GLOBALedit fit into the production process? Showtime used GLOBALedit to make their selects after the shoot.  We were able to download their selects to build the composite images in retouching. It also came in handy when we were in need of some extra body parts. Instead of asking the client to find another shot that would fit our very specific retouching needs, we were able to search for one ourselves by scrolling through the shots in the GLOBALedit library quickly and easily.   How does GLOBALedit fit into your workflow with clients and internally amongst your team? One of our clients, Victoria’s Secret, uses GLOBALedit to its full potential, which is extremely helpful and efficient for our retouching workflow.  We’ve been able to eliminate verbal communication because we simply receive their lightbox – which contains markups and notes for assets — and we hit the ground running”

The globaledit team is committed to helping you work even faster and more productively. Today we want to share with you some speed and performance improvements to the GLOBALedit platform: globaledit Integrates JPEGmini Technology Now with globaledit, creative and marketing teams can share and collaborate on high quality images at unprecedented speeds. The JPEGmini patent-pending technology reduces file sizes up to 5x so you can preview images faster in globaledit with no loss in quality. GLOBALedit Viewing Experience Up to 10x Faster Viewing large collections in grid mode has never been easier! We’ve optimized the globaledit image-serving algorithms to make viewing large collections even faster. Move through images more quickly and get your work done faster!

Now with GLOBALedit, creative and marketing teams can share and collaborate on high quality images at unprecedented speeds. Today we announced our new partnership with ICVT. Their JPEGmini technology will be incorporated into GLOBALedit and our customers will be able to view images of the highest quality and share them at speeds up to five times faster than previously possible. “The team at GLOBALedit is committed to providing our customers — some of the most discerning in the industry — with innovations that help improve their creative process and time to market. Today we’re pleased to formalize a partnership with JPEGmini and ICVT to continue to empower customers, including Victoria’s Secret, Warner Bros. Studios, Showtime, New York & Company, HBO, AMC and Turner Broadcasting, with the leading tools on the market,” states Albert Song, vice president of product and technology for Industrial Color Software. “The most exciting aspect of the integration is that our customers will have a better, faster user experience across the board with higher resolution images — at smaller file sizes — and no loss in quality.” “We share Industrial Color’s commitment to continually improving the quality, speed and user experience of photo sharing,” said Eli Lubitch, president at ICVT. “We are pleased to have the opportunity to further enhance GLOBALedit’s already robust workflow solution, which is relied on by many of the world’s leading fashion, retail and entertainment brands.” With 28 patents pending, the highly acclaimed JPEGmini media optimization technology, developed by a team of world-class image scientists, is currently used to power some of the world’s leading publishers, social networks and e-commerce companies. The ICVT suite of photo optimization products also includes JPEGmini and JPEGmini lite for Mac, and beamr? for iPhone, a recently introduced free app that for the first time ever allows sharing of a virtually limitless number of full-resolution, original quality iPhone photos . Incorporating technology like JPEGmini into GLOBALedit ensures the long-term growth and success of both the platform and its customers. Set to launch during the first quarter of 2013, GLOBALedit customers will automatically experience the improved images browsing speeds as a result of the JPEGmini integration. Stay tuned for additional announcements and events regarding this new partnership!

We picked up the recent issue of GQ magazine and came across this double sided print ad from Showtime. Showtime called two of our sister companies to also participate in the production of these new advertisements. Industrial Color provided capture and post-production services, and Impact Digital did the retouching and CGI for the House of Lies and Californication images. Showtime uses globaledit to manage the talent approvals for all of the shows. Our features made it pretty easy to send galleries, manage deadlines and track assets that have been approved. It is so exciting to see the end result!   Premiere night is Sunday, January 13th. Tune in at 9PM for all new seasons of Shameless, House of Lies and Californication and stop by the Showtime site for exclusive coverage.  

PSFK released a report showcasing the new tools in which professionals are using in the workplace and how those are effecting (and improving) efficiency. globaledit made the cut! GLOBALedit LightTable, the first digital LightTable for creative teams that integrates with the GLOBALedit platform, is featured in the visual collaboration section.   Last year, PSKF also included an exclusive interview regarding the globaledit LightTable in a PSFK series titled ‘Future of Work’. Matt Glueckert, Business Development Manager and Albert Song, VP of Product & Technology for GLOBALedit were asked a variety of questions about LightTable and the future of collaboration and touch technology. “If you’ve ever seen a traditional light table. That’s what people are used to. They want a stack of images. They want a stack of slides and transparencies. They want to work with them in a really physical way. That’s extremely efficient in its own right.   We gained some efficiency with all the data. Individuals can process a lot more data. We lost that physical aspect to it, that communication and collaboration was lacking, but this is really cool because it’s bringing that back. When people come to it, it’s very natural. It’s intuitive. People just get it.” -Albert Song, VP of Product and Technology, globaledit   You can read more about the concept and creation of this project here.   For more information about this report visit www.psfk.com/publishing/future-of-work

Happy new year! To kick off 2013, we’d like to introduce our last update from last year. Security is an important feature in GLOBALedit, since many of our clients deal in highly sensitive imagery. We added new and more granular options to Watermarking to further ensure this security: Repeating Watermarks Now you can set your account’s text watermark to repeat across the image. You’ll find this under the “Position” option: Adjust the “Rotation Angle” and “Font Size” to get more or less coverage on the image. Username Watermark Settings We broke out the Watermark feature under your Account options, and added a new “Set Username Watermark” feature: Here, you’ll be able to adjust the options for your account’s username watermark, which can be used in Galleries. Preview the watermark with your own username: We’d love to hear from you! Contact us at support@globaledit.com with feedback on this and any other feature on GLOBALedit.

Happy Holidays from all of us at GLOBALedit! This season we want to help our friends and neighbors who continue to be affected by Hurricane Sandy. In an effort to raise much needed funds, Industrial Color Brands will donate $1* for every new follow of our Twitter account.  Visit our holiday page to view our video and follow us on Twitter. Our offices will be closed from December 25 to January 1 for the holidays. For emergency production assistance, please contact support@globaledit.com. We will see you in the New Year!

The end of the year brings not only good cheer but the opportunity to look back at what we accomplished. As we prepare to break for the holiday season, it’s easy to see how far GLOBALedit has progressed in 12 months. Thanks to you, 2012 was a very good year. Here are some of our highlights… At first glance, our company has nearly doubled. This year we welcomed new account managers, a marketing team and grew out our software engineering department. The expansion of our team extended to the West Coast, where we introduced a GLOBALedit presence at the Industrial Color Los Angeles office. In April, we enjoyed the fruits of our labor after the release of GLOBALedit V4. Later this year we debuted the GLOBALedit LightTable at Createasphere NY. And we didn’t stop there… Throughout the year, we took many of your feature requests and turned them into reality, such as custom metadata panels, advance search options, collaborative markups and an improved support site. Our new partnership with North Plains solidified our place in the market as the preeminent work-in-progress solution. We launched a successful North Plains-GLOBALedit industry focused webinar in October, and there’s much more to come! We had a lot of fun participating in events and conferences, such as the NYFW Influence Lounge hosted by Style Coalition, Henry Stewart NY/LA, the National Retail Federation Expo and the APPY Awards (where ICB won an award for Vendor of the Year!). This was also a year where we were reminded of our resilience as a team and company. During Hurricane Sandy, GLOBALedit kept working without discontinuance and we managed to come together as a team to provide support for our clients while our downtown Manhattan office remained dark. This was a testament to our promise to deliver an around-the-clock platform for our clients so they can continue creating great content, without interruption, anywhere and any time. It is with this retrospective that we close the chapter on 2012 and welcome a new year. 2013…bring it on!  

We are very excited to share with you the new support videos that are now available at the GLOBALedit Support Channel on Vimeo and on our support site! Our first video series, Lesson 1, will introduce video tutorials that will demonstrate the core features of GLOBALedit. Share these videos with new team members or to explore the depth of already known tools. As new features roll out we will provide video support to help introduce the new tools to you and your team. In the following video, we demonstrate how to use the new collaborative markup feature. Check out the video and find out how to use this tool to maximize instant collaborations and accelerate team communication and efficiency. More videos will be released often so be sure to check back in with us after the New Year. Please send any ideas for support videos to support@globaledit.com.

North Plains held their annual Partner Conference on December 6-7 in Toronto, at the Soho Metropolitan Hotel.  We were proud to attend, representing Industrial Color’s sales, product and marketing teams.  We heard about plans for 2013 and spent time with the North Plains team and channel partners from around the world.  There’s much more to come as we work closely together to offer customers the best work-in-progress and DAM solutions. Check out the photos from the conference here.  

Last week globaledit and Henry Stewart teamed up to produce Real World ‘Creative Work in Progress’: Challenges and Solutions,a webinar which examined a mix of best practices, mistakes to avoid and realities to accept. Hot topics discussed were: How to move beyond hard drives and FTP through high-speed file transfer How to manage your content before it ever gets to DAM How to get it into DAM once it’s ready (what to do with that pile of hard drives sitting under your desk) Working with partners and vendors in multiple locations Unique problems associated with photo and video shoots Providing technology to creative, non-technical people Review and approval cycles for mobile creative executives Lead by Moderator David Lipsey, Principal, Media & Entertainment at Optimity Advisors, a panel of some of the busiest creative production professionals explored the characteristics of ‘Work in Progress’. Panelists included: Aaron Holm, Strategic Consultant Industrial Color Software David Plavin, Service Manager, Creative Applications Publicis Megan Re, Photo Editor Food Network Listen to the recorded version here!

The 2012 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show aired this week. There was no shortage of glitz and glamour as the very lovely VS Angels rocked the runway and brought in 9.3 million viewers. We are always very excited to be a part of this annual holiday show. Victoria’s Secret used globaledit to manage all the on-site show photography and behind the scenes footage. Check out the photos and watch performances by Rihanna, Justin Bieber and Bruno Mars from the show here.  

We are proud to announce that Steve Kalalian and Industrial Color Brands, has been awarded the 2012 APPY for Vendor & Service of the Year by the Advertising Production Club of New York. The Vendor/Service APPY is presented annually to the Vendor that embodies passion for the advertising community and for their work in our industry. Recognition is given to the company that exhibits a positive influence, creative excellence and a combination of professional and personal attributes that demonstrate leadership and contributions to the advertising and creative production community.   Paul Nicholson (VP of Print and Broadcast, Showtime Networks) presents the award to Steve Kalalian (President, Industrial Color Brands) The event was held at the Industrial Color office and was attended by over 200 industry leaders. Thanks to the APC and for all those who celebrated with us on that night!

Workflows like talent tagging or captioning usually require multiple rounds of adding different metadata to large collections. It’s not always possible to get it right the first time. Yesterday, we introduced an update to the Metadata Editor so you can append metadata to multiple assets with different data values. This means you can add onto the existing data without worrying about what’s already there, in one fell swoop. Append Metadata to Multiple Assets Multi-select or select-all assets. With assets that have different data values in a field, such as the Dublin Core Description field (commonly used to annotate talent or other descriptors), GLOBALedit will indiciate that there are <multiple values>”. Just type in your text after this object. For example, you can add John Doe to the list of talent represented in the images by adding “, John Doe” . You can also use your Backspace or Delete button to remove the “<multiple values>” data or replace with completely new text. For additional support or to submit a feature request, email us at support@globaledit.com!  

We’re very excited to announce Collaborative Markups, now live on GLOBALedit! Multiple users can make markups and text notes on an image and share with each other, their teams, and vendors. Public Markups Make your markup public so other users who have access to the image can view your edits and notes. View other users’ markups as well, and toggle them on / off to control whose you see. Quick Markup Downloads Download PDFs of markups directly from the “Download” section. Choose the “Markup PDF” download option for a single asset, and you’ll get a PDF with all public markups. Toggle off a user to hide those markups from the PDF as well. Lightbox downloads also have a “Markup PDF” option, so you can easily download all available markups for the assets in any lightbox. Controlled Markup Sharing Communicate edits and requests with your team and retouchers directly through lightboxes. When you share a lightbox, you can allow your recipients see public markups on lightbox images. They can view and download markups as needed, along with RAWs or other hires files. Leveraging GLOBALedit’s cloud-based platform allows collaborative markups to be accessible from any location immediately, increasing efficiency with the back-and-forth across your team and with your vendors and shortening your time to market. Let us know what you think!

We’re still stuffed from yesterday’s Industrial Color office potluck! Lasagna, osso bucco, and meatballs, oh my! It was a fantastic culinary turnout. It was great to enjoy and share with each other. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!    Our office will be closed from Thursday 11/22 and Friday 11/26. For support help, submit a ticket to support@globaledit.com.  

Today we bid farewell to Stewart Gillen who has been part of our Software team for 4 years. He contributed largely to the development of the GLOBALedit for iPad App and GEDi. He has been a valuable member of Industrial Color Software as well as a good friend. He will be truly missed here. Good luck in Austin! Be careful out there, Stewart..don’t shoot your eye out!  

This month GLOBALedit went to the Henry Stewart DAM LA show. We showed off LightTable to the West Coast while leading and participating in several panels and discussions. Check out our photos from the show: GLOBALedit Booth Day 1: How Creative and IT can Work Together, presented by Christopher Grakal, VP of Photo and Digital Asset Management, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc   Day 1: Work in Progress is DAM for Creatives, presented by Matt Glueckert and Aaron Holm of GLOBALedit and Industrial Color Software Day 2: How to Make Talent Approvals So Easy, Even Zombies Can Do It,  presented by Rick Zwicker, Director of Photography at AMC Check out this highlight video from the conference!  

GLOBALedit reads star ratings made on images in applications like Adobe Bridge and Capture One. Now, any star ratings you change or add in GLOBALedit can be seen in those applications after download. Stamp Star Ratings on Download If you make or change a star rating of 0 through 5 on an image in GLOBALedit and download it, the star rating will stamp to the metadata of the file. Opening the file in another program, such as Bridge, will show the rating made in GLOBALedit. We’d love to hear from you! Send us your thoughts at support@globaledit.com.  

We’re always trying to make GLOBALedit even easier to use, so this week we’ve introduced some keyboard shortcuts to improve your photo editing experience. Markup Editor – Pen Tool Now, while using the Pen tool in Markup Editor you can hold the Shift key to create horizontal and vertical lines (see blue lines below) and hold the Ctrl or Alt key to create straight lines in any direction (see red lines below). You can easily make crop indications and more advanced markups. 1-Up View You can quickly zoom in and out of an image using Ctrl/Command+ and Ctrl/Command-. Use this with the Hand tool to move around your image and look closely at detail.  

Last week NYC braved historic Hurricane Sandy. The superstorm blew into town Monday and knocked out power for all of Manhattan below 34th Street. But GLOBALedit never stopped working and neither did the creative teams who were able to continue production work without a hitch. When the city lost power our battery backups kicked in immediately which prompted our emergency generator to begin producing power. Our data center is located in a highly secure communications building that houses broadcasters, communication companies and internet service providers so we were able to keep GLOBALedit running smoothly and without any hiccups in service.   We have returned to the office this week and are thankful for all the well wishes and we continue to hope for the best for those New Yorker’s still without power. Industrial Color also made a substantial donation to the New York City Mayor’s Office Hurricane Relief Fund.

Get to know Dan Fusaro, globaledit Software Developer and guy who likes to eat. Dan was featured on foodie blog Midtown Lunch recently and revealed his Downtown culinary savvy.  Here’s a peek of his interview: Favorite lunches downtown: … South’s on Church (btw. White & Franklin) for nachos. Their nachos are the greatest thing you’ve ever seen come out of a kitchen, time and time again. They take the care to layer everything nicely, cook it through, top with guac, sour cream, pico and plenty of jalapenos. I dare you to find a better plate of nachos anywhere. I finished these by myself on a dare for lunch once, I was never the same… Read the rest of Dan’s interview here as well as his top picks for a great lunch in TriBeCa.  

Next week the GLOBALedit team will be at the Henry Stewart DAM Conference in Los Angeles. Here are some highlights we’re looking forward to participating in: North Plains & GLOBALedit Strategic Alliance  Discover how we partnered to offer enterprises the best-of-breed solutions to seamlessly manage content. Educational Sessions Panel: New Approached to Building an Effective Strategy – What DAM has to Offer with Rick Zwicker, Director of Photography, AMC, Thursday, 11/1 @11:40am Panel: How Creative and IT Can Work Together with Christopher Grakal (Turner Broadcasting), Lisette Azar (CBS), Aaron Holm (Industrial Color), Paul Nicholson (Showtime Networks) and Chris Wittmayer (NASCAR), Thursday, 11/1 @ 1:00pm Case Study: Talent Approvals So Easy, Even Zombies Can Do It, Rick Zwicker, AMC, Friday 11/2 @ 11:50am Technology Track: Work In Progress is DAM for Creatives, GLOBALedit, Thursday 11/1 @ 1:30pm                            Rick Zwicker                       Christopher Grakal                        Lisette Azar                        AMC                               Turner Broadcasting                             CBS                                                Aaron Holm                           Matt Glueckert                                           Industrial Color                        Industrial Color Join us at Booth #8 and experience the GLOBALedit LightTable. We look forward to seeing you there! Register Now and save $100 when you enter discount code “INDUSTRIAL100′ “

Let’s imagine that you’ve got a collection of high-value approved images to distribute among your executives, marketing department and printers. Security is your priority here, and you need to control sharing among these non-system users. Sound familiar? This weekend GLOBALedit improved your security options when sending lightboxes and now you’ll be able to regulate sharing among your guest users. Password Protection for Lightboxes to Guest Users You now have the option to assign a password to lightboxes sent to guest users. To do this, you must first send out the lightbox. Then, navigate to that lightbox’s Options dropdown > View Properties  Checkmark Set Password for Guests. Passwords can be up to 30 characters and a counter in the text field will indicate this.   As a guest user, you will be prompted to enter a password immediately upon entering the lightbox. Share your ideas for feature upates with us at support@globaledit.com. “

Come work with us! Industrial Color is a leading creative production company that provides high-end technology & services for the world’s top retailers, entertainment companies, and photo producers. Our software products include GLOBALedit (www.globaledit.com), a sophisticated online photo management platform that companies like Victoria’s Secret, Warner Bros., and Showtime use to collaborate and manage their photo workflow, and FileSociety (www.filesociety.com), an online tool for managing high-speed file transfer used by many of the world’s leading production groups. We are looking for a Account Sales Representative to execute software revenue generation as we continue to expand our market footprint. Position reports to Business Development Manager and is part of a six-person account management and sales team. General Responsibilities:  ? Build and maintain sales pipeline to meet and/or exceed growth targets ? Engage in daily sales activity, cold/warm/follow-up calls, social networking, customer meetings, product demos, Q&A, industry events and contract negotiation to closure and implementation ? Collaborate with and deliver customer feedback to Marketing, Product and Software Development groups ? Evangelize brand to continue to build mindshare in support of revenue growth goals ? Expand existing GLOBALedit & FileSociety accounts and participate in Industrial Color Brands cross marketing programs that include Industrial Color Productions, Fast Ashley?s Studios and Impact Digital. Experience & Requirements: ? Degree in Marketing, Business, Creative Arts or related field (min 3.0 GPA) ? General knowledge of popular production hardware and software ? Experience in creative production environments. ? New business and account development experience ? Managing, using and/or implementing production workflow tools including web-based, DAM, or workflow automation. ? Experience in Advertising, Video and Film a plus. Notes: ? Job location is in Tribeca New York; candidate must live in New York area ? Some travel expected ? Competitive compensation for the right candidate ? Passion for photography and creative production desirable   Contact: hr-ic@industrialcolor.com Indicate ?Account Sales Rep? in the subject line and paste your cover letter in the body of your e-mail. Thank you.   “

Two weeks ago we announced our partnership with North Plains and have since been gearing up for our webinar this Thursday,October 18 at 11:30am EST. Industrial Color Software and North Plains will present and demonstrate how globaledit, Xinet and TeleScope address the challenges of collaboration within creative and productions groups while still maintaing brand consistency and control. Topics include: Why one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to solutions for creative and production groups How globaledit, Xinet and TeleScope work together to manage the lifecycle of rich media assets, especially high-end photo and video content from capture through to production A global marketing use case that runs across collaboration between photo and video platform using globaledit and Xinet as the collaboration solution for creative groups, and TeleScope as the global marketing enterprise DAM Tune in to the recorded version of the webinar here.

Sunday night’s season three premiere of The Walking Dead killed the ratings record for basic cable with 10.9 million viewers. This was the highest-rated entertainment this fall.  Congrats AMC! This morning we were pretty excited about the new season – so we played around with our Walking Dead toys! Daryl Dixon vs Zombie. GLOBALedit LightTable. Too much fun. AMC uses GLOBALedit to create and organize a centralized online archive that drives their talent approvals, image review process and media outlet distribution. Tune into AMC every Sunday night at 9pm for all new episodes of The Walking Dead! “

Last week GLOBALedit presented at Createasphere at The New Yorker Hotel. The market debut of the GLOBALedit LightTable was a success! In light of the release, we offered live demonstrations to members of the digital asset management community while participating in panel discussions and case studies. Conducted Demonstrations with Industry Leaders at the GLOBALedit booth. Christopher Grakal from Turner Broadcasting Conducting Live Case Study with the New GLOBALedit LightTable Aaron Holm of Industrial Color Software Moderating Workflow Panel Featuring client BJ Gray from Victoria’s Secret Visitors Enjoyed Collaborating on GLOBALedit’s LightTable at Booth #214 Watch our exclusive interview and demo for DAM Coalition here. “

GLOBALedit added some new updates over this weekend. These handy features are bound to save you time. Filename in Large Preview Mode You will now find the filename of the current asset displayed on the bottom right corner of the screen. This update is an improvement to viewing assets in large preview mode. Having the filename in-view adds value to scrolling through a collection, making ratings and notes. Advanced Search in Owned Lightboxes Now you can search by metadata, file extension, filename, notes and ratings within your own lightboxes. Select the Advanced link next to the search bar and produce a filtered search using the dropdown menus. Save Most Recent Search Your most recent search now saves automatically. You’ll find this cuts time in half when searching for the same conditions in different folders or lightboxes. Send us your feedback, suggestions or feature requests at support@globaledit.com. “

North Plains Systems Holdings, L.P., the largest pure-play digital asset management (DAM) provider and Industrial Color Software, Inc., just announced an alliance to establish the strategic foundation for joint sales and marketing opportunities and plan for future technology development. “North Plains is pleased to formalize a partnership with Industrial Color in order to leverage the value-add derived from the complementarity of each other?s solutions…While Industrial Color?s GLOBALedit solution adds value to the creative production process from the moment of photo or video capture, North Plains? strength is in our ability to manage the lifecycle of all assets through distribution and reuse. We look forward to working together to provide enterprises with proven solutions that will enrich their digital experience and increase efficiency.” – Eric Courville, Director of Marketing and Alliances at North Plains. As a first initiative following this alliance, Industrial Color and North Plains will present a joint Webinar on October 18, 2012 showcasing GLOBALedit, Xinet and TeleScope, and how the three solutions can leverage each other. North Plains and Industrial Color will also participate at the upcoming Henry Stewart DAM conference in Los Angeles, November 1-2, 2012 and will jointly demonstrate the three solutions at the event. Read more about the alliance here. “

Aspera has released a new version of their Connect plugin that now supports MAC OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and addresses various fixes across different browsers. Download Aspera Connect V 2.8.8 for high-speed performance during GLOBALedit file transfers.    For a full description of release notes, visit the Aspera Connect website. If you have any additional questions about using Aspera Connect with GLOBALedit, check out our support site or contact us at support@globaledit.com “

Congratulations to AMC and Showtime on your Emmy Award wins! We tuned in on Sunday night to watch the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards and to see them win big and take home statuettes. Showtime won for its Outstanding Drama Series, Homeland. Co-stars Claire Danes and Damien Lewis both went home with “Best Actor- Drama” and “Best Actress-Drama”. Homeland is Showtime’s first series to win top prize for an Outstanding Drama Series. Aaron Paul won the Emmy for “Best Supporting Actor – Drama” in AMC‘s Breaking Bad. Be sure to tune in to the season premiere of Homeland on Sunday, September 30th at 9PM on Showtime. Breaking Bad fans…we’ll have to sit tight until Summer 2013 for the final season! “

PSFK is running a fantastic reporting series, The Future of Work. The month-long series explores influences, trends and presents forward-moving innovation in the way the design, advertising and digital industries work. PSFK contributor Wesley Robinson interviewed our VP of Product and Technology, Albert Song and Business Development Manager, Matt Glueckert to determine how technology is changing how we can work seamlessly with global teams. In response, we showed them our newest product, the GLOBALedit LightTable! Here’s a peak of the interview… What problem are you trying to solve@f4 Albert Song: …The LightTable really evolved out of the questions, @f5What if we can do this@f6 What if we can work in this way, especially in a creative atmosphere@f7@f8 Working in front of a workstation and a big screen, it@f9s one way of working. But it doesn@f10t really lend itself to the way that Creatives have liked to work.@f11 If you@f12ve ever seen a traditional light table. That@f13s what people are used to. They want a stack of images. They want a stack of slides and transparencies. They want to work with them in a really physical way. That@f14s extremely efficient in its own right. We gained some efficiencies with all the data. Individuals can process a lot more data. We lost that physical aspect to it, that communication and collaboration was lacking, but this is really cool because it@f15s bringing that back. When people come to it, it@f16s very natural. It@f17s intuitive. People just get it.     Read the entire article here.   “