Contemporary industry standards and ever-changing consumer demands have led to creatives facing immense pressures. They are expected to deliver on-brand content within the budget, on time, every time.  Doing this successfully requires an organized workflow that takes the stress out from the creative process and primes your organization for scaling seamlessly as your business grows. Let’s look at what benefits a structured creative workflow can reap for your organization and how exactly your creatives can leverage it to help grow and scale your business.  What is a Creative Workflow? To put it simply, a creative workflow refers to the tools and processes an organization or a brand puts in place to streamline its operations and maximize performance. In the absence of a structured workflow, your creatives are left fending for themselves, with production and collaboration taking place separately.  The most fundamental reason for you to implement a standardized creative workflow is to take the uncertainty out of the creative process and make your team work as a whole. Studies show that 51% of creatives end up wasting time and resources duplicating assets. Moreover, they spend, on average, 16 hours a week on operational, non-creative tasks.  As your organization grows and needs to scale effectively, a standardized creative workflow is essential to make that change happen. Why Do You Need an Organized Workflow? Brands are facing more competition than ever before and need to tackle a host of challenges, as a result. Unprecedented demand for creative assets: With the explosion of social media and the number of consumer touchpoints increasing rapidly, brands require top-notch creative assets at their fingertips. Inefficient communication & collaboration: Studies show that organizations lose, on average, $62.4 million per year due to poor communication. Countless hours wasted on emails and disjointed messaging tools can be better spent on creative work if a structured workflow is in place. Brand Inconsistency: The bigger your organization gets, the more complex managing your processes and creative assets becomes. This creates the perfect storm for accidental brand inconsistency due to unstandardized assets being shared and distributed by your creatives.  These inefficiencies stem from the lack of proper tools and processes that can make life easier for your organization’s creative workforce. When your team is not wasting precious hours doing guesswork on ambiguous briefs or duplicating assets, it automatically translates to more time being spent on actual, creative output.  Benefits of an Optimized Creative Workflow A creative workflow, tailored to your organization, and having the buy-in from the leadership and the creative team as a whole, is bound to generate tangible and intangible benefits for your business. Not only does it set the stage for scalability, but it also revamps your entire creative process for the better. Integrated Production: Seamless integration with all your favorite tools ensures your creatives can work on a single platform. For example, globaledit’s marketplace integrations make it super easy to connect to popular tools like Photoshop, Slack and Asana. Effortless collaboration: Having a standardized process for creative briefs, editing, and asset sharing makes collaboration a breeze. For example, Markup Editor lets your team comment directly on assets and collectively edit and approve them. Enhanced Productivity: Your creatives get to work in a stress-free environment without wasting time on operational tasks. This leads to more projects being completed on time and within the budget.  Brand Consistency: Your branding is how your audience recognizes you and thus, it needs to be treated with the utmost care. Standardized asset management practices ensure that everything that goes out is always on point.  Leverage the Power of Organized Creative Workflow It’s no longer an option to have an optimized creative workflow in place. The alternative is creative obsolescence. With AI, automation, and newer cutting-edge technologies playing a major role in creative operations, you need to be at the top of your game. Request a demo with us today to discover how you can unlock scalable and forward-looking creative workflows.  

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.

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.  

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

  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!

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.   “

With the latest release of Color Labels, you can assign your own unique purpose to making ratings or keeping your workflow organized. We have put together a short video guide to introduce you to color labels and show you just how easy it is to implement this new feature in GLOBALedit. GLOBALedit – Tutorial – Color Labels from Industrial Color on Vimeo. Stay tuned to our blog as we roll out a series of new video tutorials over the next several weeks. Send requests for any support videos you’d like to see at support@globaledit.com. “

Did you know that you can throttle down your Aspera Connect transfers to prioritize time sensitive materials? You can easily prioritize multiple transfers by changing the transfer rate and slowing down less time sensitive files. To do this, click the graph icon located to the right of the transfer bar to bring up the more detailed Transfer Monitor. Next, slide the bar up and down to select the desired speed you would like the transfer to perform at. Remember you can only throttle the transfer speed to a setting lower than your current connection; you cannot make the transfer faster than your connection will allow. Sometimes, Aspera defaults to a limited transfer speed of 45 Mbps. If your network allows, you can increase this by going through the menu bar, Aspera Connect > Preferences > Bandwidth > Connection drop down menu.   Check out our support site for more details on using Aspera with GLOBALedit. “

Sometimes, it’s hard to describe where to find something. It’s even harder when you need to be very specific to be functional. So – Anthony, our Los Angeles based GLOBALedit Account Manager, made this neat graphic to describe the new user interface of V4. “

Aspera is an easy-to-install web browser plug-in that powers high-speed uploads and downloads, compatible with most standard browsers. We can’t recommend it enough for your workflow using GLOBALedit. Top 10 Reasons to Love Aspera It’s Free. Shall I go on? Yes… Fast. The high speed transfer is the best way to upload assets and the only way to upload entire folders into GLOBALedit. Security you can trust. Rest better knowing Aspera has a high level security protocol. Aspera provides complete built-in security without compromising transfer speed. With conventional file transfer protocols, security, monitoring, and logging are deferred to external systems. No specialized hardware is required for implementation. It’s one simple lightweight download. It will automatically resume partial or failed transfers. Efficiency for transferring large set of small files. *For Example, a photographer in New Zealand can send one thousand 2MB files to a retoucher in NY with an effective transfer speed of 155 Mbps. Aspera finds and fills all unclaimed bandwidth to provide stable and perfectly efficient transfer. The largest enterprise level companies, studios, media outlets, telecommunication operators, sports leagues and government agencies rely on Aspera to transport their highly valuable digital assets. Some move excess of one terabyte per day! Transfer is independent of network delays. Luke, VP of Motivation & Inspiration  *Source: http://www.asperasoft.com/ To learn more about using Aspera with GLOBALedit, check out his handy article from our Support Site. Download Aspera Plug-In here. Some companies or organizations have a firewall that prevents the high speed connection from occurring. To make the connection possible you or your IT department need to open the following ports: ? TCP – Port 22 ? UDP – Port 33001 – 33022 “

We have a new support site! Stay updated with announcements, learn more about how to use the system to fit your needs, get technical support that you can check up on, and submit feature requests at support.globaledit.com or by emailing us at support@globaledit.com Peruse the knowledge base, share question and comments with the community, and check your existing requests by signing up as a user in our support center. If you can’t find what you are looking for, you can submit a request and we will get back to you as soon as possible. You can do this by visiting support.globaledit.com and clicking ‘Submit Request’ at the top of the page. If you have already communicated with our support staff, you are already registered. By creating a login and password, you can login to our support site to check your existing requests. When submitting a request, please be sure to include as much information as possible. This will greatly help to expedite our ability to answer your questions and solve any problems. Once you’ve submitted your request, we will send you a welcome email asking you to verify your email address and sign up with a password so that you can continue to visit the site and check on your requests. We’ve made submitting requests fast and easy so you can be on your way in no time. Likewise, you can always send us an email at support@globaledit.com and we will be with you shortly. “

In the new version of GLOBALedit you can make ratings on multiple images. Use the shift or command key to select multiple images or select all by using (command + A on Mac), then click your desired rating from the top toolbar. By selecting two or more images, a ‘Select All’ button will  appear next to the number of items selected for you to select all on a Windows machine. Likewise, you can multi-un-select asset ratings by doing the same thing. Making edits just got a little bit easier. Visit our GLOBALedit Support Center for more workflow tips and information. “

We made downloading a whole lot easier by putting it in GLOBALedit‘s main window. Once you select ‘Download’ you will see a list of available assets for you to download. Here you can choose which file to download by clicking the download icon. You can also select an image, click the ‘Options Icon’ in the top right of the preview window, and select download. Or, select the ‘Options Icon’ directly on the image in Grid or List view and choose download. In order to download multiple images you will need to first add the images to a Lightbox and then select ‘Download All’. To read more about downloading images, please visit our brand new support site for more information. “

When shooting your images through CaptureOne, you can seamlessly integrate your workflow with GLOBALedit to preserve your ratings and metadata and share with your creative production team. Use CaptureOne to apply Star ratings and metadata when shooting on set. When setting up your CaptureOne recipe, click “Advanced” and make sure to check the “Include Ratings and Color Tags” box. This will ensure your ratings and metadata will be included in the outputted JPGs.   When you upload these JPGs to GLOBALedit, the Star ratings will be reflected in the Library, and you can view and further edit your metadata in the Metadata Editor. Per standard digital capture workflows, you can also use the plus (+) sign to indicate Star ratings. Any file that has 1 to 5 plus signs at the beginning of the filename to indicate an on-set select will populate the corresponding Star rating in GLOBALedit. Learn more about the new CaptureOne Pro 6 and other industry-standard photography tools from PhaseOne. “

When a Lightbox is created, an expiration date can be set so that after that date, the recipients of that Lightbox will no longer have access. A frequently asked question is, “How do I extend a Lightbox after it has expired?”. Only the user that originally created the Lightbox can extend expiration dates. Log in to your GLOBALedit account and go to Lightboxes. Select the Lightbox you wish to extend, click the options drop-down gear that appears and select View Lightbox Users. This will bring up a list of Lightbox users and information about the Lightbox. Find the user(s) you wish to extend the Lightbox for and click Edit under the Permissions column. Click in the blank field under Lightbox Options to set a new expiration date and click Update Permissions. Do you have questions you would like answered in the blog? Email us at support@globaledit.com. “

Once you’ve set up your file directory and users on FileSociety, it’s really easy to give your users access to the files and folders that they need. Here are a few ways you can do this: Drag the user’s name onto the file or folder you want them to access (this will automatically grant them the ability to both upload and download) Conversely, drag the file or folder onto the user’s name (both upload and download access will be given here as well) Click the file or folder, and then click the upload, download, or link icon to give access as needed. The link icon will give both upload and download access. To see what a user can access, click the “Show user library…” drop-down list and choose the user’s name. This will show you that user’s library. For any additional questions on this or any other features, visit our support site or contact us.

Complicated file and folder names can create unexpected problems or errors. When uploading to GLOBALedit or FileSociety, or when downloading files or lightboxes, there are some best practices you can follow: Avoid illegal characters: The following characters should not be used for names because they may cause file transfer errors or failures:  /     ”   :   ‘   ?   >   <   &   *   | Avoid very long file names: Most systems limit to 256 characters or less. Try to keep your file and folder names short. Avoid blank spaces at the end of names: Do not leave a space at the end of the name. This can cause Aspera to skip over this item for transfer. If you receive an error message of a failed transfer check for the above characters or an end space and remove them, then try the transfer again with the renamed files or folders. It’s best to keep your names simple and straightforward not just for GLOBALedit, FileSociety, and Aspera, but for all systems and sites. If you have any questions you would like answered on the blog, please email us at support@globaledit.com.

Users will often upload a job to GLOBALedit but then not be able to see the job in their library. In order for a job to be accessible through My Library, the job first needs to be assigned to that user. To assign a job to a user after it has been uploaded, simply go the Administrator side of your account and select Users – Assign Job to User. Here type in the job name, a folder within that job if you only want to assign specific folders within a job, the user name, the user role and an expiration date if applicable. You can also chose whether you want to notify that user that the job has been assigned to them. Then select Assign. Now just go to the User side and select My Library and you will see your job. If you have GLOBALedit questions you would like answered on the blog email us at support@globaledit.com “

Users often ask us how to create contact sheets to save to their desktops and print. With our latest updates, we have made the process quick and easy. Open up Job Collection Panel and select the lightbox you would like to make a contact sheet from. Please note that contact sheets can only be made from lightboxes so if you want to make a contact sheet of a specific shot folder you just have to send the assets in that folder to a lightbox. Then, select Contact Sheets in the Tools drop down menu on the top right-hand side of your screen. Here, you can customize the format and layout of your contact sheet. Once you@f29ve set up your contact sheet, simply select Create Contact Sheet. You will then receive an email once your contact sheet is ready to download. You can access your items ready for download in the Downloads tab. Do you have GLOBALedit questions you would like answered on the blog@f30 If so, email us at support@globaledit.com

A frequent question that comes from users downloading from lightboxes is why there are no downloads available to them when they try to download images. Users will see the message below when trying to download an entire lightbox by selecting Download All when they weren’t given permissions to download files. These messages indicate that the sender of the lightbox did not give the recipient permissions to download any file. When setting up the lightbox, the sender selected the No Files option In Download Permissions. Lightbox owners can customize what types of files they would like the recipients to be able to download by selecting either Low res only, Download any file or they can choose specific file types to allow by selecting Custom. To change the download permissions for a lightbox that was already sent out, the sender just needs to roll over the lightbox in their lightbox list and select View Lightbox Users. From there, they can select the Edit button under Permissions for that user and select which file types they would like to give the recipient permissions to download. If you have GLOBALedit questions you would like answered on the blog email us at support@globaledit.com

One of the questions we are frequently asked by users is how to reset or retrieve their passwords. Once you are logged in and want to change your password, just go to Settings in the top right of the page after you log in. Click on Password and then type in your current password and then create a new password which you will have to enter twice. Just click on the Update button when you are done. If you have forgotten your password, you can easily retrieve it by selecting @f23Forgot your password@f24@f25 under the Log In button on the GLOBALedit sign in page. You will then be emailed a link to create a new password. Do you have questions you would like answered on the blog@f26 If so, email us at support@globaledit.com

The Globaledit iPad App can be used to instantly communicate between creative executives and their production team from any location. Users can rate assets and enter notes that are immediately available to other iPad App users and users of the Globaledit web application. The iPad app is a useful way for users who are often traveling and on the go to work and communicate with users back at the office. To create a gallery, go to Manage ? Galleries and select either a lightbox or folder from your library. You can then configure the gallery name, kill percentage or approval ratings, expiration date, watermarking and notes. Senders have the option of sending the same gallery to multiple recipients, which allows users to collaborate on the same assets instantly and see each other?s ratings or they can send the same content to multiple users in individual galleries so that users cannot see each other?s activities. Type the recipients name in the Recipients field (they must have a Globaledit account) and then configure the email subject, message and any other recipients that you would like copied on this email. The gallery recipients can then view the gallery through any internet browser or can login to the Globaledit iPad app to view and edit their galleries instantly from any location with internet access. For users with the iPad app installed viewing their notification email on the iPad, the link will take them directly to the App. To download your galleries, touch the gallery to start the download. Simply touch a gallery again to open it up and begin editing. To approve an image, select the image and then touch the Approve button. This rating will be instantly saved on the system and be available to any user with access to this asset. To make a note, select the image and then select the notes icon. Touch the Add a note button to write your note. Select Save to save your note. This note will be instantly visible on Globaledit to any user with access to the asset. The other user who was sent this gallery will see the ratings and notes made to the gallery by the first user.  The second user can then go in and make additional notes and ratings in response. These ratings and notes will be instantly reflected on Globaledit and the system will indicate who approved which assets and who made each note. For more information on using the Globaledit iPad app, watch the support video below: For a fun demo of Globaledit iPad app features, watch the marketing video below: Visit our support wiki page on the Globaledit iPad App here for specific workflow information. “

There are several new lightbox features that can make sharing and collaborating on lightboxes easier and more efficient. OPTIONS Users can now see all their lightbox options in once place simply by rolling over the lightbox name and opening the dropdown menu. This menu gives you the following options: Share: share the lightbox with others Download All: download all the images in the lightbox View Properties: view properties such as who the lightbox owner is, when it was created, if there are any notes associated with it and to see a list of the files in the lightbox View Lightbox Users: see who are other viewers of the lightbox Move To: move the lightbox to a new group Delete: delete the lightbox SHARING AND COMMENTING The new comments feature is a useful way of collaborating and making notes on a project as a team. It enables the team to have an ongoing conversation about the job as a whole in addition to specific notes on individual assets. The bottom of the screen shows the lightbox comment box. You can maximize or minimize the box by clicking the title of the comment box. Comments are now saved with a time stamp so you can see when users posted their comments. Lightbox senders have the ability to change a user@f2s permission after a lightbox has already been sent out.  This feature is handy if you didn@f3t give the correct permissions to a user when sending out the lightbox or if the permissions need to change. You can share the lightbox by selecting @f4Invite Others@f5 in the comment box or by rolling over the lightbox and selecting @f6Share.@f7 To change a user@f8s permissions after a lightbox has been sent out, simply click Lightbox Users in the comment box and adjust as needed. To learn more about working with lightboxes you can go to our Lightbox Support page here. “

Industrial Color Software and IO Integration hosted an interactive Lunch & Learn workshop in our New York City office on Thursday, February 10, 2011. Aaron Holm, Industrial Color Software’s VP of Development, discussed the changes in technology currently underway in creative production and gave a full demonstration of Globaledit’s tools. Following the presentation, attendees were given the opportunity to break out into small groups to work one on one with the Globaledit account management team. During these short sessions, guests learned about Globaledit’s features and workflow options. Below is the full Globaledit presentation that was shown at the event: To learn more about Globaledit and its features visit https://www.globaledit.com. Thank you to all that were a part of the event and special recognition to IO Integration for their sponsorship. To view more photos from the event and see the beautiful views from our Tribeca office check out our gallery on Facebook here.

GLOBALedit allows you to manage your workflow more efficiently with the support of video by providing you with the same easy-to-use tools you have already been using to manage your image content. Simply upload your hi-res videos using the Library Manager and the system will automatically encode and process out a lower-res, web-optimized version that you can view instantly. Work with image and video content side by side. Through your Library Manager or Image Editor you can make edits, send videos through lightboxes, apply metadata, and provide access to download videos. GLOBALedit Approval Galleries are extremely helpful for film production, whether it is for a TV show, movie, or advertising campaign. You can send out dailies for approval from talent, publicists, and executives while eliminating the need for creating and distributing discs or hard drives. To create an Approval Gallery, navigate to Manage > Galleries. Click “Create a New Gallery,” where you can choose either a lightbox or a folder from your library – even an entire job. You can allow the recipient to either Approve or Kill images (depending on your workflow) and specify expiration dates and kill percentages. You can monitor the progress of these approval galleries, as well as view edit ratings instantly updated in your library. For more information on how to manage your workflow please visit our SupportWiki or contact us at support@globaledit.com.  Stay tuned for future tips and tricks that can help streamline your workflow.

Installing Aspera Connect is now easier than ever before! There are no more security hassles or restarting your web browser to install the latest high-speed transfer plug-in from Aspera. This is exciting news for users who do not have administrative privileges on their computers and are required to request permission to install new software, as they will be able to upgrade and download Aspera without having to go through this time-consuming installation process. The new downloading method works through a Java applet installer. In order to install Aspera Connect via applet you must have Java enabled on your browser, which most browsers have enabled automatically. With the new Aspera Connect installation web site, even users who manually installed the program can now automatically upgrade to the latest version via the applet. Another feature of the upgrade is that users can now check if they have the latest version installed by simply visiting the download page. Users also no longer have to select which operating system they use when downloading as the correct version is auto-detected when installing. To see which version of Aspera Connect you currently have installed and to automatically upgrade to the latest version here: http://www.asperasoft.com/download_connect/ “

With the latest release of GLOBALedit, managing your workflow is made easier with new lightbox features. Organize your lightboxes into groups, quickly download all your images with a click of a button, and generate professional, print-ready contact sheets.  

GLOBALedit allows you to manage your workflow more efficiently with the support of video by providing you with the same easy-to-use tools you have already been using to manage your image content. Simply upload your hi-res videos using the Library Manager and the system will automatically encode and process out a lower-res, web-optimized version that you can view instantly. Work with image and video content side by side. Through your Library Manager or Image Editor you can make edits, send videos through lightboxes, apply metadata, and provide access to download videos. GLOBALedit Approval Galleries are extremely helpful for film production, whether it is for a TV show, movie, or advertising campaign. You can send out dailies for approval from talent, publicists, and executives while eliminating the need for creating and distributing discs or hard drives. To create an Approval Gallery, navigate to Manage > Galleries. Click “Create a New Gallery,” where you can choose either a lightbox or a folder from your library – even an entire job. You can allow the recipient to either Approve or Kill images (depending on your workflow) and specify expiration dates and kill percentages. You can monitor the progress of these approval galleries, as well as view edit ratings instantly updated in your library. For more information on how to manage your workflow please visit our SupportWiki or contact us at support@globaledit.com.  Stay tuned for future tips and tricks that can help streamline your workflow.

With the latest release of GLOBALedit, managing your workflow is made simpler with the support of video. We have put together a brief overview that shows you just how easy it is to work with videos in GLOBALedit. Please stay tuned for future posts about tips and tricks that can help you cut time from your media production workflow.

According to marketers at Ad Age’s Digital Conference on April 13, team collaboration is considered the most important piece for an agencies success. The new life-skill of agencies,” according to Microsoft Chief Creative Officer Gayle Troberman, is “orchestration.” As media continues to converge and agencies are required to handle a lot more moving parts, it’s important for large teams to collaborate with each other in order to handle a range of functions. Please click here to read more about the discussion on agency collaboration. The spotlight for Ad Age’s Digital Conference this year was digital strategies and opportunities.  Held over the course of two days, April 13 and 14, marketers from companies like Proctor & Gamble, Microsoft, TBWA/Chiat/Day, Yahoo, and Ford, to name a few, came together to present their ideas and discuss current trends within the industry.  You can read more about the two day conference here “

Did you know that GLOBALedit allows you to upload more than just JPGs? Once you?ve made your selects or approvals, you can quickly and easily route high resolution files or other versions associated with your files. You can ingest and/or append a wide variety of files like: RAW files from most brand-name cameras (CR2s, DNGs, TIFFs, NEFs, etc) Adobe files (AIs, PSDs, INDDs, PDFs, etc.) You can also ingest any of the following file formats directly into GLOBALedit: JPG JPEG JP2 JPE PNG GIF TIFF TIF BMP PCX PSD CR2 EPS PDF DNG Using GLOBALedit to manage and distribute all your different files shortens your workflow turnaround.  Contact us for more information on how to speed up your image management workflow.

Did you know that you can quickly check a non-admin user’s access and privileges? Simply select the user from the ‘Show user library…’ drop down  The selected users library will be displayed in the library window below.

You can quickly notify a user about a file or folder already uploaded to your FileSociety account by ‘Right-Clicking’ on the item in the list and then selecting ‘Notify’. Add ‘Users’ and ‘Groups’ by selecting them from the list, then add a custom Email Subject and Message.   “

If your globaledit photo editing session needs to be cut short, or if you have an extra large batch of material to sort through, you can easily create a placeholder using the Bookmarks function to return to your work easily and save you time.  You can create and manage multiple Bookmarks in globaledit. While editing your images in the Image Editor, you can click on the Bookmarks icon in the middle of the top tool bar, under Actions. This will allow you to save your place and return at a later time to where you left off. Specify a name for your Bookmark, and click the Save button. Stay tuned for future postings for tips on how globaledit can help streamline your workflow. “

With globaledit’s drag-and-drop folder and file management feature, you can easily rearrange folders in your library as well as the file hierarchy of your jobs using Job Manager on the admin side or Library Manager on the user side. Simply click on an image or multi-select a group of images and drag them to the desired new location. The newly moved images will be reflected immediately. You can also move whole folders into or out of other folders within the same job. Note that currently, you cannot move folders or images between different jobs. Stay tuned for more information on this and other features or contact us at support@globaledit.com. “

Whenever a new job is posted to globaledit, there are often many different users who need access. For similar jobs that occur over a period of time, often the same users will need to be given access to each. globaledit allows you to create “User Groups”, making the process of assigning jobs to multiple repeat users easy. Here’s how:  On the Admin side, navigate to Users > User Groups and choose your account if necessary.   Click the plus sign button next to “User Groups”, enter a Group Name, and click “OK”.   Click the plus sign button next to “Users” to add a new user to this user group. Choose a user and his role, and then click “OK”. Repeat until all your desired users have been added.   When you assign job to users, just click the “To Group” under “Assign Job” and choose the user group you’d would like to give access to the job. All the users in the user group will be assigned. Stay tuned for future postings on other ways globaledit can help streamline your workflow. “

Make sure your images are picture perfect with globaledit’s Image Zoom tool.  Ideal for photographers, editors, retouchers, and others in the photoshoot production workflow, this new feature can greatly aid in making sure every detail is accounted for. globaledit’s Image Zoom is a full-resolution image zoom tool that progressively loads high resolution images for accurate focus checks and detailed image review. You can view the actual RAW, TIF, PSD, or other high resolution file on the web through globaledit the same way you would on your computer. Here’s how: Open up your image in the Image Editor. Click the Zoom magnifying glass icon to open the loupe/zoom tool in a new window. Slide the scroll bar to zoom in or out on the high res image, and move the red box on the preview icon to specify your desired view.

Often, photographers using globaledit will contact us asking how to deliver a bunch of high-res files to a client, an agency, or another member of their team. A recently developed feature of globaledit is the Lightning Box. An extension of the Lightbox, it allows the user to send a group of images to another user to download with one simple click. Here?s how: 1. Create a Lightbox of the images you want to send. For example, these can be all the selects from your recent shoot (use the Filter options). 2. Click the Email Lightbox option next to your lightbox. When filling out the requested fields, be sure to click the Enable Lightning Box checkbox to activate this function. You can choose what files you want to send (Original, TIFs, whatever is available). Be sure to specify an expiration date; it’s required. 3. Once the Lightning Box is ready, your recipient will receive an email notification. The user can go to the link provided and just click on the Download button under the top toolbar and above the images. The images will be downloaded in a neat package, sorted out by image type. For more information on Lightboxes, visit its support page: Lightboxes Support Stay tuned next week for other ways globaledit helps to streamline your workflow.