Review by Susan Chambers
posted 03/05/06
For anyone who wants detailed, complete
information on organizing your photos and other digital files, "The
DAM Book - Digital Asset Management for Photographers" is for you.
The book’s author, Peter Krogh, goes through
the entire process of helping the reader choose what hardware would
be best for a photographer’s workflow, to the quantities of
information available in any digital asset program and how best to
use them. He also clearly illustrates how digital asset management
adds value your files.
Experienced computer users can pick and choose
which chapters would best help them, but for any computer novices,
the book shows all the ins and outs of managing files.
The book also has illustrations that show how
using keywords for photo management is a must. Krogh also provides
the reasons for and against making keywords too detailed - something
that, as a photojournalist, I struggle with frequently.
One thing to note is that Krogh deals
primarily with Adobe Photoshop and Bridge. He touches on other
applications, such as Extensis Portfolio, but uses Photoshop and
Bridge for all the examples. While I appreciate the universality of
Adobe’s products, users may choose another brand and giving some
practical examples of those may also be helpful to a broader range
of readers.
Krogh also suggests repeatedly that users
should convert their digital files to the DNG - digital negative -
format developed by Adobe for permanent storage.
"Adobe developed the DNG format to address the
drawbacks of using RAW files," Krogh says in the book. "DNG is an
openly documented file format that can contain the RAW image data,
plus lots of other useful stuff. You can convert your RAW files into
DNG files and be confident that you are putting them into a good
format for inclusion in a permanent archive."
While I can see how this makes sense, DNG
isn’t incorporated into all other digital asset management programs
- yet - and may leave some photographers behind. And though the DNG
format does likely have more staying power than the multiple kinds
of RAW formats, can anyone really look into the future and say with
any kind of certainty that it will be available years from now?
Regardless of whether photographers have
Photoshop and Bridge or another asset management program, the
information in "The DAM Book" will be helpful to anyone trying to
track all their files, now and into the future.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/dambk/index.html |
