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HOW TO select your Canto package

HOW TO select your Canto package

by | May 3, 2019 | Canto SaaS, Digital Asset Management, HOW TO

Now that you have selected Canto as your DAM solution, how to pick the right configuration package for your needs. Are you worried about your storage needs – is 1TB enough? And how about the number of Users (administrators and contributors) – do you have many outside parties that contribute content?

Let’s start with storage.

 

The amount of storage

How much cloud storage do you really need? We see very few customers go past the 1TB. A great way to get an idea of how much storage you really need is to look at how much you’re currently using. It is also a good time to start cleaning up and re-organising your files and folders. Canto has inbuilt de-duplication which is really handy at helping you clean things up. Here are a few other things to consider when choosing the storage amount.

Type of data

Some types of files require much more space than others. Video files are the largest. Audio files rarely surpass 20GB. Images can vary in size and quality. Document files don’t take much space at all.

Archive

Any of your data that is not accessed frequently, is no longer in active use, and may not be needed in months, years, decades, is suitable for Cold Storage – a much cheaper option than the normal Hot Storage. The assets in Cold Storage can still be accessed, searched for, previewed, and requested for download, or moved back to the Hot Storage. More on the Canto Cold Storage here.

One of the major benefits besides security and offsite storage is the scalability of cloud storage. You can easily purchase more if needed.

Number of user licenses

The next big question in choosing the configuration is: how many user licenses do we need.

There are 3 types of users – Administrators, Contributors and Consumers.

There are 2 types of licenses – Users or Consumers.

Both Admin and Contributors (any combination) are grouped as user licenses, they distribute content to Consumers.

Administrators control your Canto account; they are business users (not IT). Contributors can upload content, add metadata, organise your library.

Do you have external agencies, photographers or other independent parties that contribute content to your library? If so – and they don’t need to have access to your Canto account – all they need is an Upload Link to upload the content to, and the Admin can then approve the content to be added to the Main Library. It is a much more controlled process, and it saves you money for getting additional user licenses.

 

I hope this article has been helpful in clarifying some things on the different package configurations of Canto SaaS DAM. There are custom configurations available, if necessary. Make sure you talk to databasics about your needs, we are happy to help.

Top 10 Canto Features 2018

Top 10 Canto Features 2018

by | Mar 20, 2019 | Canto SaaS, Digital Asset Management

Approaching the end of the first quarter of 2019, we are looking back at what great features Canto introduced in 2018. Besides the ever popular – ease of use, modern interface, free updates throughout the year, ease of content sharing and collaboration, and other popular features, the latest features continue to establish Canto as a strong player in the DAM market place.

The following features introduced in 2018, have our top votes.

 

Style Guides

Creating your brand style guide is now easier than ever with the introduction of Style Guide feature at the end of 2018. You can create public or private style guides to be shared with your team, partners or public. All you need to do is showcase your colours, typography, imagery and copy. See more in our blog HOW TO create a Style Guide.

Asset-level reporting

Are you interested to see how a particular asset is used? Admin can set up Usage History and Activity sections of a single asset. This information will then be visible in the asset information window.

 

WCAG 2.0 compatibility

This is a big win for Canto User Experience. The WCAG 2.0 compatibility makes Canto more accessible to people with disabilities. You can find the Keyboard shortcuts to help navigation here.

 

Drupal integration

Pull content from your Canto library directly into Drupal.

 

Amazon Translate and Set Your Preferred Language

Besides the powerful Amazon Translate feature that would translate the extracted document text for you right there inside Canto, each user can also set their own preferred language in Profile Settings.

 

Free API keys

Canto has made it easy to build an integration with the DAM using self-generated API keys.

Inbuilt CloudFront – Content Delivery Network

Canto now uses AWS CloudFront, a highly secure global content delivery network from Amazon that delivers content to almost anywhere in the world with low latency and high transfer speeds.

 

Add a note to specific area of an image

@mention in annotations

In the preview view, you can add a note or a comment to a specific area of an image.

@mention users

Set up self-registration for multiple Portals

If you’d like to setup self-registration for multiple portals at once, it’s now easy to do through Users & Groups Settings.

 

 

 

Expanded S3 Regions for Optimal Performance

Store your files in Sydney with this new AWS S3 location. Being closer to your files means faster upload and download speeds.

We chose these features based on what our customers ask for most frequently. That being said, we feel we need to mention a few other features that are frequently requested and are now part of your Canto DAMS:

  • Asset Request – distribute low resolution and/ or watermarked content, or send request for original
  • Edit Existing Keywords – easily edit existing keywords in the Configuration Options in Settings
  • Superzoom in full screen
  • Folders and Albums show Portal information – see in which Portals you can find the particular Folder or Album
  • Terms & Conditions viewable from Portals
  • Follow Folders – you can now follow Folders along with Albums
  • Updated reports page – all analytics on the same page
  • Easy access to My Uploads, My Collections, Portals and Workspaces – select them from the left pane.

 

There are many more features we could talk about. You can find the Release Notes in Canto Help Center.

What are your favourite Canto features? Let us know and we might write a blog about it!

 

Image Recognition and DAM

Image Recognition and DAM

by | Feb 8, 2019 | AI, Canto Cumulus, Digital Asset Management, Image Recognition

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been on top of everyone’s mind for the last couple of years – will it improve our lives, or will robots be soon taking over?  However, for DAM users it is hard to ignore the benefits of the image recognition (or more accurately – object recognition) and automatic image tagging technology in digital asset management. The most time-consuming (and – important) process in managing your digital assets is tagging your images with accurate metadata so they can be easily searched for and found.

 

What is Image Recognition?

According to Clarifai, one of the providers of this technology, Image Recognition “refers to a computer vision’s ability to identify the dominant subject in an image and apply the relevant “concept” or “tag”. This could be objects, places, people, words, and even actions.”

Simply said, image recognition picks out the central object in an image that the camera was focusing on.

 

What are the benefits?

  • Improved search results – with improved metadata quantity and quality by automatic object recognition and tagging, your search will be a breeze
  • Increased efficiency – the content is automatically uploaded with metadata, saving thousands of hours of manual work and frustration
  • Focus on core strengths – with the labour-intensive manual tagging out of the way, you team can now focus on their core strengths.

How does it work?

Select one or more assets from your collection, hit Run Auto-Tagging in your tool box.

auto-tagging

The tags are generated. Review, edit or delete tags.

tags

And you’re done.

 

Summary

For years customers have been asking if there is an easier way to add metadata to assets. AI has been around for years, however only now we believe the technology has finally reached the level of functionality to be useful in digital asset management. Would you like to save time and money? Learn more about this affordable technology and what can it do for you and your asset library. Contact databasics at info@databasics.com.au or call 1300 886 238.

Why Upgrade to Cumulus 11

Why Upgrade to Cumulus 11

by | Aug 5, 2018 | Canto Cumulus, Digital Asset Management

Have you jumped on the Cumulus 11 bandwagon? Not yet? Here is a summary of what you’re missing out on. For more detailed descriptions of features and enhancements please refer to the resources at the end.

Improved InDesign Client – now supports Adobe InDesign Creative Cloud 2018:

 

  • Select multiple assets from Cumulus at once using the common keystrokes
  • Selected multiple assets can be placed together in documents
  • Right-click on the file and view, modify, etc. that asset in the Cumulus Web Client with the new entry “Open in Cumulus”
  • New “Relink” function – replace any link or resource with an asset from Cumulus Catalog

Portals:

  • Customisation: a new lighter theme available out of the box
  • Transparency support
  • Playback for audio files
  • Static URLs for all main pages
  • Deep link functionality – to facilitate the integration of 3rdparty applications
  • Field labels in overview, search result pages, and the basket overlay
  • Controls for page navigation display on top of search results
  • Show asset relationships if desired, browse related assets
  • Configure the number of assets per page
  • Static URL for Upload Collections

Web Client:

  • Similarity search – detect visually similar files and potential duplicates
  • Define asset actions in toolbox for better workflows – send a sample workflow that supports the similarity search and handling of similar assets, add selected asset functions to workflow states
  • Asset navigation – navigate through list of files in details view, edit or preview modes with controls and keyboard shortcuts
  • Improved container browsing – Vertical Container Tree on the left side of the window
  • Audio playback
  • Support for native language environments: define a default language, auto-tagging in multiple languages, email notifications in multiple languages
  • Easily change your download collections
  • Select All – Deselect All function
  • New Crop Editor Tool to deliver proper renditions of the asset
  • Focus Area Cropping – a “region of interest” can be defined for images and PDFs. This region of interest is saved along with the asset’s metadata

Roboflow:

  • Better overview of workflows – toggle switch
  • New folder filter: combine “including” and “excluding” in a fresh folder filter
  • New action: call-external-script

Cumulus Office Connector (Please note this feature requires additional purchase):

  • Browse in and insert images directly from Cumulus into your Microsoft Word documents or PowerPoint presentations
  • Pull and insert PSD Photoshop files, when placing a PSD file into document a PNG file is generated by Office Connector

Image recognition (AI) and Auto-Tagging – this optional feature allows for all your images to be scanned and auto-tagged by Cumulus. These tags can be added to the metadata of the assets. Please note this feature requires additional purchase.

SharePoint Search Connector – search for Cumulus assets within the SharePoint search, view assets along with metadata and preview, save to SP Document library. Please note this feature requires additional purchase.

 

Useful resources

If you’ve fallen behind a couple of major releases here is what you’re missing from Cumulus 10and Cumulus 10.2

Wondering what does Cumulus Office Connector do? More here.

From Canto:

Cumulus 11 update

Cumulus 11.0.2 update

Cumulus 11.0.4

Cumulus 11.1

Canto Community

DAM for Business

DAM for Business

by | May 16, 2018 | Digital Asset Management

DAM is more than just a marketing solution to make your job easier

Imagine a single photo, taken by a freelance photographer, undergoing some initial retouching, uploaded to a client’s corporate network, reviewed, commented on and changed, all before being searched, retrieved, and used in a marketing campaign. Repeat that thousands of times.

DAM for engineers, architects, designers and photographers

Organisations in nearly every industry could benefit from adopting solutions that better promote the creation, organisation and distribution of content across enterprise.

Whether it is an employee, supervisor, subcontractor or client who is looking to access a blueprint or job site photograph, these assets can be readily available and easily accessible within a DAM to keep a project moving along at a productive pace.

DAM will not only allow end users to view files, such as CAD, product cut-sheets, digital photography, and others, but to also make necessary edits in a collaborative manner, especially when multiple parties are required to provide input on a project checkpoint.

It is hard to imagine a more fitting field for DAM than in a business segment where critical, collaborative files are constantly on the move throughout the network – an expansive web of devices and applications that now includes mobile elements.

DAM for marketers and brand managers

When you’re working with hundreds of graphics and logos, managing your organisation’s brand, and executing multiple marketing campaigns, quickly finding digital assets can be a challenge. Sharing your assets with others, including colleagues, partners, graphic designers, can be an even bigger issue.

How do you handle this torrent of creative assets? How do you manage an increasing number of stakeholders and their different requirements?

If you would like to talk to our team of DAM consultants, send us an email at info@databasics.com.au or call 1300 886 238

What Problems Can DAM Solve For Creative Agencies

What Problems Can DAM Solve For Creative Agencies

by | Jan 29, 2018 | Digital Asset Management

As a creative agency, are you spending long hours dealing with the logistics of getting your creative work to other people, getting it approved, converting files, etc.? All this taking time away from what you do best: CREATE…

Your life without DAM

A new product has been developed. A client sends a request for digital asset creation to the Idea team to create a concept, look and feel for the assets. The Advertiser, Concept Engineer and Designer work on the concept sending concept drafts back and forth between themselves.

“Who has the final concept version?”

“I think John has it.”

“John, do you have the final version?”

The idea/ concept is generated and sent via email to the Creation team. Photographer, writer and graphic designer begin work on the assets, along the way they employ a freelance videographer to shoot some product videos. The assets get emailed back and forth between Creation team and Freelancers for approval and collaboration.

“Wait a minute – I needed the image of the product in blue, not red.. can you change that, please?”

“I did. And I emailed it to you.”

“I can’t find it, can you please resend?”

The finished version gets emailed to Review team and Client for approval. Changes and improvement requests get emailed back to Creation team. A new version is emailed to Review team.

“Where is the latest version?”

“Was this version approved?”

“Why can’t I download the latest version?”

 

Final version is emailed to Production team. Product is being produced and the created marketing assets are being used. However, they would like to use the version 2 of the asset.

“Where do I find version 2?”

Manufacturer adds its logo and would like to set brand guidelines for using the assets.

“How do I make sure everyone follows our Brand Guidelines?”

“What about the copyright?”

“How can I control who sees and accesses these assets?”

“I would like this asset to expire in three months, how do I manage that?”

“Where is that high-resolution image?”

 

The assets go to Distribution team. Partner needs high-resolution image. “Could you please send me a high-resolution image?” Retailer adds a little message to the asset. If Employee wants to share an asset on social media he needs to download it on his computer first, no copyright, permissions applied.

Along the way, all versions of assets are stored in an archive (it could be a cloud storage service, a shared drive, a file server, or even an email inbox).  It is not organised nor controlled. If a Salesman needs a particular asset, he needs to contact someone at the Creation team who then contact the Idea team to locate the asset. If the asset cannot be located it needs to be created, going through the creation process again.

 

Your life with a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution

What is DAM?

 

It is a central repository that an organisation uses to manage, organise, search, edit, store, secure, and distribute its digital assets. Digital assets might be images, documents, video files, presentations, PDFs, audio files, and spreadsheets.

 

How DAM helps

 

With a digital asset management solution, you will have a tool to streamline your digital asset production processes – from idea to distribution, allowing your staff to concentrate on their main responsibilities.

 

You will save money by allowing your creative and marketing teams to focus on their projects instead of answering endless email requests.

 

DAM will increase your return on investment by repurposing already existing assets and eliminating lost files.

 

Improve organisational efficiency through a central, searchable repository for assets that support and power your marketing efforts.

 

In the end, a life without a DAM can end up being more costly than the investment in a DAM solution that controls asset permissions, asset ownership and usage controls.