SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT May 2017
We are announcing the winter 2017 publication of The DAM Book 3. Anyone who purchases a copy of the existing DAM Book will get a $15 coupon toward the purchase of the next edition. Read more in the blog post.
The DAM Book is the seminal guide to building and managing digital photography collections. It defines all the elements of the digital photography ecosystem, including storage hardware, file formats, metadata, software application types and workflow practices.
The DAM Book was first published in 2005 by O’Reilly Media. In the 2009 Second Edition, Peter Krogh updates his ground-breaking book on creating and managing digital photography collections. Peter guides you through the entire digital photography ecosystem, showing you how hardware, software, file formats and workflow practices can work together to keep your images safe, and to let you get the most from your pictures.
Compellingly presented in 492 full-color pages, The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers brings Peter’s understandable approach to a subject that can be technically intimidating. Krogh’s twenty years of experience in instructive visual storytelling make this material not only accessible, but compulsory reading for serious digital photographers and any others who need to manage photo collections.
The second edition has been almost entirely rewritten, updating the material for the changed technical landscape. Chapters were added that covered the use of Lightroom, as well as an entirely new chapter on backup and validation of image files. Peter also covers the use of GPS devices and software to geotag your images. The second edition is more than 40% longer than the first, and includes quite a few flowcharts and new illustrations. Printed below is the Table of Contents from the second edition of the book.
Available as a PDF for immediate download for $19.95.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1 A Digital Photography Ecosystem
The Digital Photography Ecosystem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
What Is Digital Asset Management?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
The Prime Directive, and Other Goals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
The Benefits of Sound Digital Asset Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Exploring Digital Asset Management Tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Rules of Sound Digital Asset Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Understanding the Data Lifecycle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Intelligent Imaging Technologies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Chapter 2 Non-destructive Image Editing
Parametric Image Editing: An Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
Advantages of Parametric Image Editing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Limitations of Parametric Image Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
DNG as a Parametric Image-Editing Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Working Non-destructively in Photoshop. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Chapter 3 Metadata
Metadata: An Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Classes of Metadata. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Ownership and Licensing Metadata. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Image Content Metadata. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Describing Images with Keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Prioritizing Images with Ratings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Grouping Images. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Metadata Schema. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Metadata Handling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Tagging Images with GPS Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 116
Chapter 4 Organizing and Naming Files and Folders
Organizing Your Image Files: An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Working File Directory Structure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Archive Directory Structure: An Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Archive Directory Structure: Making Buckets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . 141
The Fine Art of File Naming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . …. . . . 150
Chapter 5 Choosing Hardware for Image Storage
Choosing the Appropriate Storage Media. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . 160
Hard Drive 101. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. . . 165
Purchasing a Hard Drive. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . 175
Hard Drive Handling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . …. . . . 178
Drive Configurations: JBOD, RAID, Drobo, or NAS? . . . . . . . . . . . .. 180
Other Storage Media. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . … . . . . 184
Media Cards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ….. . .. . . . . . 188
Network. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Monitors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Uninterruptible Power Supplies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . 194
System Configurations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Chapter 6 Backing Up and Validating Data
Primary vs. Backups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Understanding Threats to Your Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Backup Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Additional Protections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
Backup Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Protecting Data Throughout the Data Lifecycle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Putting It All Together: Backup Configurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
Data Validation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
Restoration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Chapter 7 Ingestion Workflow
Image Ingestion: Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
Ingestion with Lightroom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Ingestion with ImageIngesterPro. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
Chapter 8 Working Files Management
Working Files Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
Raw File Workflow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
Reworking Archived Images. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
File Handling Workflow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Chapter 9 Lightroom Workflow
Lightroom Basics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Setting Up Lightroom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
Sample Lightroom Workflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
Chapter 10 Bridge/ACR Workflow
Bridge/ACR and Expression Media: A Great Combination. . . . . . . . . . 359
Setting Up Bridge and ACR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
Sample Bridge/ACR Workflow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Chapter 11 Cataloging Strategies
Choosing Your Software. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
Managing Your Catalogs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
Expression Media Basics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
Expression Media Workflow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
Archive Restoration and Validation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
Chapter 12 Data Migration
Data Migration Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
Migrating from One Drive to Another. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
Migrating from One Metadata Field to Another. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
Migrating File Names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ….. . . . . . . . 441
Converting Legacy Camera Originals to DNG. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .441
Deduping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
Migrating Disorganized Digital Files to an Organized
Archive Structure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
Migrating from Film to Digital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
First Edition table of Contents
(For those who want to compare)
Chapter 1: What is all this DAM stuff?
It’s like Color Management, Only Different
An Overview of the DAM System
Understanding Digital Asset Management Software
Benefits of the DNG Format and Digital Asset Management of Raw Files
The Benefits of Sound Digital Asset Management
Chapter 2: Metadata
Types of Metadata
Applying Ratings, Groupings and Keywords
Storing Metadata
Chapter 3: Creating the Digital Archive Part 1: The Information Structure
The Archive: An Overview
Information Structure
Directory Structure: Enter the Bucket Brigade
The Fine Art of File Naming
Chapter 4: Creating the Digital Archive Part 2: Hardware Configurations
My Rig
Choosing a storage medium
Choosing Your Hardware
How Safe is Safe? Backing Up Your Archive
Chapter 5: Setting up Bridge
What Exactly is Bridge?
Setting Up Bridge Preferences
The Bridge Menus
Setting up Keywords in Bridge
Using Bridge’s Contextual Menus
Chapter 6: The Editing Workflow
Workflow Checklist
Phase I: Acquire Images
Phase 2: Preparing Images in Bridge
Phase 3: Create the DNG files Catalog
Chapter 7: Using Cataloging Software
Evaluating Software
The DAM interface
Using DAM software to Perform Work on Images
Managing the Archive
Other DAM Stuff
Case Studies
Chapter 8: Derivative Files
What is a Derivative File?
Reasons to Make Derivative Files
Conversion Options
Cataloging Strategies: What to Keep
Chapter 9: Strategies for Successful File Migration
Overview of the Migration Process
Migration of disorganized digital files into an organized Information Structure
Migration from Film to Digital
File format migration (RAW to DNG)
Migration from one storage medium to another
OS/Software Migration