It is with great pleasure that we can announce the release of the full digital version of The DAM Book 3.0. In the nine years since the last version was published, our use of visual media has become marked by increasing connectivity – between images, people, data, applications and web services. The new book helps you understand this connectivity and how to evaluate which tools are right for you.
The change in covers between TDB2 and TDB3 help to illustrate the differences between the versions. In 2009, it was fine to think about collection management as “a big ball of my stuff.” In our connected world, that’s not enough. Your image collection will connect to other people, images, services, applications, ideas and information. You will also probably have additional satellite collections on other devices or services. And, yes, like Tinkertoys, these connections often plug into each other in standardized ways.
In the new book, I’ve laid out the elements of the connected media ecosystem. We’re seeing connection and integration in all aspects of the way we make and use images. Connectivity is often born into an image at the moment of capture, and increases as your images move through the lifecycle. Almost everything that hosts or touches your images has some type of connection.
The new world of cloud and mobile workflow are impacting every part of the way we manage and make use of images. File formats, storage, backup and metadata are evolving to incorporate these new capabilities. I’ve rewritten the book from the ground-up so that connectivity is built in to each topic.
Of course, connectivity is not the only change that has come to digital media over the last nine years. The use and importance of photography has expanded dramatically, and anyone who wants to understand how visual media works can find important context in this book.