Daminion has adopted a new logotype
| July 21st, 2010 | by Murat |
Daminion is adopting a new logotype. We asked our logotype designers to incorporate a sense of full control, authority and reliability into the new design—those things that characterize Daminion. After several weeks of searching, we selected the logotype you see below; it now adorns the headlines of this blog and the Daminion site.
Below are some of the finalists
 4 Comments |
Mac vs PC. What professional photographers prefer?
| July 19th, 2010 | by Murat |
Are you a Mac or a PC? The answer depends on many factors including your job. Many designers prefer Macs, while Architects and Engineers prefer PC. What about Photographers?
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Supported media and metadata formats
| June 18th, 2010 | by Murat |
Daminion supports a huge number of media formats including raster, vector and camera raw images, video, music and PDF format. Later we’ll add support for Microsoft Office, Adobe InDesign, Autodesk AutoCAD formats…
Additional media formats and metadata can be added by third-party developers as new MediaProcessors (MediaProcessor API will be available soon).
Below is the table of media formats and the corresponding metadata supported by the current Daminion version
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Image Processor
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| Format | Type | Image | EXIF | IPTC IMV | XMP |
| JPEG | Image | r | rw | rw | rw |
| TIFF | Image | r | rw | rw | rw |
| PSD | Image | r | – | – | rw |
| GIF | Image | r | – | – | rw |
| PNG | Image | r | – | – | rw |
| JPEG 2000 | Image | r | r | – | rw |
| BMP | Image | r | – | – | – |
| ICO | Image | r | – | – | – |
| TGA | Image | r | – | – | – |
| DCX | Image | – | – | – | – |
| Portable pixmap | Image | – | – | – | – |
| Portable graymap | Image | – | – | – | – |
| Portable bitmap | Image | – | – | – | – |
| Adobe DNG | Camera RAW | r | rw | rw | rw |
| Canon CR2 | Camera RAW | r | rw | rw | rw |
| Nikon NEF | Camera RAW | r | rw | rw | rw |
| Konica-Minolta MRW | Camera RAW | r | rw | rw | rw |
| Olympus ORF | Camera RAW | r | rw | rw | rw |
| Pentax PEF | Camera RAW | r | rw | rw | rw |
| Sinar CS1 | Camera RAW | r | rw | rw | rw |
| Sony Alpha ARW | Camera RAW | r | rw | rw | rw |
| Panasonic RAW | Camera RAW | r | rw | rw | rw |
| FujiFilm RAF | Camera RAW | r | rw | rw | rw |
| Creo Leaf Mosaic | Camera RAW | r | rw | rw | rw |
| Canon CRW | Camera RAW | r | r | r | r |
| Kodak DCR | Camera RAW | r | r | r | r |
| Sony SRF | Camera RAW | r | r | r | r |
| Sigma X3F | Camera RAW | r | r | r | r |
| Kodak KDC | Camera RAW | r | r | r | r |
| Kodak K25 | Camera RAW | r | r | r | r |
| Sony SR2 | Camera RAW | r | r | r | r |
| Casio BAY | Camera RAW | – | – | – | – |
| Nucore BMQ | Camera RAW | – | – | – | – |
| Casio CAM | Camera RAW | – | – | – | – |
| Kodak DC2 | Camera RAW | – | – | – | – |
| PS | Vector | r | – | – | rw |
| EPS | Vector | rw | – | rw | rw |
| WMF | Vector | – | – | – | – |
| EMF | Vector | – | – | – | – |
| CUR | Image | – | – | – | – |
| Music Processor | ||||
| Format | Type | Music | ||
| MP3 | Music | rw | ||
| OGG | Music | rw | ||
| WAV | Music | rw | ||
| Monkey”s APE | Music | rw | ||
| ADTS AAC | Music | rw | ||
| Apple”s AIFF | Music | rw | ||
| Xiph”s Flac | Music | rw | ||
| MusePack | Music | rw | ||
| MPEG Audio | Music | rw | ||
| WavPack | Music | rw | ||
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PDFProcessor
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| Format | Type | XMP | ||
| Adobe® PDF | Text | r | rw | |
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VideoProcessor
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| Format | Type | Video | XMP | |
| QuickTime MOV | Video | rw | rw | |
| Windows Media | Video | rw | rw | |
| AVI, DIVX | Video | rw | rw | |
| 3GP | Video | rw | – | |
| Flash Video | Video | rw | rw | |
| MPEG 1-2 | Video | rw | rw | |
| MPEG 4 | Video | rw | rw | |
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VideoProcessor
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| Format | Type | Video | XMP | |
| QuickTime MOV | Video | rw | rw | |
| Windows Media | Video | rw | rw | |
| AVI, DIVX | Video | rw | rw | |
| 3GP | Video | rw | – | |
| Flash Video | Video | rw | rw | |
| MPEG 1-2 | Video | rw | rw | |
| MPEG 4 | Video | rw | rw | |
| 4 Comments |
Using tags to classify the media library quickly
| June 02nd, 2010 | by Murat |
It’s impossible to avoid human input when classifying media documents. It’s possible for text and audio files, but not for images and videos. Daminion can extract all the technical information from the files, but you will need to manually describe the content of your pictures and videos:
- Who is showing in a picture
- What is showing in a picture
- Where was picture taken (This can be partially solved by using GPS info)
- What place is shown in a picture?
- What event is depicted in the picture?
- Who are the document creators (third-party images often come with some copyright info on IPTC that can be easily detected and imported by Daminion)
Using tags drastically reduces the time needed to classify documents. Daminion includes about 30 predefined tags that can be shown on the tag panel; that is usually enough in most cases. Some tags examples are: Creation Date/time, File Folder, Author, People, Event, Keywords, Categories, Featured Place, Rating, Color Label, Camera, Lens, and Media Format. A bit later, we’ll add the ability to create and assign custom tags. For example, tags for a Construction Company could be: Device, Department, System, and Chassis.
| Tags can be organized with no limitations on nesting depth! You can create highly complex category structures or simple ones. It is up to you and depends entirely on your requirements and not on any program limitations. Most importantly, your tags can be saved to XMP preserving the hierarchy. Any program that understands XMP and hierarchical tags can restore your tag structure. |  |
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Existing tags can be assigned to Documents by dragging and dropping. New keywords are created from the context menu and you can add multiple keywords at once, separated by commas. Some system tags like Rating, Media Format, Camera, and Folder cannot be changed. |
The “Shown Place” tag is composite and contains 4 named levels:*
Each level is mapped to separate IPTC/XMP metadata field. * We’ll probably add a 5th level named “Region” according to XMP specification. |
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Below is the prototype of the Quick Assigner window that is not yet implemented. It will provide quick access to recently assigned tags.
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| 2 Comments |
Using tags for Advance Searches
| May 18th, 2010 | by Murat |
Daminion Tags help to quickly identify and find your documents and media files
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Area #1 allows for creating, changing, deleting, moving and assigning tags to files. Area #2 helps to perform complex search requests and quickly locates necessary documents with only a few clicks. |
I’ll write about classification of tags on the next post. Now I’ll show you how quick and easy it is to compose complex search requests with the following sample:
Assume that you work for a design company specializing in architecture and landscape design. And you want to find “summer house” buildings that were built in London, Bristol or Oxford, and that have both “brick” and “metal,” but not “wood“.
Open a catalog and type in the “summer house” phrase in the search box. This word phrase might result in a large number of files. Let’s assume that you found 7,000 files about summer houses from our 120,000 file media library. So, you must further refine your search.
Check the necessary keywords on a Tags panel (Area #2) by holding your Ctrl key down.
| Once you select the second keyword, the “AND” label will appear. This means that only buildings that have both “brick” AND “metal” will be located. Click on that label from the context menu and change it to “OR.” Now Daminion will find buildings that have either brick OR metal. |  |
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Let’s exclude the wood buildings from the result. If you click and hold the left mouse button on the “Wood” tag in area #2 the small menu will appear (see screenshot). Now select the “Hide from the current set” menu option and all the wood buildings will be excluded from our request. |
| Now you can add the city filter to your request. For some tags, you can use the “OR” option only (as in the case of the “Shown Place” tag, because usually only one location is shown on an image, according to the XMP specification). |  |
If you additionally select the following extra tags:
- Color Label tag: “Approved”
- Media Format tag: “DWG”
Then the program will find only the approved AutoCAD projects.
That’s it! The necessary documents were found in only a few clicks and a few seconds.
But this is not the end: Your search requests can be refined even more precisely by the Advanced Search option and saved as Smart Tags for future usage.
Finally, to reset your filter, click on the “Show All” button near the search textbox.
| 5 Comments |
Tags are the easy way to classify and locate your media files. Multiple tags can be assigned to a single file without taking up additional space on your hard drive.
 “Camera Lens” |
 “Rating” and “Color Label” |
The main benefit of tags in Daminion, over the categories in PicaJet, is that separate metadata mapping is employed for different tags.
For instance, once a user assigns Rating 4 to a file, it will immediately be written directly into the file as EXIF and XMP metadata (XMP:MSPhotoRating, XMP:Rating, EXIF:Rating, etc). Daminion follows MWG specification rules here.
Any application (for example, Windows Explorer) that understands metadata, will see your changes.
View changed “Rating” by Windows Explorer
Some of the Tag Mapping Rules:
Author tag mapping:
- IPTC ByLine
- XMP DC:Creator
- EXIF Artist
- EXIF XPAuthor
- XMP TIFF:Artist
Once you’ve changed the Author tag of an asset, it will be written into the file’s metadata. That means that all file information will travel along with your file – if you copy or move it.
People tag mapping:
- IPTC Contact
- XMP Iptc4xmpExt:PersonInImage
Copyright tag mapping:
- IPTC CopyrightNotice
- EXIF Copyright
- XMP DC:Rights
| 4 Comments |
Shared catalogs with multiple user access
| April 29th, 2010 | by Murat |
Very often, shared access to an image or a media database located on other computers, on a local network, is necessary.
Some stand-alone digital photo and media management software (including PicaJet) allows for sharing of image databases, along with multiple user access from a local network. Media files must be imported with network paths like, “\\mediaserver\photos\…” allowing the images to be retrieved from any PC, on a local network. But this method has significant limitations:
- You can’t see the changes made by other users in the same media database till you restart the media database software, or you refresh the opened catalog.
- You can’t deny specific access, for instance, to those users wishing to view the photos from your “Underwater Session 2010″ project; nor can you stop guests from downloading your hi-res photos.*
- There is no guarantee that your current media cataloging tool will not crash and damage your files due to simultaneous attempts to change the same information by – multiple users.
- Users are unable to check the document, lock it, make changes, and then return it to the database so other customers might see updates and edits.
- No other user will be allowed to edit a document at the same time as another user
- You can’t track authorship and changes to your documents.
Daminion is a multi-user digital asset management system without the above-mentioned limitations**.
Users can:
- Provide controlled access to the media library
- Assign permissions for a particular group of users by function: catalog, asset or tag.
- Easily administrate user roles and permissions
- Provide version control capabilities granting seamless teamwork and collaboration of media content
* Users may configure access rights on the Windows NTFS level, but it is extremely laborious, inconvenient and limited.
** The alpha version will be for stand-alone usage only.
| 6 Comments |
Daminion has made the retrieval of imported assets extremely fast and simple; it stores all the media descriptions in a database named, Catalog. Stand-alone versions of Daminion will use .dmc file extensions.
Pictures (digital images) and other media files – of different formats or themes – can be separated into individual catalogs. For example, private.dmc can be used for private photos; music.dmc for songs; landscapedesign.dmc for the collection of landscape designs, etc.
We recommend creating the catalog in the same folder where all the media files belonging to this catalog are located. The catalog has paths relative to the imported files, so you can copy the Media folder to your laptop or other PC and immediately work there with the copied catalog.
Sample scheme of organizing a media archive.
Photo and media thumbnails are cached into the separate folders; this means the catalog files stay compact, and can be easily and quickly backed-up.
Several catalogs can be opened under different tabs in the thumbnail browser like web pages in the tabbed web browser.
3 catalogs are opened in different tabs
| 4 Comments |
Daminion: The new DAM for creative pros and small business
| April 13th, 2010 | by Murat |
Dear PicaJet customers,
Announcing a brand new version of our popular photo-cataloging program: Daminion*
This new media management program will manage not only images and movies, but also
music and various documents (PDF, Office, InDesign, AutoCAD, etc…).
Daminion Media Browser
The major Daminion benefits are:
- Support for almost any media format
- Joint multi-user collaboration with media documents
- Split access to catalogs by user permissions
- Track authorship and changes to your documents
- Protection for your files by using:
- Version control
- Backup
- Complete support of the EXIF, IPTC, XMP and MWG metadata standards
- Super-easy cataloguing and ultra-fast file location
- Affordable price
Viewer Mode
On the next post, I’ll list more program benefits, and give more details about Daminion’s release date.
* The Daminion name was created from two words: DAM (digital asset
management system), which means the market segment where belong
the product and Dominion.
The definition of “dominion” from Wikipedia:
“…In English common law, the dominions of the Crown referred to
all the realms and territories under the sovereignty of the Crown”
That’ s what Daminion is designed to do: Manage the realms of media documents
under the sovereignty of our customers.
| 29 Comments |
