Do you use a DAM (Digital Asset Management) tool? Looking for recommendations...thanks! | Community
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Christina_Jarosz
Christina_Jarosz
Level 9
June 14, 2022
Question

Do you use a DAM (Digital Asset Management) tool? Looking for recommendations...thanks!

  • June 14, 2022
  • 5 replies
  • 2058 views

We're looking to incorporating a DAM and want to know what experiences you have had (good and bad) with what's out there. I believe some people use box.com also for this purpose but it's limited in what we are looking to do.

Thanks for your feedback!

5 replies

K
KevinQu1
Level 10
June 15, 2022

First, Box is not a DAM. It's a glorified, cloud-based server. If you have come around to the fact that you may need a DAM (and you probably do if you have creative assets to store), you need to get away from ideas like using Box, OneDrive, SharePoint, etc. ;-p

Having been through the shopping exercise for a DAM at least four times now (and built one of my own from scratch)…that is not an easy question to answer without asking alot of questions. Budget and organization size have to be the early questions, but it gets more complex from there.

You might wish to consider a consultant (I liked our last one reasonably well) to help you. We did it three times ourselves, when it was just our department. When it became enterprise-wide, we shopped via a consultant.

I can tell you that at present, Workfront's DAM really has no special advantages over a third-party DAM, if that was part of your thought process. Also, Adobe's DAM does not live up to the hype compared to it's direct competitors unless you really, really need the direct Creative Suite integration (which we do not use as it creates too many headaches).

Sorry to be so vague, but this is a complex topic and I wouldn't recommend our DAM to you without knowing the answer to a whole host of other questions.

    Christina_Jarosz
    Christina_JaroszAuthor
    Level 9
    June 15, 2022

    Kevin, as usual, you do not disappoint with your knowledge and thought out reply.

    I 1000% agree as it relates to Box.com - that's many peoples knee jerk reaction to our mention of a DAM and it's too complicated to get into WHY it would not work...it's just easier to say we're not interested.

    To that end, WF DAM's (and the dying WF Library product) did not stand out as any viable solution.

    We have a number of 'contenders' that we are loosely considering at this point in the discovery process but nothing specific. My goal with this post was to get some ideas/recommendations of what others have used either successfully or with challenges. I'm a little....jaded.....now, as WF is *the product* and yet here we are in the community well aware (as admins and end users alike) there's a whole host of problems that would make me shy away from any real recommendation at this point.

    I'd love the name of the consultant if you can PM me. We aren't looking for Enterprise level at this point, but we do need to be able to have something that is scalable if we adopt it in more places.

    Right now, the high level list of features:

    Single asset location and maintenance - update it once in the DAM, and it flows out to all the other areas that the asset may live/reside to ensure the most up to date asset is available.

    Activation/expiration feature - being able to mark when something can go live, and when it should expire and automatically come down

    Grouping/metadata/collections - be it either system generated or customizable.

    Reporting reporting reporting - usage statistics, access statistics, etc.

    Nice to have:

    Notification of expiring assets

    Asset assignment of ownership (for content changes)

    Internal/external facing option

    Support hosting of .exe files

    Integration into WF or Adobe

    Right now - this is just more of a 'brain dump' but thought I'd see if anyone else had feedback (good or bad) on solutions they may have used.

    K
    KevinQu1
    Level 10
    June 15, 2022

    I'll PM, since I don't want to get into a position where I seem like I am endorsing (a corporate no-no) vendors and products.

    If you have specific questions I'm happy to answer. I've been at this DAM thing a little too long, so let me go get my DAM cane to get the whippersnappers off my lawn…

      P
      PeggyGr1
      Level 2
      June 16, 2022

      Hi Christina, we have had our DAM for 7 years. We are integrated with Workfront. Please PM me and I will be happy to talk to you about it.

      J
      JamesMa4
      Level 4
      June 17, 2022

      Hi Christina, I'll be interested to hear what you end up going with and why.

      When we brought on Workfront, we were planning to integrate with Adobe DAM, but found the cost, effort to implement, and process for our Creatives to use it as presented didn't outweigh the benefits.

      It may be a different calculation now. Don't quote me on this but I believe for the Adobe DAM, there would still be implementation costs, but any ongoing licensing/integration fees would no longer exist.

      Thanks and good luck!

      E
      Efianvot
      April 1, 2025

      I see it's been a while since this topic was discussed, but I'm curious—has anyone found a DAM that integrates well with Workfront without too much manual work? I've been looking into different options, but seamless integration seems to be a challenge. If you've had success with a particular tool, what made it work well for your team?

      E
      Efianvot
      April 7, 2025

      I've been using it alongside a DAM, and it’s been a game-changer for keeping things organized. If you're looking for the best digital asset management software for photographers, having a system that makes searching, tagging, and collaborating easy is key. It really depends on how your team manages assets and workflow, but integration with existing tools has made a huge difference in speeding up approvals and keeping everything accessible.

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