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Ask DN: Digital asset organization

over 8 years ago from , Senior Developer at Fusion Dealership Systems

I'd love to hear some recommendations for digital asset management/organizer software. I've looked at Pixa and I think it's pretty close to what I want but it has a few annoyances: SVG previews really could be better, apparently no support for organizing fonts; to name a couple.

5 comments

  • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, over 8 years ago

    What does 'digital asset' mean?

    1 point
    • Matt VMatt V, over 8 years ago

      I assume it would be PSDs, images, icons, PDFs, any digital item used for a project.

      0 points
      • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, over 8 years ago

        Pixa is more of an image manager from what I know - much like Bridge or Ember.

        For us, Dropbox does the job: You get the native interface of your OS and the chance to structure, tag and organise to your heart's content, versioning up to 30 days and of course everyone will always have the very latest version of every file.

        The actual structure of a project folder changes as the project unfolds, starting with a folder for all the legal/financial stuff and one for the information available (briefs, wireframes, sketches, etc) and folders for the design, materials, linked smart objects, archived ideas and exported assets to be added later on.

        DB increased their preview limit now so you can open PSD files on IOS devices even if they are larger than 50MB.

        Another good option is Desktop CC, which at the cost of some clunkiness, offers a few awesome features like Font syncing, assets management directly from within all of your design apps, colour scheme management on all devices and apps, online PSD viewer, etc. The personal plan only comes with 20GB of storage though.

        I'm sure there are other solutions but the easiest and most natural usually works best.

        1 point
        • Jonathan JacobsJonathan Jacobs, over 8 years ago

          Using Dropbox for this offers some really fantastic perks, especially versioning (something Pixa appears to lack), without the added effort of using a proper version control system like Git. That's a really good point, thanks for making it!

          The filesystem is not particularly well suited to specialized tasks, consider why often music and video is managed by something built on top of a filesystem. For example: Searching by filename, tags and metadata (images with size X, of file type Y) for only my managed assets is pretty clunky in Finder compared to Pixa.

          Pixa also has the advantage that it's definitely not the OS filesystem, it can do much more specialized things: I can have assets exist in my main library and any number of sub-projects too without having to manage copies or pay the price of duplicated files. I can rename it in one place and have it immediately affect everything else, I can group by color (and it automatically tags dominant colors), etc.

          Being limited to organizing and managing images (both raster and vector), fonts, etc. by the tools a general filesystem and file browser constrain you to is why I started looking for something that had a more specialized focus.

          0 points
  • Samuel ṢoṣinaSamuel Ṣoṣina, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

    .

    0 points