If you don’t know what DAM is, I could be rude and suggest you are not a serious photographer. Now I won’t because I am a polite boy, but really, if you are serious about digital photography, you simply have to be serious about DAM.
Basically, it involves everything between getting your images in on to your computer, through to when they are finally archived safely in various locations. It involves rating, labelling, keywording, file formats, catalogues, virtual sets, back ups and a whole lot more. It is the integration between Photoshop, a browser such as Bridge, and catalogue software such as iview Media Pro (now Microsoft Expression Media).
With DAM you are building value to a collection of images by organising them in a way that builds that value. Not only for you as a photographer, but also for your clients.
The bible is The Dam Book by Peter Krogh. Check out the website of course. And the forum. DAM is not a simple concept. Well, conceptually it is simple enough, but in practice it’s not simple. You might need to read the book several times and absorb it for months before doing the painstking work of getting your images into shape. yeah, it’s Boot Camp for digital images alright. I wish I’d read about it when I first bought my digital camera, not a year and 10,000 images later.
I will hazard a guess though – read the book and you’ll say at some point – “damn.. why haven’t I heard of this before”… 
Technorati Tags: DAM, digital asset management, Peter Krogh
Well maybe “completely different” is a bit of an exaggeration, but I’m prone to exaggerate. When I’m travelling for example I take a lot of what I call stock photos. The idea is to capture meta data on location as quickly and as accurately as possible (street names, buildings etc). For this I want a fast file browser that is capable of this (Photomechanic, Breezebrowser etc), and I also want to cull at the time, because I will take many (too many) images. I don’t want to have to import them into lightroom and then do all this stuff. However if I’m in “art photography” mood, I’m probably looking for an image or two to target at a print, so location metadata is not important (all my images will probably share this) so I don’t need the file browser software – it doesn’t apply to my workflow. Similarly as an “art photographer” producing prints I probably have different finished product requirements (different print sizes, formats etc) so my cataloguing process has to take this into account because I will likely want to find items on a different basis than my stock photos
Richard, I don’t see why. The process of downloading, renaming, adding basic metadata such as copyright and keywords, and then going through them and evaluating, ranking and sorting and finally converting to dng and backing up is a workflow process that should be common to all photographers the way I see it. After that stage I imagine a different focus might be applied by different photographers, depending on their output needs, but don’t you think the initial work flow is going to be (or at least should be) roughly the same for everyone?
Bit late with this!
First of all I think people should concentrate on their workflow and processes. Previously the software was rather thin on the ground and limited so you couldn’t match it to your workflow. For this reason I think a lot of people’s workflows were driven by the software – they got a program or 3, and their processes becaome what they could do with those programs. Now I think the software is mature, and you no longer have to compromise, or work with umpteen separate programs. The worklow for a sports or press photographic is going to be completely different from a documentary photographer or an art photographer. So look at how you work, or should work, from capture through initial sorting, cataloguing and archiving. Then choose the software that you need to accomplish these goals. Without contradicting myself, let me say that I think Lightroom has changed things quite dramatically, but you need a photobrowser to supplement it. DNG is also core in my opinion. I’m half way through this process, and may do a little series of blogs on what I have found useful if I have time.
I’d be curious to hear your methods Richard. I’m finding the Dam book a revelation.
He he … just going through the process of post-managing many thousands of images myself. I postponed the effort because I wasn’t quite sure exactly how I wanted the catalogue to be organised, and compounded by having a mixture of analogue and digital files… as you say, don’t wait. Once you have some kind of catalogue in place it makes refinement much easier.