5 Tips for Seamlessly Managing Adobe Creative Files with DAM
In today’s “everything-is-digital” era, visual content has become a must-have in any successful marketing strategy.
Almost half of marketers pump out visual content roughly 2-5 times per week, as they know it’s a foolproof way to instantly grab their target audience's attention - and effectively communicate their brand message.
But where do most creatives create and collaborate on content?
Marketing teams worldwide rely on platforms like Adobe Creative Cloud to fuel their creative processes.
Adobe Photoshop, a tool provided by Creative Cloud, is particularly popular among creative professionals - with more than 90% of them using it to produce captivating visuals for marketing campaigns.
Despite the undeniable benefits of using such tools, creating visual content is not without its challenges:
82% of creative professionals spend a quarter of their time managing projects instead of being creative.
Only 48% of creatives consistently meet project deadlines.
A mere 26% of respondents have a consistent and standardized process for reviewing and approving creative content.
So what creative content management solutions are out there?
Tools like digital asset management (DAM) can serve as a viable option when it comes to speeding up content creation and streamlining creative content operations.
By managing and distributing all company digital assets from a “single source of truth” - which includes seamless integration with Adobe programs.
This article explores how a DAM can help work on Adobe creative files efficiently to complete all their projects on time.
Table of contents:
5 ways to work on creative files seamlessly with DAM
Centralized storage
File versioning
File preview and collaboration
Metadata management
Workflow automation
DAM for Adobe Creative Cloud
5 ways DAM enables you to work seamlessly on Adobe creative files
From being a single source of truth to speeding up your everyday creative workflows - here’s 5 ways DAM enables you to work smarter, not harder, on your Adobe creative files.
Centralized storage
In the digital age, creative teams require a smooth workflow that allows them to create and distribute content efficiently.
DAM platforms are a top-notch solution to this problem.
One of the essential features of a DAM platform is its centralized storage. By storing and maintaining all your digital assets, including Adobe Creative files, in a single location - creative teams can easily access files (without the need for extensive searches across various platforms).
Plus: DAMs allow creative teams to browse files by keywords or sort them by name and upload date.
This streamlines the entire search process, AKA: No more wasting time searching for the assets themselves.
Centralized storage also allows for effective collaboration. By providing a single storage location, team members can easily share and work on files together, even if they are working remotely.
For instance, graphic designers can easily access their Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign files from a single location, eliminating the need for extensive searches across various platforms and enabling them to work better and faster.
File versioning
One of the key features of DAM is file versioning, which allows teams to keep track of different versions of their Adobe files and collaborate seamlessly.
With file versioning, everyone can be sure they are working on the latest version of the file, reducing the risk of errors and confusion.
But DAM offers more than just version control. It also allows teams to:
Provide direct links to assets directly from their InDesign document.
Modify, save, upload, and download digital assets.
View digital assets in either a grid or list format.
The system automatically updates any changes made to digital assets, ensuring that everyone has access to the latest version.
Web designers can leverage file versioning to streamline their workflow. Take the following example:
When creating and optimizing web graphics, banners, and layouts using Adobe Photoshop, the DAM system keeps track of different versions of these files.
This allows the web design team to collaborate seamlessly, ensuring that they are always working on the most up-to-date versions of the assets, enabling them to work more efficiently and deliver high-quality web designs.
The result?
Enabling better brand compliance overall.
File preview and collaboration
One of the greatest things about your DAM is that it lets you preview and work on files together. You can instantly access your Adobe files with your team and collaborate on them in real-time.
Previewing files lets your team have a quick look at your Adobe files and make sure they're up to par.
This real-time collaboration helps your team work together easily, even if you're not all in the same spot. This is especially helpful for remote teams, so that everyone is on the same page, and that the final outcome makes everyone happy (and that it all stays on-brand).
DAM's file preview and collaboration features also provide additional benefits that streamline the entire creative process from A to Z.
For example: When using Adobe After Effects to create engaging animations by combining videos, images, and effects, the DAM platform allows the creative team to collaborate in real-time (no matter where they are).
They can preview the animation, make adjustments, and provide feedback instantly, ensuring efficient teamwork and delivering professional-quality motion graphics.
Metadata management
Managing and retrieving thousands of Adobe files can be a headache for creative teams, but a DAM platform makes it easy.
With metadata management, you can efficiently categorize your files based on different criteria, making it easier to search and find them.
Think of it as organizing your files in a digital library, but with more efficient and precise search results.
Tagging assets with metadata helps teams search content by product info, theme, campaign, and SKU. For example, tagging photos for a new product campaign helps the marketing department find them without sifting through emails and drives.
Adding on: Integrating your DAM with other MarTech solutions is crucial for achieving a seamless marketing ecosystem.
Full integration ensures that your content creation, approvals, and distribution workflows are automated, saving content creators time, and freeing up marketers to create and distribute content to audiences everywhere.
Integrating your DAM with Adobe Creative Cloud means all teams and departments have direct access to approved assets straight from Digizuite. No more digging through chaotic email chains or downloading files from various sources.
This streamlined process is especially valuable for tasks like video editing, where you can easily import, enhance, and add effects, transitions, titles, and audio using Adobe Premiere Pro.
What you’re left with is ensuring that your workflows are efficient and that you deliver professional-quality videos.
Workflow automation
One of the best things about implementing a DAM is how it can automate repetitive tasks and workflows. Which makes your life much easier in the long run.
For example, you can spend less time searching for files and more time on other important tasks.
Our solution, Digizuite DAM already includes workflow automation features, ready to go. With the automated approval-for-use workflow, you can accurately ensure that you're only using content that has been approved and meets the right criteria for your organization.
Plus, automating tagging and categorization of assets is another great way to future-proof your content.
Adding on: A DAM system will simplify enterprise content management by automating workflows that signal when content has expired.
Creative professionals are then able to focus on their graphic design work using Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign, creating visual designs for logos, illustrations, posters, and marketing materials - without the burden of manual file organization and searching.
Digizuite DAM for Adobe Creative Cloud
Ditch the old-school idea of a DAM system being just a place to store and organize your content.
These days, DAMs are way more robust and can work with your creative tools to make your content creation process a breeze.
It's not just the marketing department who can benefit from DAMs now.
Creative teams who add new photos and videos to the system also get in on the action.
To streamline the creative process and get more content out there, integrating your DAM with your creative tools is the way to go.
And with Digizuite DAM, creating visual content and managing your digital assets is made easy.
You can search, edit, upload, and download images and graphics without leaving your Adobe Creative Cloud apps like InDesign, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Photoshop.
Plus, all changes you make to your creative files will be automatically saved in Digizuite.
There are three big advantages to doing this:
Having all your approved and updated brand assets in one secure location means you're in complete control over what goes out on your public channels.
Managing and updating your content is automated, so you don't have to waste time doing tedious tasks like deleting outdated content.
Integrating your tools means your creative teams can focus on being creative instead of spending hours searching for the right content on personal computers and shared drives.
Conclusion
With a big majority of marketers, specifically 41%, prioritizing the production of video and visual content - having the right tools and technology to get this done efficiently is key.
That’s where DAM tools come in, especially DAM tools that seamlessly integrate with creative Adobe programs so that all creative files are easily collaborated on.
In this article, we outlined the 5 ways in which DAM enables content creators to work on creative files smoothly:
Centralized storage
File versioning
File preview and collaboration
Metadata management
Workflow automation
DAM empowers creative teams to unleash their full potential by automating workflows, eliminating tedious file search and version control and centralizing digital assets.
Want to learn more about how your creative teams can benefit from DAM tools like Digizuite?
Get in touch with us here.
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