Extensis Portfolio
Extensis Portfolio is a well-established and powerful digital assets management (DAM) package for ingesting and retrieving images, sounds, movies, and documents. It is available in both Single User and Client/Server versions. Built-in features let you embed metadata into your assets then archive them or share them with partners, clients and vendors. It offers a huge number of options and for that reason requires the user to spend a reasonable amount of time learning to operate it.
When handling images Portfolio extracts thumbnails, displays screen previews and extracts metadata from most formats. Its list of supported file formats is formidable and it can batch convert many imaging formats to JPEG and PixelLive VFZ/PFZ.
For previewing, tagging, cataloging, editing metadata, and web publishing, Portfolio has a full set of features. Version 8 introduced the concept of scratchpad galleries: temporary baskets where you sort, edit and merge files from searches of other galleries. This sort of feature helps to maintain Portfolio's popularity with newspapers and photo agencies.
Comment
An excellent archiving tool, Portfolio has many helpful features like auto-synchronization of folders. The developers succeed in keeping it up-to-date, with, for example, support for most current, professional-level digital cameras.
A new feature is the ability to save collections of metadata as a pre-set, then apply it to an entire selection of assets. With this kind of technique -- in the hands of someone who has become an expert user -- it's possible to achieve a high degree of automation to carry out otherwise repetitive and boring tasks.
Tech info
- OS: Windows 2000 onward; Mac OS X
- Price level: (Single user) Approx. $200
Extensis
Based in Portland, Oregon, Extensis is a division of Celartem, Inc. which in turn is a subsidiary of Japanese corporation Celartem. Established in 1996, Celartem develops technology in the areas of digital image compression, scalable image viewing and secure content distribution and management.
From the same vendor:
- NetMediaMAX
- Extensis Universal Type Server
©trl