No ... not a stock portfolio, as important as that may be, but
I refer to the files you use to prepare your website. Many art
departments and media development firms refer to these files as
"assets". The term is appropriate since the files that
are assembled to create any form of media piece for print or electronic
distribution become extremely valuable to their owners. On a simple
scale, if you were to take a series of digital pictures and scan
a number of emulsion photographs for use on your website, the
original "master" versions of these files have an investment
of time and money to acquire. They also have a long term value
since you may not use them all right away. Then one day you find
a use for one of those files ... where the heck is it? And, if
you cropped, digitally altered, or saved an image in a compressed
format (like made a low quality JPEG to save space) and didn't
save the master you might be out of luck to repurpose the "asset".
So it is obvious that anyone who is serious about their digital
development work also needs to be serious about maintaining their
digital assets. A workable system of folders on your computer's
drive is certainly the place to start but what happens if the
drive fails? Solution ... backup everything you would hate the
thought of losing to CD or other reliable storage device. Even
keeping a copy of crucial backups in a separate physical location
is wise. I suspect that bank safety deposit boxes are beginning
to contain the family jewels, securities, and digital assets.
And now, the most important suggestion in this chapter, use dedicated
software to manage your digital assets! My personal favorite is
Portfolio by Extensis
Inc. but there are a number of other programs available that
will make cataloging and using your files a much more productive
process than organization within folders alone. The database Filemaker
Pro is also well know for managing large inventories of digital
assets. While I am a big fan of this product, I happen to prefer
the way Portfolio helps to locate files and make working collections
or "Galleries" of selected files while I am making creative
and practical decisions. Since Portfolio is in fact a database,
it includes a wide range of features for cataloging, associating
keywords with files, and automatically providing useful information
about the files themselves such as k-size, dimensions, and much
more. All versions of Portfolio will scan through specified directories
and catalog your files but the current version adds the ability
to take advantage of a well planned folder storage scheme and
keep the catalog up to date as files are added, deleted, or revised.
You should start to consider the modest investment in this type
of software if you use professional level applications for image
work (Photoshop, etc.), you typically use high quality digital
master files to prepare any type of media from, and you typically
save the master files for future work. If you find yourself dreading
the process of opening one huge file after another looking for
the right one for a current undertaking ... you are definitely
ready to benefit greatly from such software.
PC users that want to be more than simple hobbyists should not
use free software that comes with scanners or such devices! These
products often store files in a proprietary format that requires
"reader" software to view the catalogs. This can become
a big problem if you need to give files to others. Native cross-platform
standard file formats may or may not be well supported and many
types of files that are not created on the particular device it
came with may not be cataloged by the software. If it is "free",
be sketptical before investing time into using it!
