(Archived) Evernote Business - Is it for us? (Digital Asset Management)

[Sarah201 0]

Hi everyone. 

 

I posted a while ago regarding a searching by tag issue I had encountered in Evernote Business and was very pleased with the helpful response I received, so thanks again and I have come back!

 

This is a much more general topic - please excuse me in some parts, I am not overly techie!

 

So, a bit of background: I work for a medium sized business with a sizeable picture library (I'm talking 20,000 pictures at a guess). We currently store all our pictures as jpeg files on Windows, in a structured folder system. This works well if you know exactly what picture you are after and where it is stored, but less well/terribly if you don't as there is no way to search. The result is a very inefficient, time-consuming trawl through the picture library to locate the file. 

 

We have recently begun trialling Evernote as a Digital Asset Management system to hopefully enable us to store our pictures in notes and tag them appropriately so they are easy to locate. We have uploaded a small portion (500 pictures) and assigned relevant tags and we are very happy with how much easier Evernote makes the searching process. Pictures would be uploaded in one central business library by the administrator (myself) and then shared out to around 50 users who can then search and use the pictures.

 

However, we have come across some potential issues, and I would like to get some second opinions on whether or not Evernote is the right programme for us to use before I upload thousands of images. Please note that for the most part I am after opinions and understand that definite answers may not be possible until we actually put it into practice - I know this   

 

Our first problem is with stacks. I was keen to arrange pictures in stacks that resembled the current folder system we have, with the tags providing a secondary, more powerful search function. After trialling it myself and reading this forum, though, I know that stacks can only go one stack deep and then cannot be shared to other users. Have people found this too limiting? Will one notebook with 20,000 separate notes in cause us problems - will it be slow to load or sync, and do you think 20,000 pictures in one library would be difficult to navigate? 

 

Secondly, as images are uploaded into Evernote, we insert them in to the note and then when we wish to use them, we seem to have to save them back as a file on to the computer itself to then use it how we wish. Do you think this is an impractical use of Evernote, and in this sense is it more suited for personal photo storage rather than corporate use? I am concerned that staff will get fed up of re-saving their most used photos on to their desktop and will just keep them there, bypassing the Evernote system. 

 

Thirdly, have people encountered problems with employees being able to alter notebook names on their own account? 

 

Has anyone else used Evernote similarly, as a Digital Asset Management system? What were your experiences/thoughts? 

 

Apologies for some of the poor explanations, please ask if anything needs clarifying.

 

Thanks very much!! Sarah. 

 

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Hi everyone. 

 

I posted a while ago regarding a searching by tag issue I had encountered in Evernote Business and was very pleased with the helpful response I received, so thanks again and I have come back!

 

This is a much more general topic - please excuse me in some parts, I am not overly techie!

 

So, a bit of background: I work for a medium sized business with a sizeable picture library (I'm talking 20,000 pictures at a guess). We currently store all our pictures as jpeg files on Windows, in a structured folder system. This works well if you know exactly what picture you are after and where it is stored, but less well/terribly if you don't as there is no way to search. The result is a very inefficient, time-consuming trawl through the picture library to locate the file. 

 

We have recently begun trialling Evernote as a Digital Asset Management system to hopefully enable us to store our pictures in notes and tag them appropriately so they are easy to locate. We have uploaded a small portion (500 pictures) and assigned relevant tags and we are very happy with how much easier Evernote makes the searching process. Pictures would be uploaded in one central business library by the administrator (myself) and then shared out to around 50 users who can then search and use the pictures.

 

However, we have come across some potential issues, and I would like to get some second opinions on whether or not Evernote is the right programme for us to use before I upload thousands of images. Please note that for the most part I am after opinions and understand that definite answers may not be possible until we actually put it into practice - I know this   

 

Our first problem is with stacks. I was keen to arrange pictures in stacks that resembled the current folder system we have, with the tags providing a secondary, more powerful search function. After trialling it myself and reading this forum, though, I know that stacks can only go one stack deep and then cannot be shared to other users. Have people found this too limiting? Will one notebook with 20,000 separate notes in cause us problems - will it be slow to load or sync, and do you think 20,000 pictures in one library would be difficult to navigate? 

 

Secondly, as images are uploaded into Evernote, we insert them in to the note and then when we wish to use them, we seem to have to save them back as a file on to the computer itself to then use it how we wish. Do you think this is an impractical use of Evernote, and in this sense is it more suited for personal photo storage rather than corporate use? I am concerned that staff will get fed up of re-saving their most used photos on to their desktop and will just keep them there, bypassing the Evernote system. 

 

Thirdly, have people encountered problems with employees being able to alter notebook names on their own account? 

 

Has anyone else used Evernote similarly, as a Digital Asset Management system? What were your experiences/thoughts? 

 

Apologies for some of the poor explanations, please ask if anything needs clarifying.

 

Thanks very much!! Sarah. 

 

 

I'm a hobbyist but have tens of thousands of images (photo scans, digital photos, home movies, "clip art" type images, etc) on my computer.  Before I even found Evernote, I'd used ACDSee Photo Manager for organizing my images & videos.  IMO, it's similar to Evernote in that it uses a tagging system but it's geared toward images/videos.  I would suggest you take a look at that, if you haven't already.  And although I'm a heavy user of Evernote (over 60,000 notes & I use it pretty much every hour of my waking day), I still prefer ACDSee Photo Manager for organizing my digital images. 

 

Also, IMO, when organizing images, I find it not helpful to try to replicate the folder structure on the hard drive.  That's akin to trying to assign a meaningful name to each & every image - something you simply cannot do once your library gets even a little bit big.  That only complicates things, IMO.   After all, if the folder structure was so good at organizing, why would you be needing an organizing tool?  Use the tags.  Then when you need to access the actual image, you can simply drag & drop from ACDSee or if you need to use the file system, it displays the actual file name on the computer.

 

Another reason to use tags is their flexibility (and why folder organization fails with very many files) is (to use Jefito's example), if you have a photo of a round, red, rubber ball...where do you put it in a folder structure?  Do you put it under round?  Red?  Rubber?  Ball?  When using tags, it doesn't matter. Put it anywhere.  Then tag it with round, red, rubber, ball.  Then when you're looking for a red ball, you can simply select those tags & find all images of a red ball. 

 

Also, since ACDSee's focus is digital images, it allows you to view & edit the meta data - something Evernote does not do.

[gbarry 2,658]

Secondly, as images are uploaded into Evernote, we insert them in to the note and then when we wish to use them, we seem to have to save them back as a file on to the computer itself to then use it how we wish. Do you think this is an impractical use of Evernote, and in this sense is it more suited for personal photo storage rather than corporate use? I am concerned that staff will get fed up of re-saving their most used photos on to their desktop and will just keep them there, bypassing the Evernote system. 

 

I'll let others chime in with the efficacy of using Evernote for photo cataloguing--I will say that you can presently make modifications to a photo while still keeping it "in" Evernote--you can "open with" an image from your Evernote account, select a photo editing tool, and save that directly back into Evernote without directly downloading the file to a local computer.  At sync, this will cause the new version to be uploaded, which, for large images would potentially eat into a good amount of your monthly allowance.  If you're using Evernote Business in this scenario that's not too big of a concern, unless you have really hefty editing volume of extremely large images.

 

Distribution of images would be pretty flexible without having to download too--you could distribute a direct link to the image, or just a link to a shared Evernote note.

 

If all you are using Evernote Business for is cataloguing photos and nothing else, I wouldn't necessarily say we're a tool that is optimized for that, though we've talked about it many times in the past.  If you were to say include a bunch of additional data alongside your photos (for example, where or who with a photo was last used, or metadata like where it was taken) the utility of Evernote jumps up tremendously.  Or, as another example, organizing photos into groups of projects, etc.

[gazumped 11,652]

I'd assume that if you have a central library of images,  you'd be pretty keen to avoid any changes to the originals,  whether or not you might be interested in keeping details of any changes that were made for individual projects.  I'd think the security aspects would be a little scary in Evernote - anyone with access to the note could change or delete the image by accident.  All due respects to Evernote,  I'd think external storage of some sort is a safer bet.  Although: you could keep your index in Evernote and 'point' to image files stored elsewhere via URL.  You'd want to include a thumbnail of the image and all your keywords,  plus details of the projects its been used for...

[ZZZ 135]

Apologies for some of the poor explanations, please ask if anything needs clarifying.

 

On the contrary your explanations were excellent.  While EN is an excellent product and wonderful for storing photos in a limited fashion, I don't think it's a good solution for this application.  Wouldn't there be times your users need to scan through thumbnails and images quickly?  I'd recommend a product specifically designed for this type of application.

[Jojo 2]

Hi,

We have the same issue in my company and will be testing Adobe Lightroom in January. See the how to videos on the website about organizing.. They have great tagging ability while keeping the photos in the folder structure that you already have. Not sure if they are web shareable, they may have that because they do offer offsite storage,.

Let us know if you find the solution, I am many of us can benefit.

Good Luck

[C6REW 416]

Hi Sarah,

 

I am a serious hobbyist photographer with over 120,000 images.

 

I store my photos and work on them using Adobe Lightroom 5. Within Lightroom they have virtually the same as a tagging system which allows you to easily locate an image assuming you have 'tagged' it correctly. This works exceptionally well for my use case.

 

But I just get the feeling that with your specific requirements, which appear to be viewing not editing a photo and more importantly sharing amongst many users - you mention 50 above - using Evernote and the tag system as described by BnF would be your best bet.

 

One thing that does bother me is what quality do you need the images to be at? If it is high then I foresee a problem with your storage, unless you put all your 50 users on a business account which would give you 100 GB per month. But this would not remotely work for me as I have over 3 TB of images meaning 2 1/2 years to upload all of them. However at low resolution you shouldn't have too much of a problem.

 

Best regards

 

 

Chris

[Jojo 2]

Hi Again,

 

I just looked at ACD (burgerNfries recommendation) and it seems like a good option as well as Lightroom.

Chris:  I will be testing lightroom in January.. one of our main issues is what happens when you change computers or PC crashes etc..  is there a database that remembers all the cataloging you did?  We have all data backed up on cloud systems for individual photo recovery.

 

It sounds to me that you may need more than 1 software. Lightroom or ACD  to give you the ability to tag and still keep your local folder system. But both of these seem to be all local and need 1 license to manage.

 

Then you can look at Podio.com. You can duplicate the assigned tags in a Podio database and upload each photo where it can be shared, searchable and downloadable. However be careful, when I last checked (February, 2013) the photos and attached docs were not exportable en mass. Meaning that if you have 5000 pictures in a podio database and wanted to move them to another system, you will have to do it 1 by 1. But the data in the database is exportable to excel.  You should have a "Master" set at home base.

 

Hope this helps..

[C6REW 416]

Hi Jojo,

 

Yes the catalogue information can be kept and transferred in Lightroom.

 

Best regards

 

Chris

[Jojo 2]

Hi Chris,

 

Thanks for letting me know.

 

 

Regards

 

Joesph

[ZZZ 135]

Folks, just an FYI, don't assume as you analyze these programs and they work great for you that they will work for well for teams.  To my knowledge, most of these programs such as ACD (which is my favorite photo manager) create a LOCAL database for an individual user.  I don't know if they can create a central database which can be accessed simultaneously by multiple users, which is what you need for teams.  Not saying it can't, but I've seen no evidence that it supports a multiple user scenario.

[ZZZ 135]

It sounds to me that you may need more than 1 software. Lightroom or ACD  to give you the ability to tag and still keep your local folder system. But both of these seem to be all local and need 1 license to manage.

 

Exactly.  Had not seen this when I posted above. 

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Folks, just an FYI, don't assume as you analyze these programs and they work great for you that they will work for well for teams. To my knowledge, most of these programs such as ACD (which is my favorite photo manager) create a LOCAL database for an individual user. I don't know if they can create a central database which can be accessed simultaneously by multiple users, which is what you need for teams. Not saying it can't, but I've seen no evidence that it supports a multiple user scenario.

Local databases can normally be stored on a networked drive which can then be accessed by other users globally, if vpns are set up.

And for more info on ACDSee in a corporate environment:

http://www.acdsee.com/en/corporate-sales

[ZZZ 135]

 

Folks, just an FYI, don't assume as you analyze these programs and they work great for you that they will work for well for teams. To my knowledge, most of these programs such as ACD (which is my favorite photo manager) create a LOCAL database for an individual user. I don't know if they can create a central database which can be accessed simultaneously by multiple users, which is what you need for teams. Not saying it can't, but I've seen no evidence that it supports a multiple user scenario.

Local databases can normally be stored on a networked drive which can then be accessed by other users globally, if vpns are set up.

And for more info on ACDSee in a corporate environment:

http://www.acdsee.com/en/corporate-sales

 

 

OK , but other than the fact that they have a corporate sales page for volume licensing, I don't see a single blurb there that indicates any type of meaningful multi-user support, which one would assume they'd mention or make a huge deal of if they offered it.  Especially on the product page itself.  You can often locate a database on a network drive, but that doesn't mean the database supports simultaneous users accessing it and modifying it.  And I see no mention or indication of being able to control user rights through the software, which is going to be a requirement for many teams, though I don't know what the requirements are of the posters in this thread.

 

It's entirely possible they offer some type of meaningful multi-user support, but at this point I remain skeptical.

[ZZZ 135]

In case it is useful to the posters, here is a product that is for teams that looks interesting.  http://www.daminion.net/

 

It also speaks to some of the concerns Jojo and I expressed above, here:

http://www.daminion.net/feature-tour/daminion-server/daminion-server-vs-file-server

[C6REW 416]

Hi Jojo,

 

Just found this information on Lightroom whilst looking at cloud storage.

 

http://photographylife.com/sharing-lightroom-catalog-with-multiple-computers

 

Best regards

 

Chris

[Jojo 2]

Hi ZZZ & Chris.

 

Both options look good to give a try.

 

Thanks for the help

[gbarry 2,658]

(Great discussion.  Don't mind me, just editing the title to include digital asset management.)

[Melissa Kelly 0]

Hi Sarah,

 

You should check-out WebDAM, it's a cloud platform where you can manage, centralize, search, distribute all of your pictures, documents, creative files and more. We work with over 200,000 professionals that face the same issues you have described.  We help teams work easier and faster with all of their visual media making it easy to add keywords or tags to pictures, maintain an organized folder structure and hierarchy, improve searchability and help your users intuitively navigate through all of your pictures, and more.

 

We'd be happy to give you more information or answer any questions you may have. You can see a quick demo here: http://www.webdamsolutions.com/digital-asset-management/enterprise-dam/

 

Hope this helps!

Melissa

877-408-4888

[C6REW 416]

Hi Melissa,

 

Just tried to check out your software, but you don't publish any prices. That always makes me think a company/product/service is too expensive! So I haven't bothered to go any further. I wouldn't want to contact any company to get a price of an on-line service such as this. Most companies in this field seem to put their prices on their web site and there are too many competitors out there without having to be added to a database.

 

Best regards

 

 

Chris

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Hi Melissa,

 

Just tried to check out your software, but you don't publish any prices. That always makes me think a company/product/service is too expensive! So I haven't bothered to go any further. I wouldn't want to contact any company to get a price of an on-line service such as this. Most companies in this field seem to put their prices on their web site and there are too many competitors out there without having to be added to a database.

 

Best regards

 

 

Chris

Like a lot of things, "too expensive" is relative.  When selecting software for my own personal use, I absolutely agree with your comments about published prices.  If it's not published on the website, it's probably out of my league & I don't want my name/phone number added to someone's database.  And there are some apps that are feasible for both personal & business use, which will have published prices.

 

OTOH, when you're talking about software not for personal use but instead for business use (as Webdam appears to be), there are a lot of companies that do not post prices b/c they really can't, since it would depend upon what they would suggest for your use as well as how many seats/users/licenses you'd need.  It's not because it would be too expensive for your use case or that the company is shady.  It just means they need to have more details regarding how you want to use the product in order to provide an accurate estimate.  When you're in that league, it's a bit like trying to get an estimate to have your car repaired w/o the mechanic looking at your car - they simply cannot give you an accurate estimate w/o seeing the car first hand.

[C6REW 416]

Got to agree with the business usage. For me photo storage is about my personal use, hence making the comment.

 

However, I did waste a lot of time last contacting various companies for costs on cloud based contact management software. Only to be given ludicrously expensive pricing and then followed up with a barrage of emails and phone calls! But sometimes, as you say, it has to be done.

 

Best regards

 

Chris

[Melissa Kelly 0]

 

Hi Melissa,

 

Just tried to check out your software, but you don't publish any prices. That always makes me think a company/product/service is too expensive! So I haven't bothered to go any further. I wouldn't want to contact any company to get a price of an on-line service such as this. Most companies in this field seem to put their prices on their web site and there are too many competitors out there without having to be added to a database.

 

Best regards

 

 

Chris

Like a lot of things, "too expensive" is relative.  When selecting software for my own personal use, I absolutely agree with your comments about published prices.  If it's not published on the website, it's probably out of my league & I don't want my name/phone number added to someone's database.  And there are some apps that are feasible for both personal & business use, which will have published prices.

 

OTOH, when you're talking about software not for personal use but instead for business use (as Webdam appears to be), there are a lot of companies that do not post prices b/c they really can't, since it would depend upon what they would suggest for your use as well as how many seats/users/licenses you'd need.  It's not because it would be too expensive for your use case or that the company is shady.  It just means they need to have more details regarding how you want to use the product in order to provide an accurate estimate.  When you're in that league, it's a bit like trying to get an estimate to have your car repaired w/o the mechanic looking at your car - they simply cannot give you an accurate estimate w/o seeing the car first hand.

 

 

Couldn't agree more.  We'd have to know more about any business before providing pricing to make sure we're giving the most cost-effective quote for your needs.  Very well put BurgersNFries!

[K.Murat 1]

Hi everyone,

 

I am co-founder of the Daminion program that was mentioned here by one of the Evernote users. Give me a chance to explain some of the Daminion benefits for creating a single image database that can be accessed by multiple user from multiple computers across your local network (and even from the Internet):

- It's almost always is better to use a specialized program to resolve a certain task, for example: Evernote to remember your ideas, projects and experiences, Lightroom for RAW image adjustments, ACDSee for fast image viewing, and I can suggest to use Daminion as a DAM (digital asset management) for small teams with tight budgets

- Unbeatable price. If you need to use Daminion to manage your home images and videos we offer an unbeatable price: $199 for Daminion Home Server (fixed price). $1k for Daminion Server Pro. Plus you pay once, no endless monthly payments.

- True multi-user access. None of the mentioned above standalone photo organizers (except WebDam) can provide you a safe, reliable and fast multi-user access, because these program weren't designed for this from the beginning

- Supports for more than 100 media formats, including images, RAW images, vector images, videos, audio, MS office documents, PDF, DWG, etc...

- All your annotation are always synced with image metadata. Automatically, without your commands! It means that all your many-hours work is safely backed up inside the images and can be easily read by hundreds of applications that understand EXIF/IPTC/XMP metadata.

- Tested with million imported files. We have customers who use Daminion to manage ~1 million assets.

- Controlled access to your image archive. For example, users with Viewer role can only search, view, and export media documents, but can't edit or remove them.

- Live project, live community. We are involved in Digital Asset Management market since 1999, and have an active community of users.

 

I don't like to litter this forum by listing all Daminion benefits. Please welcome to check them out on our web-site.

 

I'd be glad to answer to any questions related to our Daminion or image management strategy here or on our forum.

[C6REW 416]

Hi Melissa,

So for a private user such as me, I still have no idea if your software solution is £10 or £10,000. So give some reason why I should spend my time looking any further?

Best regards

Chris

[ZZZ 135]

Couldn't agree more.  We'd have to know more about any business before providing pricing to make sure we're giving the most cost-effective quote for your needs.  Very well put BurgersNFries!

 

With all due respect Melissa, balderdash .  Companies typically don't give pricing because they are still operating with a pre-Internet mindset, and because some marketing guru or sales VP who is afraid he/she might lose his job if he can't justify his existence doesn't want to list clear cut pricing.  "If I can just get someone to call me I can get them to buy".  It also allows for all sorts of pricing games where you give different prices to different customers.  Your website engages in one of my biggest pet peeves, which is the phony "pricing" selection on the navigation menu that....actually doesn't give any pricing at all.  I've often thought it would be interesting if it would be possible to analyze how much business you gain versus lose by engaging in these pricing games.

 

Let me be clear, I totally understand not offering pricing for complex software, let's say a SAP enterprise offering.  Though even for that, unless we are talking about a 6-7 figure installations, it's pretty easy to get pricing estimates to at least get some idea of what the software runs.

 

But on your website, it's a big secret.  All you're offering is a simple hosted service.  You could quite easily list your per user and storage pricing.  BTW, an Internet search quickly brings up a blog article where someone from 2011 is discussing your pricing.  Which humorously, could be much lower now since storage costs have gone down, but since you won't list pricing potential customers searching will instead be getting possible outdated info from some guy with a blog.

 

BTW, it's too funny that it's ALWAYS the same companies that want to keep their pricing a secret that also offer phony "free trials" (http://www.webdamsolutions.com/trial/) where you make it look like a person only has to fill in their info to get a trial, only to get told someone will "contact you".  And the fact that you can offer a free trial once again tells me how simple it would be to give pricing if you wanted to.  That means someone can turn an account on in 30 seconds.

[ZZZ 135]

Hi Melissa,

So for a private user such as me, I still have no idea if your software solution is £10 or £10,000. So give some reason why I should spend my time looking any further?

Best regards

Chris

 

You shouldn't.  Nor should you even if you were a corporate user for a simple hosted offering such as this.  You have more valuable things to do with your time.  Thanks for bringing this up, it is a big pet peeve of mine and I literally try to steer away from purchasing software for my company* that play these games.  My other big pet peeve is software companies that don't have user forums.  That's another big warning sign.  Usually means they want to contain info and are afraid of public discussions about their products.

 

*I am talking about simple hosted offerings.  I have no problem with not giving pricing for complex software that has tons of options and requires network config etc.

[ZZZ 135]

- Unbeatable price. If you need to use Daminion to manage your home images and videos we offer an unbeatable price: $199 for Daminion Home Server (fixed price). $1k for Daminion Server Pro. Plus you pay once, no endless monthly payments.

- Controlled access to your image archive. For example, users with Viewer role can only search, view, and export media documents, but can't edit or remove them.

- Live project, live community. We are involved in Digital Asset Management market since 1999, and have an active community of users.

 

Awesome post.  If I was in the market for this for my business you (and your website) just made it super easy for me to make a decision and make a purchase.  And you've got a user forum too.  I could visit your website and purchase your software and be testing it long before I could get someone from Melissa's company to call me back to "discuss pricing".