Daminion

Digital asset management for file servers, NAS and the cloud

Daminion is a digital asset management system. Its users are production, marketing and design teams who want every photo, clip, document and design findable in a single place. Customers may run it on their own file servers or network-attached storage, or subscribe to a hosted service called Daminion Cloud, and the firm says more than 900 organizations worldwide use it.

Search, tags and previews

The system finds files through structured metadata, tags and filters that sort assets by image color, size, license type and other technical and descriptive values. Its AI tagging assigns keywords and categories from a controlled vocabulary that the customer sets, for images, videos and documents alike. Duplicate and look-alike detection finds near-copies of an image, and thumbnails of vector graphics, video and PDF files let people see what a file holds before they open it.

Version history and sharing

Each asset keeps a history, which lets people weigh one revision against another and return to an older file when needed. Teams and clients can collaborate inside the system, and large files such as TIFF, PSD, video and PDF can be shared by email or messaging without uploading them to a third-party cloud service. The firm says this removes the reshoots and repeat approvals that happen when people cannot find the right video or design.

Permissions, licenses and maps

Granular permissions limit each user to the files they are allowed to see, which the firm recommends for sensitive projects. The system raises alerts when an image license is due to expire, to help teams avoid using unlicensed photos by accident. Built-in geotagging places photos on a map by where they were taken, so a group of images can be found by location.

Speech and document search

Speech in video is converted to text, and text inside PDFs and other documents is indexed, so spoken or written words become searchable. According to the site, it handles over 200 audio and video formats and codecs, with MOV, MKV, MP3 and WAV among them.

Deployment choices

Daminion can be installed on-premises inside a company's network. In that setup it maps the folder structure and permissions already on the file server and works at local network speed, which the firm says keeps data behind the firewall and avoids the cost of storing large archives in the cloud. A cloud option offers zero-IT setup with automatic updates and backups, suits distributed teams, and can be combined with on-premises servers in a hybrid setup. Clients and vendors can be given secure links with scoped access.