Resize, Crop, Change Resolution and DAM Automation.
Let’s face it: no one likes to do boring repetitive tasks. And the tasks we most dislike generally get done last. Even if they are really important to someone else.
Pretty much every organization has standard sizes or crop ratios they use for photos going on their web pages or print publications, and standard resolutions for both. So when someone working on the website needs a specific photo they do not just need to find it, they need to output it, open it in another program like Photoshop, set up one of the standard crop ratios (horizontal or vertical, 4:3, 2:3, whatever) apply the crop, then resize the image to 72 or 300 dpi or whatever your standard is for that application.
Need 10 photos for this web story? You get to do it 10 times. Maybe 20 if the editor wants a wider spectrum of choices as they create the pages. And since most things are used cross-media these days, do another set for potential print use…..
And what if you need to deliver the same image, in three different resolutions to three different people, and by the way one needs to be watermarked? Even more fun!
Remember how the premise was that computers would save us from routine work? Instead, too many times they “enable” one person do the work previously done by 4 people. But does that have to be the case?
We believe in making the machines do the grunt work, while the human does the higher level jobs. To that end we built a Workflow Engine: you build a workflow by defining what you want done, and every time you drag and drop an object onto that workflow, it gets executed. Remember earlier you needed to take 3 photos, resize them three different ways, forward them to three different work groups, and put a watermark on one of them? Set up that workflow once (takes a minute) and from then on you just drag the objects to that workflow and you go on to do something else. You get more time to do the creative part of your job, and the machine gets to be useful doing the grunt work it is happy to take care of.
Merlin DAM Automation
The Merlin Workflow Engine has two definable classes of components: Triggers and Actions. A trigger can be anything: we used drag and drop, but it could be clicking on a checkbox, or a file arriving in a folder, or any other action you can imagine within a program. An Action is what the Engine knows it is supposed to do once a Trigger event happens, and it can be (and usually is) a sequence of actions (for example crop, resize, watermark, send to DropBox or FTP). If you can describe the repetitive tasks you have to spend hours on, the Workflow Engine can automate it for you.
Let some DAM automation help you get your life back!