That DAM SharePoint

Last month I went to a wedding at Breadsall Priory in Derby (yes, for those who read this weekly SharePoint Blog the one where I had the unfortunate hole appeared in my trousers). Now thousands of photographs are starting to appear of the happy event – luckily none of the hole in my trousers yet. Everybody seems to have taken photographs and videos of the couple on their big day and now all of these are appearing in various forms on Facebook, as well as being emailed around the globe. These days companies/organisations seem to have ever-increasing mounds of digital photographs. Without being able to reply on Facebook they a way of making these digital images generally available to their employees and customers.

So how useful can SharePoint be at handling large amounts of pictures and video (commonly called Digital Asset Management, or unfortunately DAM for short, hence the term ‘Dam SharePoint’)?

For those who know SharePoint (either WSS ‘available free’ or MOSS) the SharePoint features allowing you to do the following with your photographs can be useful;
1. Add metadata (properties like a drop down for ‘Guest Type’ which could include Groom/Brides Mother/Page Boy/Hanger On)
2. Create workflow (maybe automatically email all pictures of Best Man to Best Man’s parents or remove all photographs that include that hideous looking guest in the green suit)
3. Add Approval. Let the happy couple themselves approve which pictures are fit for publication
4. Add permissions. Define exactly who can see which photograph. You don’t want Auntie Joan seeing what Uncle Bill was up to.

All of these basic SharePoint document features are useful, but if you really want to get the best out of your photographs there is a terrific product available called ‘MediaRich for SharePoint’. This product not only lets you store your photographs on SharePoint (even the ones of last year’s Christmas Office Party), but also gives you some powerful options to let you manipulate the photographs. You can use it to zoom in on an area in the photograph and then automatically refocus. So you can easily crop the cute picture of that four-year old bridesmaid trying to hide under the brides dress and send it on to her mum.

MediaRich for SharePoint lets you convert your photographs instantly to over 20 different formats including PDF and Photoshop. It can also let you stretch it, make it into trendy black and white, flip it over, produce a website size version, change resolution and most useful of all sharpen the image (so you can easily get a sharp close up poster sized picture of the gravy stain on the Bride’s Father’s suit).

The powerful nature of ‘MediaRich for SharePoint’ has to be seen to see the impressive range of easy to use features. It really can help you store, search and enhance all of your company’s valuable pictures and videos.

Office Talk as well as being SharePoint specialists are European Partners for MediaRich for SharePoint. If you want to see a demonstration please email Frank Faulds (frank.faulds@office-talk.com) and tell him you read about it in Andy’s blog.

Now, on Monday night Gareth Barry is back at Villa Park with his new team so I must now go and crop him out of all the Villa photographs in my SharePoint MediaRich Library.