Digital Asset Management for Visual Artists

This overview information is based on my presentations for the Center for the Preservation of Artist Legacies in New York, NY on Nov. 13, 2024 and April 2, 2025.

https://www.cpal-info.com/digitization-class


This is an important but often unseen aspect of analog visual artists with decades of analog work that has future market and cultural value.

Artists and their heirs are at the front line of preserving the history they lived and documented.

My perspectives on this topic draw from working with 20th century archives, visual artists, and estates with decades of historic analog content.

Themes

Important themes underlying this topic are risk management, accessibility, narratives, and preservation.

Keep In Mind

Goals, Strategies, Tactics

Archives can be dense and complex sources of information with many functions.

It’s important to be clear what to spend time and money on, what the ROI is, how perceptions of value evolve.

Numerous Applications

Visual media objects and their data can help preserve and inform institutional culture for custodians of an artist’s legacy.

Digital media objects can preserve analog objects and visual history destined for landfill, decay, or isolation.

A Digital Asset Management system facilitates making a CR “catalogue raisonné,” an overview of an artist’s entire output and history.

A Digital Asset Management system helps an institution when considering acquiring the physical content.

Digital Asset Management systems create value with narratives and accessibility.

Digital Asset Management

The idea behind Digital Asset Management systems (aka DAMs) is the Unified Field Theory of media, how all parts in a system relate to each other, in a system that is forward compatible.

These parts include: Physical and Digital Objects, Storage, Backups, Catalogs, Naming Conventions, Meta Data, Search, Directories, Vendor Systems, websites, Etc.

DAMs are a roadmap to the physical work, its context, and how it exists in the world.

Digital & Analog Content

Let’s define what this is for our purposes here.

Digital is anything stored in computer memory that we access through screens. Images files, vector files, documents, and container systems like spreadsheets, databases, and operating systems like Finder, Bridge, Lightroom.

Analog is everything that is stored in physical space that we can see and touch with our human biology. Works on paper, paper records, film, contextual materials (aka ephemera)

Coexist & Support

Digital records refer to and locate physical objects. Physical objects use digital records to help people see and understand their existence and meaning.

This active relationship is shaped by a purpose to support the people who own or work with the content. This happens at touch points, points of contact with content.

Internal & External Touch Points

Internal, Private

The people who interact with the content privately are the artist, staff, family, and heirs.

External, Public

The content that gets seen by either a select few or the public at large.

Researchers, museums, art markets, publishing

What content?

Analogue:

Artwork, finished works on paper

Context external to the object:

Process, The working materials used to make the finished work.

Ephemera, data story related to the artwork

Ephemera, things that describe the unique perspective of the artist or their culture.

Digital:

Master digital copies of analog artwork

Records

Text based docs - found by searching text intrinsic to the media

Image Based Objects - found by attached text (file names and metadata) and containers (folders) embedded or related to the media

Who is the content for?

Internal and external audiences

Facilitating appraisals and acquisitions

Catalogue raisonné

Custodial handoff

Marketing

Licensing

How is DAM Stored?

This is the software structure around the content.

It needs updating and maintenance.

After 3 - 10 years the data inside it can become unreadable.

DAM Related Software

Each one has strengths, weaknesses, overlap, and boundaries.

Always ask, who owns your data, will the container around it last indefinitely, what is the learning curve?

FileMaker - A Clairs (Apple) company

DIY or hired consultant, https://www.claris.com/partners/find-a-partner

Ask me for an example of photographer www.EllenGraham.com

Artbase.com - for “galleries, museums, collections, and artists” and merged with Artlogic.

Artlogic.net - for “galleries, artists and collections”

Artsystems.com - for “galleries, artists and collections”

Flickr.com - shared online albums with captions and comments

Finder - Apple

File Explorer - PC

Adobe Bridge, Like Finder with Metadata Options

Adobe Lightroom

DAM Related Doc Types

RTF (Rich Text Format)

Google Docs

Word

Pages

Google Sheets

Numbers

Excel

DAM Image Object Types, Common

Uncompressed: (For Master, Working, and Print Files)

.TIF

.PSD

.PSB

.PDF

.DNG

Compressed: (For Websites and Reference)

.Jpg

.Png

.PDF

DAM Motion Image Object Types

.Mov - Apple

Smaller with compression

Higher quality marginally

Easier to edit on Apple

.Mp4

International Standard

More compatible across websites and Apps

Kinds of Image Files

Source, Scans or Original Captures

Working Adjustment Layers

Flat Final, for Print or Web

Reference (FileMaker)

Image File Sizes, Common Uses

Kilobyte (KB): 1,000 bytes - For Websites and Social Media

Megabyte (MB): 1,000 kilobytes - For Master, Working, and Print Files

Gigabyte (GB): 1,000 megabytes - For Storage Devices

Terabyte (TB): 1,000 gigabytes - For Storage Devices

Image Color Spaces, Common

Adobe RGB (1998) - For Printing and Making Derivative Files

sRGB - For Digital Screens

Gray Gamna 2.2 - For B&W Images For Printing, Making Derivative Files, and Digital Screens

Data Storage Considerations

Each one has strengths, weaknesses, overlap, and boundaries.

Types:

Computer

Local hard drives

DVDs

Cloud

Apple iCloud

Google Drive

Dropbox

Box

Costs:

One time

Subscription

Costs of time, money & environmental impact

Larger files:

Take time to open and transfer

Have more cost to store and CO2 footprint

Risk Management of Data Loss from Damage & Security

Fire, Water, Theft, Virus, Ransom, Obsolete, Hacking

Local Drives

Offsite Physical Location

Cloud

Additional Accounts

Different Vendors

Who Manages Content?

The Artist Creator, Assistants, Staff, Family, Heirs

Professional archive work requires time, expertise, trust, money and learning.

With the range of expertise needed more then one person may be needed from high level to entry level.

Internal and external outsourcing and access

Geographic location of the archive

Skillsets needed: Writing and editing copy, archival preservation of media, project management, historical knowledge of the artist and their world, research, licensing, marketing, sales, accounting, tax, reproduction for print and digital publication, database maintenance, website and social media development, digital asset management

Content Institutional Knowledge

The Artist’s People who manage the data, are they scalable or lynchpins?

Direct lifetime contact with artist?

Consider making a basic guide, map, manual or screen cast for how your DAM works.

Descendants

It’s not inherently family relatives responsibility to take responsibility for an artist archive. However, digital asset management practices can make the process of transferring an artist’s work to future custodians easier and more likely.

Posthumous Artist Wishes for content objects:

Public Domain

Rights Managed

Royalty Free

Private Family Only

Sellable

Historically Relevant

Lessons from 20th century analogue film and print archives

Photographers had to create content systems to manage their growing and working archive

Alphabetically and project based

Job folders, lab folders, assignment in mail

Ephemera was kept because it was useful

Two Time Saving Tactics

iPhone Accessibility shortcut to see negative images as positives (On an iPhone with Face ID)

In Settings go to “Accessibility”

Go to the bottom of the menu and select “Accessibility Shortcut “

Select both:

_Classic Invert

_Color Filters

Then:

Swipe down from the top-right corner of the screen.

Press and hold on the short cut screen to add a short cut.

Click “+ Add a Control” Type “Accessibility” in the search field.

Now swipe down from the top-right corner of the screen, select Accessibility and activate both Classic Invert and Color Filters, turn on camera.

Note that pictures and screenshots in this mode will still be positive.

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ORC, Copy Paste

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a technology that converts text from images into digital text.

The Photos app on iPhone and destroy OS will convert any text in an image into text that can be copied and pasted into a document.