I haven't noticed any articles discussing Digital Asset Management (DAM) best practice so I thought I'd offer my own insights...
Showing posts with label ImageAlchemy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ImageAlchemy. Show all posts
Monday, 27 May 2013
Sunday, 24 October 2010
Thumbnail search in Content Server
I received an email from Stijn about displaying image thumbnails in UCM. Content Server comes with a search results template called "thumbnail view." Stijn commented that the thumbnail view was useless because all the content items used the same thumbnail, even if they were an image. This doesn't seem very useful... fortunately UCM doesn't have to work like that. Images and PDF documents can display a graphic thumbnail, here's how...
Thumbnails come from three places. The first place is an icon matched from the dDocType metadata field on the content item. The icon is useful for helping users to quickly identify content by type, but as Stijn pointed out, it is useless for searching for a specific image. (The icons can be updated from the Configuration Manager's "Options" menu, choose "Content Types.") This is the image you see only if no other thumbnail is defined.
The second place is from IBR (InBound Refinery.) IBR is used to process and convert content to different formats and this can include the generation of thumbnail images. The thumbnail is generated at check-in so each content revision gets one thumbnail. Go to the Configuration Manager's "Options" menu and choose "File Formats" to add or set the jpeg and gif extensions to use the ImageThumbnail conversion. Then tick the "Create thumbnail only for select graphics" option on the "File Formats Wizard" page (from the Content Server "Administration" menu under "Refinery Administration".) Finally, tell IBR how to generate the thumbnails on its "Additional Renditions" page. To change the thumbnail size, go to the Admin Server's General Configuration and add ThumbnailHeight=80 and ThumbnailWidth=80 (but it only applies to new checkins - use Archiver to apply retrospectively.) IBR is required for any content processing so it is worth installing, even if just for thumbnails.
The third place is from DAM (Digital Asset Management.) DAM is an extension to UCM that can create multiple renditions of an image, including a thumbnail rendition. DAM is installed on both Content Server and IBR and it requires some third-party software to perform the conversion, such as ImageMagick and ImageAlchemy (more info here.) DAM is probably overkill if all you want is thumbnails.
One final tip - you can force any search results page to display thumbnails by adding &listTemplateId=SearchResultsThumbnail to the URL. This is useful in the contribution editor for when the user is trying to insert an image because it overrides whatever view they have configured.
Thumbnails come from three places. The first place is an icon matched from the dDocType metadata field on the content item. The icon is useful for helping users to quickly identify content by type, but as Stijn pointed out, it is useless for searching for a specific image. (The icons can be updated from the Configuration Manager's "Options" menu, choose "Content Types.") This is the image you see only if no other thumbnail is defined.
The second place is from IBR (InBound Refinery.) IBR is used to process and convert content to different formats and this can include the generation of thumbnail images. The thumbnail is generated at check-in so each content revision gets one thumbnail. Go to the Configuration Manager's "Options" menu and choose "File Formats" to add or set the jpeg and gif extensions to use the ImageThumbnail conversion. Then tick the "Create thumbnail only for select graphics" option on the "File Formats Wizard" page (from the Content Server "Administration" menu under "Refinery Administration".) Finally, tell IBR how to generate the thumbnails on its "Additional Renditions" page. To change the thumbnail size, go to the Admin Server's General Configuration and add ThumbnailHeight=80 and ThumbnailWidth=80 (but it only applies to new checkins - use Archiver to apply retrospectively.) IBR is required for any content processing so it is worth installing, even if just for thumbnails.
The third place is from DAM (Digital Asset Management.) DAM is an extension to UCM that can create multiple renditions of an image, including a thumbnail rendition. DAM is installed on both Content Server and IBR and it requires some third-party software to perform the conversion, such as ImageMagick and ImageAlchemy (more info here.) DAM is probably overkill if all you want is thumbnails.
One final tip - you can force any search results page to display thumbnails by adding &listTemplateId=SearchResultsThumbnail to the URL. This is useful in the contribution editor for when the user is trying to insert an image because it overrides whatever view they have configured.
Thursday, 25 June 2009
How to get Digital Asset Management to report image details
The Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities of UCM are powerful and kick-arse, but often misunderstood. Unfortunately it has a non-Oracle dependency that limits its effectiveness and could cause your management to shy away from implementing it. DAM is supposedly able to plug into any image conversion software but it turns out that it has a dependency on the ImageAlchemy converter. After converting an image, it asks ImageAlchemy to do a report on each image rendition - the size, filetype, dimensions etc - that cannot be reconfigured. Without ImageAlchemy that useful information is lost.
ImageAlchemy is not free - it costs thousands of dollars to purchase. If, like me, you are unable to convince the boss to purchase this non-Oracle add-on you'll find yourself relying on alternative software for conversions. Anything should work just fine - but you have no image information.
ImageAlchemy does offer a free demo version but it is crippled to only convert small images so it cannot be used. It turns out that although the ImageAlchemy demo won't convert images, it can still perform the reports; it just appends a "buy now" disclaimer to the output. If you try to use the demo with UCM, just for reporting, it works fine - except the extra disclaimer message at the end causes UCM to fail the conversion.
The solution is quite simple. Configure DAM to use whatever conversion software to generate images, but set the <$ImageAlchemy$> variable to point at a shell script. Tell the script to accept two parameters - the image filename and a report flag. The script should accept the parameters and execute the ImageAlchemy demo, but instead of just printing the output to the console, pipe the output to a file. Then get the script to output the file to the console but stop at the disclaimer. Eureka! The reporting is complete and the conversion is successful. There is one little hiccup - ImageAlchemy can't read filenames over 80 chars, so make sure your script changes the image path.
ImageAlchemy is not free - it costs thousands of dollars to purchase. If, like me, you are unable to convince the boss to purchase this non-Oracle add-on you'll find yourself relying on alternative software for conversions. Anything should work just fine - but you have no image information.
ImageAlchemy does offer a free demo version but it is crippled to only convert small images so it cannot be used. It turns out that although the ImageAlchemy demo won't convert images, it can still perform the reports; it just appends a "buy now" disclaimer to the output. If you try to use the demo with UCM, just for reporting, it works fine - except the extra disclaimer message at the end causes UCM to fail the conversion.
The solution is quite simple. Configure DAM to use whatever conversion software to generate images, but set the <$ImageAlchemy$> variable to point at a shell script. Tell the script to accept two parameters - the image filename and a report flag. The script should accept the parameters and execute the ImageAlchemy demo, but instead of just printing the output to the console, pipe the output to a file. Then get the script to output the file to the console but stop at the disclaimer. Eureka! The reporting is complete and the conversion is successful. There is one little hiccup - ImageAlchemy can't read filenames over 80 chars, so make sure your script changes the image path.
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