best practices series creative operations...adobe’s imaging and graphic design software. create...

CREATIVE OPERATIONS:

B E S T P R A C T I C E S S E R I E S

D I G I T A L A S S E T M A N A G E M E N T

W I T H P H O T O S H O P

I N T R O D U C T I O N 3

S T A G E S O F A S U C C E S S F U L C R E A T I V E P R O J E C T 4

K E Y E L E M E N T S : P E O P L E , P R O C E S S , T E C H N O L O G Y 5

P R A C T I C E S I N A C T I O N : B E H I N D T H E W H E E L O F A C R E A T I V E C A M P A I G N 6

P L A N N I N G : A L I G N I N G G O A L S & G E T T I N G R E A D Y 7

B E S T P R A C T I C E # 1 : B U I L D A S T R O N G M E T A D A T A S T R A T E G Y 1 0

M E T A D A T A C H E C K L I S T 1 0

B E S T P R A C T I C E # 2 : O R G A N I Z E A S S E T S F O R E A S Y E D I T I N G A N D S H A R I N G 1 1

E X E C U T I O N : A S S E T C R E A T I O N , S E L E C T I O N & E D I T I N G 1 3

B E S T P R A C T I C E # 3 : S T R E A M L I N E T H E A P P R O V A L P R O C E S S 1 4

D E L I V E R Y : F I N A L I Z E & S H A R E A S S E T S 1 9

S U M M A R Y 2 1

T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

Creative directors are faced with many new and growing challenges, including consumers’ heightened expectations regarding content, growth in the number of channels where content is consumed, increased regulatory constraints on asset usage, and the struggle to collaborate effectively with globalized teams that are often separated geographically.

With these increasing challenges, creative directors need to develop an operational mindset to ensure every move is as efficient and organized as it can be. They also need tools to support and streamline their day-to-day activities, allowing them to achieve their goals more easily.

Creative team goals:

This whitepaper introduces best practices for creative operations to help creative professionals achieve these goals and navigate the challenges of a dynamic world driven by visual content.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

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3. Ensure consistency and adherence to guidelines when working with cross-functional teams and external stakeholders.

1. Accelerate asset turnaround while maintaining high quality deliverables.

2. Align creative projects to achieve organization goals and business objectives.

4. Create relevant and engaging content that delivers dynamic, personalized experiences to customers.

T I P S & T R I C K SLearn tips and tricks to help you and your team avoid common challenges.

B E S T P R A C T I C E SDiscover creative operations best practices that you can deploy today.

P R A C T I C E S I N A C T I O NFollow along with a fictional creative team as they implement best practices to deliver a creative campaign.

D E F I N I T I O N SUnderstand key terminology used throughout the guide.

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The product, location, and objectives may be unique to each project, but a successful creative campaign is composed of three key elements:

P L A N N I N G O U T C O M E S : Project Plan & Creative DirectionClear roles & responsibilities Centralized asset repositoryAlign to organizational metadata and governance strategiesCreative campaign goals/KPIs

E X E C U T I O N O U T C O M E S :Raw and retouched assetsEdits and approvals tracked for each assetOrganized collections with metadata applied

D E L I V E R Y O U T C O M E S :Approved final assetsResponsive assets Renditions for use across channels and regionsAsset analytics

Stages of a Successful Creative Project

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Project Kick Off Ideation & Concept

Organizational Standards

Creation & Sourcing

Selection Editing Finalize Share

P L A N N I N G E X E C U T I O N D E L I V E R Y

Setting a strong foundation with advanced preparation. Putting plans in motion and working together to achieve project deliverables.

Ensuring project objectives are met and final assets are delivered on-time.

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Each stage of the project relies on three key elements working in harmony in order to be successful: People, Process, and Technology. The makeup of each element will evolve throughout the stages, but all three elements are crucial. Careful planning ensures the right resources are ready when needed.

Key Elements: People, Process, Technology

T E C H N O L O G Y Core technologies and tools needed

with appropriate accounts created and access granted.

P E O P L E Team members involved and key stakeholders

whose input is needed.

P R O C E S S The processes required to achieve the actions

that are being taken.

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P R A C T I C E S I N A C T I O N

Behind the wheel of a creative campaignAn international consumer car manufacturer is looking to launch a brand new sports sedan. The creative director of the company, Adam, is tasked with managing a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign to build awareness and drive sales for the sedan in multiple regions around the globe.

His team, located throughout North America and Europe, includes creatives, project managers, and key contractors who work together across multiple time zones and rely on effective communication to overcome physical distance.

When the campaign launches, digital assets will be shared with channel partners around the globe, each requiring renditions unique to their market.

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1In the project planning stage, the creative director meets with key stakeholders (internal and external) to define the vision and overall objectives for the project, such as a product launch involving a photo shoot. Core technologies and tools are outlined during this stage, ensuring necessary accounts are created and appropriate access is given. Planning also includes aligning team members, including contractors and external vendors, to the organization’s processes and expectations regarding asset management.

Planning: Aligning Goals & Getting Ready

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Creation & Sourcing



P E O P L E :

Creative team: Creative Director, photographer(s), designer(s), project managerInternal stakeholders: Branding, marketing, product, and sales departmentsExternal stakeholders: contractors, creative agency partners, major channel partners

P R O C E S S :

Organization-wide metadata strategy supporting asset discoverability and governance Centralized asset repositories and automated workflowsEnsure key stakeholders are aligned on campaign objectives and creative directionAssign and clarify roles and responsibilities Define assets required, including usage rights and renditions for channels and regions

T E C H N O L O G Y :

Digital Asset Management (DAM) softwareDesign software and creative desktop tools

P L A N N I N G : A L I G N I N G G O A L S & G E T T I N G R E A D Y

Plan for approvals ahead of time, ensuring key stakeholders are aware of approval processes and timelines.

D E F I N I T I O N S

Digital Asset Management (DAM)Users across an organization can store, manage, and access digital assets such as images, graphics, audio, video, and documents through a shared web interface providing a single source of truth..

Metadata In the case of digital asset management (DAM), metadata is data used to provide context and information about your digital assets like images, videos, sales collateral, etc. Metadata is a prerequisite for digital asset governance and discoverability.

T I P S & T R I C K S

Designate roles early in the kickoff meeting and assign those without a clear owner. Ensure role responsibilities are clear to each owner.

Create a list of necessary accounts and permissions to be granted. Create accounts and grant permissions now, don’t wait until they are needed.

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Our creative director, Adam, kicks off the project by meeting with all key stakeholders to define the vision and objectives for the campaign.

Once core technologies and tools are identified, the project manager ensures all accounts are created and verified, even those that are not needed until the delivery stage.

Adam’s organization uses a centralized repository for all digital assets and has an asset management strategy that includes guidelines for tagging, sharing, and storing images. These guidelines are documented and shared with all stakeholders to ensure compliance.

Individuals needed for approvals are also identified and briefed on both approval processes and essential timelines.

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Any organization that works with digital assets must ensure that those assets are easy to find, share, and track. If users are unable to find the right assets, or finding them requires time and effort, your creative operations will suffer.

A well-defined, organization-wide strategy around metadata and data governance can be applied to all projects, campaigns, and assets. Having these strategies in place helps increase overall productivity, prevent asset misuse, and significantly reduce the time spent locating assets and performing administrative tasks.

By providing the creative team with a list containing only the specific metadata needed for the project or campaign they are working on, you can keep people from feeling overwhelmed.

B E S T P R A C T I C E # 1

Build a strong metadata strategy

For example, the overall organization may have a more exhaustive list that includes less critical metadata items, but you can avoid deterring your team from applying metadata by keeping the forms short and making requirements clear.

Further refine the process by finding software that automates metadata workflows and makes it easy to incorporate metadata into your daily operations.

Metadata Standards:Jumpstart your metadata strategy by working with pre-defined industry standard schemas. Three of the most common metadata standards include International Press and Telecommunications Council (IPTC), Dublin Core, and XMP.


M E TA D ATA C H E C K L I S T Here are some common metadata fields you may wish to consider

Technical Metadata � pixels / size � color profile � ISO speed � camera make/model � aperture setting � shutter setting

Descriptive Metadata � captions, headlines � titles, keywords � location of capture � geographical settings � tone / mood � season � product model / SKU � instruction for use � campaigns used

Administrative Metadata � creation date � creation method � file type � access rights � usage rights

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P L A N N I N G : P R O J E C T K I C K O F F & C O N C E P T U A L I Z A T I O N


Organize assets for easy editing and sharingAs the number of digital assets grows, the harder it is to ensure that the right images can be found by the right people at the right time. A powerful Digital Asset Management (DAM) system can improve productivity and efficiency in managing assets.

The DAM acts as a centralized asset repository, with enhancements to make sharing resources easier and more seamless. Added features help you organize, store, search, retrieve, and manage assets, including automatic, or “smart”, tagging of assets. By employing these features, creative teams can avoid duplication, control versions, find “lost” assets, share files, and eliminate time spent focused on administrative work that could otherwise be spent on creative development.

Some organizations choose to perform initial selects before uploading images into the DAM, with the rest of the files being either discarded or stored in an archive. Alternatively, organizations may choose to upload all raw files (with only minor filtering) into DAM and then do selects in the DAM. That way all assets are under central management.

Other DAM organization best practices include:


Determine the kinds of assets that will be created and organize folders accordingly. For example: car interior, car exterior, distance, specific product features.

Tag photos according to channel. If print and web campaigns require different images, including that will save time when looking for assets later.

K E Y F E AT U R E S O F D A M :• Version Control • Permission Control • Renditions and Asset Distribution• Dynamic Assets• Automated Workflows • Digital Rights Management • Robust File Type Support• Enterprise-level Metadata Support• Industry Standard Metadata Schemas• Scalable Storage (Cloud)• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine

learning for automatic tagging, cropping, and translation

Automate basic asset management workflows to save time and cut administrative work• Perform regular maintenance • Annual data audits• Archiving policy

Define roles to manage DAM:• Owners• Custodians• Creators• Contributors • Consumers

Organize folder structure based on asset type or common use cases• Set guidelines for file names, titles,

descriptions, etc.• Use simple, clear, easily

understood language

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Adam’s organization has a DAM system that is used for all creative projects. Teams store digital assets in collections with specific access permissions, making it easy to share and distribute digital assets that are visible only to those with the necessary permissions.

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2With the Planning stage complete, all stakeholders have a clear vision of the project as well as its goals and objectives. The creative team is now ready to execute, which in this case includes a photo shoot that will result in thousands of raw digital assets.

Depending on the organization’s strategy regarding assets in the DAM, all, or only selected, raw images are then batch uploaded to the DAM. Metadata tags are applied during upload and assets are organized into collections to expedite editing, sharing and approval.

Execution: Asset Creation, Selection & Editing

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Creation & Sourcing



P E O P L E :

Creative team: Creative Director, photographer(s), designer(s), project managerInternal stakeholders: Branding, marketing, product, and sales departmentsExternal stakeholders: contractors, creative agency partners, major channel partners

P R O C E S S :

Streamline collaboration and approvals


DAM SoftwareAdobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop)Digital asset collaboration capabilities

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E X E C U T I O N : A S S E T C R E A T I O N , S E L E C T I O N & E D I T I N G

D E F I N I T I O N S

Adobe Creative CloudA set of applications and services that gives subscribers access to a collection of software used for graphic design, video editing, web development, and photography, including mobile applications and cloud services.

PhotoshopAdobe’s imaging and graphic design software. Create and enhance photographs, illustrations, and 3D artwork. Design websites and mobile apps. Edit videos, simulate real-life paintings, and more.

Adobe Experience Manager Assets Designed and built for modern marketers, Adobe Experience Manager Assets (AEM Assets) is an enterprise DAM that enables organizations to locate, edit, manage, and deliver assets effortlessly in a single platform. AEM Assets facilitates collaboration between cross-functional teams, ensures assets are compatible and compliant, integrates closely with Adobe Creative Cloud, and supports multilingual asset management as well as artificial intelligence.

Adobe Asset LinkTransform the way creatives and marketers work together by speeding up content creation. Asset Link allows teams to search, browse, and check in/out DAM assets directly in Photoshop.

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By the time Adam’s team finishes the photo shoot for the sport sedan, they have accumulated more than 5,000 photos.

The creative team takes an initial pass, discarding images with flaws and errors, before batch uploading the assets for editing into the DAM. By applying metadata and organizing assets into collections during uploading, the assets are easy to search, sort, and store.

The team then gets to work making initial edits. With Adobe Asset Link, creatives can easily access digital assets from the central repository, allowing them to discover, use, upload, and edit assets from the DAM without leaving their preferred Creative Cloud (CC) applications, such as Photoshop.

When a designer opens an asset for editing (”check out”) using Asset Link, it is automatically stored in the user's CC account. This enables them to work on this asset across different devices (leveraging storage, sync, and access on mobile devices) and share with other CC users for comments, collaboration, approvals, etc.

When the designer has completed the updates, they can save the latest version to the DAM (”check in”) and provide a version comment that will be available in the DAM.

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Provide a timeline clearly showing when each round of approvals are due.

Create collections of assets based on type or channel to keep images organized.



Streamline the Approval ProcessThe approval process can prove to be very complicated, even for small and relatively “simple” projects. As the volume of assets and number of approvals grows, the approval process can become difficult to manage and take up a considerable amount of time and resources.

When it comes to collaboration and approvals, start small. Begin by creating a basic workflow that can be built upon as needed. Using software to automate basic approval workflows and enable collaboration between stakeholders could mean the difference between delivering a project on-time and being late to launch.

Approvals generally require rounds of feedback, a number of iterations, and lots of back-and-forth discussions. Using asset collaboration software allows collaborators to work together easily, sharing feedback, tracking changes, and seeing a full history of each asset from raw files to approved, campaign-ready edits.

Collaborators can also work within the tools they prefer — designers can work with digital assets as well as view and incorporate feedback without ever leaving their design software, while other stakeholders can leave feedback and view all comments without ever needing to download a local copy or be concerned that they are looking at an out-of-date version.

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Approved assets are “checked in” to the DAM and ready for delivery. Asset now appears “unlocked” in the DAM and the Asset Link panel in Photoshop.• Designer can add a comment during check-in

that is included in the DAM alongside the asset• Previous versions are available to view

and compare• Easily see what edits were made and revert

to a previous version if necessary

Asset Collaboration Workflow

Using the Adobe Asset Link extension, designers search for assets in the DAM without ever leaving Photoshop.• Images uploaded with metadata and

tags make them easy to find• Search using keywords and tags,

or leverage AI to find “similar images”

To begin editing, designers “check out” assets, locking them from being edited by others. The lock is easily visible to other designers with Asset Link.• DAM displays a lock icon showing the

asset has been locked, and by whom• Checked out assets automatically stored

in user’s CC account• Asset available for editing immediately,

designers can work on asset across different devices (leveraging storage, sync, and access on mobile devices)

Designers use Creative Cloud collaboration capabilities to share with other CC users to request feedback, make comments, and get approvals easily.• No need to download local copies

or worry about out-of-date versions• Comments and edits are tracked

alongside the images

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3The editing process is complete and approvals have been given. It is now time to finalize assets and create renditions. With automation in place, the creative team need only provide a single master asset in order to create all necessary renditions for delivery, based on specifications set during the planning stage.

Delivery: Finalize & Share Assets

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Creation & Sourcing



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D E L I V E R Y : F I N A L I Z E & S H A R E A S S E T S

P E O P L E :

Creative team: Creative Director, designer(s), project manager Internal stakeholders: Branding, marketing, product, and sales departmentsExternal stakeholders: major channel partners, wholesales, retailers

P R O C E S S :

Save valuable time and effort with automatic rendition creation and dynamic deliverySetting permissions for asset collections makes it easy to share the right images with the right people.Asset usage guidelines ensure assets are being used correctly, including archiving when no longer available for use.


DAM SoftwareDesign software and creative desktop toolsDigital asset collaboration capabilities

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An organized DAM with strong metadata makes it easy for everyone to find the assets they need.

A DAM that supports preset rendition rules will automatically generate assets for specific channels.

D E L I V E R Y : F I N A L I Z E & S H A R E A S S E T S


Thanks to the easy setup and control of their assets, Adam's team was able to save time on administrative tasks and create great content faster.

Despite working across multiple timezones and locations, the creative team utilized CC collaboration capabilities to track versions and check out/in resources in order to avoid duplication of efforts.

Organized collections provided detailed tracking of each asset's evolution and helped streamline the approval workflow.

With approvals in place, automated workflows in the DAM were used to support the delivery of final assets. Using preset rules, the creative team provided a single master asset and the DAM generated all necessary renditions automatically.

The finalized assets retain a complete history of edits, as well as metadata that makes them easy to search, sort, and share with internal and external stakeholders.

Together, Adam's creative team exceeded their goals and delivered an engaging, personalized experience to customers across every channel.

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S U M M A R Y

Create great content faster.

Streamline workflows.

Easy set up and control.

Save time and money.

With designers focused on creation rather than administration, it’s easier to deliver the high-quality content that customers crave.

Automated and customizable workflows keep finished projects separate from those in-progress and make it easy for teams to collaborate across departments.

Integrating Creative Cloud apps, AEM, and Adobe Stock lets creatives work within the tools they prefer while keeping everything organized and in sync.

A centralized DAM helps teams avoid duplication, control versions, find “lost” assets, and share files quickly and easily.

Click to learn more about the features and solutions discussed in this whitepaper:

Turn how you work with assets into an asset.

www.adobe.com/go/enterprise

www.adobe.com/go/aem_assets

www.adobe.com/go/assetlink

www.adobe.com/go/enterprise

www.adobe.com/go/assetlink

www.adobe.com/go/aem_assets

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