Digital Asset Management

ImageKit offers a built-in full-fledged Digital Asset Management (DAM) system. Get a single, cloud-based repository to streamline the storage, management, and distribution of product images, videos, banners, sales decks, social media and advertising graphics, and more. Level up your current asset storage to ImageKit's DAM.

ImageKit DAM provides the following features:

• Upload assets - You can upload images, videos, PSD, AI, or any file in the media library using the intuitive user interface (and also using the API). You can upload assets in bulk, drag and drop assets, or from external sources like Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, and more.
• Manage assets - Organize your assets in folders and subfolders. Create virtual collections to group assets based on your requirements. Add tags manually or use AI to categorize them. Create custom metadata fields to store additional information about the assets.
• Search assets - Search millions of assets in a fraction of a second. ImageKit DAM provides a powerful search experience, from simple auto-suggestions to advanced search queries. You can also use AI-powered visual search to find assets based on their content.
• Saved searches and bookmarks - Save your frequently used search queries and filters for quick access, and bookmark any links for easy future reference.
• Generate images via text prompt - Effortlessly create unique visuals by simply typing text within ImageKit's Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform.
• Access control and collaboration - Share assets with your team members or external stakeholders. Set permissions on folders, collections, or individual files to control who can view, edit, or delete them. Add comments to assets to provide feedback or context. Receive notifications on new comments and mentions on threads you are watching and when assets are shared with you in the Notification center.
• Publish assets - Embed videos, images, and other assets to your website or app. Create public sharable links of files, folders, or virtual collections to share with your team or external stakeholders.
• Edit assets - Remove background, crop, resize, or add basic text/image overlays with a few clicks.
• Embed Media library in your CMS - Embed ImageKit media library in your CMS or any other web application to manage assets directly from your application.
• Desktop app for DAM - Upload, browse, search, and drag and drop files to your system or applications directly from your desktop.
• History and Audit logs - View the history of all the changes made to an asset. View audit logs to see who made the changes and when.
• Backup - You can configure automatic backup of your assets to your AWS S3 bucket.
• Path policy - Define path-level configurations for custom metadata fields; modify and validate upload API request parameters, and validate media library API request parameters.

ImageKit DAM supports all kinds of files, including images, videos, PSD, AI, PDF, DOC, XLS, PPT, and others.

ImageKit DAM offers many different features, as mentioned below. However, before getting to the features and how they work, it is essential to answer a few questions about how you and your team will use the DAM and consider a few points to make the most of it.

A DAM is meant to work with both internal and external stakeholders. However, not everyone needs to log in to the DAM. We have covered some cases below.

You can add and manage users and groups from the User Management page.

• Does someone need access to upload, manage files, or share content - Add them as a user to the DAM.
• If they need a view-only access,
  • Will they need access to advanced search to find specific files? Add them as a user to the DAM.
  • Would it be okay to share a small number of files and folders using links with them without the ability to search? There is no need to add them to the DAM, as you can use Public Links. External PR agencies or marketing agencies can fall into this category.

To maintain security, follow the principle of least access. Users should start with access to nothing and then be granted access to only specific files and folders useful to them.

• Except for Account Administrators or DAM managers who need access to the entire DAM, everyone else should be added as a Media Library Restricted User.
• Add all restricted users to relevant user groups or teams, such as the Marketing, Graphics, Technology team, etc. Team members often have the exact access requirements, and using these groups makes granting access easier.
• Grant individuals or teams the lowest access level to complete their work. Access should only be given to specific folders to prevent misuse, accidental deletions, or overwrites. For example, your graphics team would want access to upload files to a folder and can be given Contribute access. But, your technology team might only need access to view these files and should be given view-only access.

As a general rule, the DAM should contain anything that should be available centrally to multiple team members or will be needed for a decent amount of time. For example, a Photoshop file that can be used to create multiple banners in the future can be stored in the DAM, and the entire graphics team will have access to it.

However, let's say you recorded some raw video footage to create a final video for your Instagram channel, and the raw videos are useless after the final video has been produced. If that's the case, then the raw footage can be omitted from the DAM, and only the final video can be uploaded to the DAM.

You can also define specific constraints on permitted file types (e.g., allowing only MP4 files in a specific folder), set maximum file size limits, or pre-process files before they are stored using upload functions within Path Policies. This prevents your storage from being cluttered with unoptimized files and ensures that all uploaded assets meet your technical standards before they are even stored.

You can set ImageKit to create unique file names to prevent accidental overwrites. Or, if you want to preserve the file names and version history, like while iterating on a banner, you can set ImageKit to create a new file version when a file with the same name is uploaded. You can also reject the file upload if a file with the same name exists in the folder where you are uploading it.

These upload settings can be enforced at the account level or modified at the time of upload. Which setting to select depends on your business requirements and workflows.

• Start by creating folders for your teams to work on. Do not upload content directly to the root of the DAM.
• Folders can be arranged in several different ways. The method you adopt should depend on how your teams work daily and which structure will make it easier for them to accomplish their goals. Here are a few options, starting with the team, the project, or the content type as the base folder.

• What will make it easier for your team to search for specific files? Do you often have to look for content associated with a specific product ID, banners associated with a specific city, or some other parameter that cannot be part of the file or folder name? If so, you can simplify the search using Custom Metadata. This allows you to associate searchable structured data with your assets, aligning with how your teams search for files.

• Different asset types require specific metadata. For example, a product image needs a Product ID, whereas a promotional banner might only require the campaign name and year. You can create custom metadata fields and use Path policies to define which fields are applicable or mandatory at the folder level. This allows you to manage diverse asset types within a single DAM while maintaining a highly organized, customized structure for each asset type.

Once your files are in use, you want to prevent accidental changes or deletions. To safeguard critical content, you can implement validate functions within Path policies to prevent unauthorized or accidental changes. These functions allow you to enforce strict rules at the folder level, effectively blocking users from deleting, renaming, or modifying high-value files. By establishing these guardrails, you ensure that core brand assets remain permanent and consistent, protecting the integrity of your library.

ImageKit offers a couple of ways to integrate the ImageKit DAM directly with your internal CMS and applications.

The Media Library widget makes it easy to integrate ImageKit DAM into your CMS or any web application. You can access all assets stored in your Media Library, along with all search and collaboration options, and insert them directly in your existing CMS or application using this widget. You can learn more about this widget here.

For more advanced custom integrations, you can also use ImageKit DAM as a headless DAM using its APIs. You can use the ImageKit API to programmatically upload, organize, search, and manage assets. You can also use the ImageKit SDKs to integrate ImageKit DAM with your application. You can find the API reference here.

ImageKit provides a native app that allows users to quickly access its Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform on Windows and MacOS and use the assets in the DAM with applications such as Photoshop, Figma, Canva, and more.

The app enables you to browse and search assets, drag and drop them in the application of your choice, create new folders, upload files and folders, and perform operations such as copying file URLs and downloading files. You can also select and open assets directly on the web platform for advanced operations. With drag-and-drop functionality, you can quickly move files between the app and other applications, ensuring a seamless workflow.

You can backup all media library assets in your S3 bucket by setting up an active backup.

Go to the backup settings page.

Here you have to enter the S3 bucket credentials with write permission.

Learn how to grant write access to an S3 bucket - https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/writing-iam-policies-how-to-grant-access-to-an-amazon-s3-bucket/

Once the settings are saved, all newly uploaded files will also be uploaded to your backup bucket.

All newly uploaded files are automatically uploaded to your backup bucket. For old files, please raise a support ticket at support@imagekit.io. Based on the number of objects, additional charges may apply.

ImageKit will overwrite the file in your backup bucket at the same location.

ImageKit will not delete the file or folder from the backup bucket.

ImageKit will not copy or move the files or folder in your backup bucket.

Using AI-powered image generation, background removal, auto-tagging, or other AI extensions using the ImageKit Editor consumes extension units. Your ImageKit plan includes a fixed amount of extension units that can be used to execute different extensions. Different extensions consume different amounts of extension units.

You can access the full list of extensions and the extension units they consume here.