Managing Digital Assets

You manage digital assets in the Digital Asset Manager, which is accessible by clicking the digital assets icon on the CQ Welcome page:

Or when working in CQ you can click the camera icon to open the Digital Asset Manager (DAM) console:

After you upload assets, you can perform the following functions:

Create folders to organize assets better.
Edit assets, including asset metadata.
Upload thumbnails.
See what pages reference an asset.
Create a version that you can restore your asset to at a later time.
View sub assets

Note

To override a binary, upload another file with the same name in to the CQ DAM administrator. Please note that metadata contained in the original file will be overwritten.

Organizing Digital Assets

All digital assets, metadata and content of Microsoft Office and PDF documents are extracted and made searchable. Search allows sophisticated filtering on assets and fully respects the proper permissions. Metadata is covered in detail in Metadata in Digital Asset Management.

CQ5 DAM supports multiple ways of organizing content. You can organize them in a hierarchical manner using folders or you can organize them in an unordered, adhoc manner, using for example tags. Users can edit tags in the DAM Asset Editor where sub-assets, renditions, and metadata are displayed.

Creating Folders

When organizing a collection of assets, for example, all Nature images, you can create folders to keep them together. This is purely organizational.

To create a new folder:

Navigate to the place in your digital assets folder that you want to create a new folder.
In the menu, click the arrow by New... then select New Folder....
In the Title field, type the name of the folder. By default, CQ DAM uses the title you type as the name. You can specify another name (The name is what appears in the Websites tab list).
Click Create. Your folder appears in the digital assets folder.

Using Tags to Organize Assets

You can use folders or tags or both to organize assets. Adding tags to assets makes them more easy to retrieve during a search. See Tagging for more information on tagging.

To add tags to an asset:

In the Digital Asset Manager, double-click the asset to open it.
In the Tags area, click the drop-down button to reveal the available tags. Select tags as appropriate to add a tag. To delete a tag, hover the mouse over the tag and click the x to delete it.
Click Save to save any tags you added.

Searching for Assets

You can search for assets in the digital asset manager by keyword, tag, file type, date, and path. To access searching in the digital asset manager, click the Search tab in the digital asset manager.

The following provides information on the search capabilities:

Fulltext	Searches the titles of the assets for the keywords you enter.
Path	Limits the search to the path you select. Select the Do not search in sub folders check box to search only in the selected folder.
Modified after/before	Limits the search to the dates you select.
File Types	Limits the search to the file types you select. Click the arrow next to the file type to select sub types.
Tags	Limits the search to the tags you select. Click the arrow next to the tag to select any sub tags.

You can also customize the search capabilities for assets by using an overlay.

Editing Assets

You edit assets (or sub-assets) in a window called the Asset Editor, which you access by doing one of the following:

Right-clicking an asset and clicking Open.
Double-clicking an asset.

You can perform the following on an asset:

edit metadata
edit tags
create and restore versions of assets
download an asset
publish an asset to Scene7
upload a thumbnail for asset types that do not support thumbnail creation

In addition, the Asset Editor provides access to the following:

any sub-assets, such as pages in a PDF
all renditions of the selected asset
reference information on what web pages an asset is used

It also provides a quick way to return to the DAM admin. Click Digital Assets in the top left corner to return to the admin page. Any other assets you have opened are also available by clicking the appropriate tab.

Note

All of the actions that you perform on assets, you can perform on sub-assets as well. To select a sub-asset, click the appropriate sub-asset in the right pane of the Asset Editor to open it.

Editing Images

Images uploaded to the repository can be resized, scaled, cropped, rotated, watermarked, thumbnailed or processed in any other form, because of the integrated graphics engine.

There are two types of editing in CQ DAM:

Interactive editing includes everything in the image editor, such as resizing, scaling, and cropping.
Non-interactive editing uses a workflow process of images to generate new renditions. For example, you could create a watermark by using this kind of workflow.

This section covers interactive editing in the Image editor.

To edit images:

1. Right-click an asset and select Open or double-click the asset to open the Asset Editor.

2. If the asset supports interactive editing, Edit appears at the bottom of the left pane. Click Edit. The Edit menu opens.

3. You can perform any of the following functions:

Crop	Click Crop to display the crop marks. Move the crop marks in or out to crop the image as desired.
Rotate	Click Rotate to move the image clockwise. Click Rotate again to rotate it again, and so on.
Resize	Move the Zoom lever to the right to make the image larger. Move the lever to the left to make the image smaller.

4. After you make changes, click OK. A rendition of the change appears in the Renditions tab. Scroll to see all the renditions.

Uploading Thumbnails

Most file formats support automatic thumbnail extraction. However, for some file formats, for example Flash animations (swf files), you need to create a thumbnail manually and upload it. CQ DAM lets you upload a thumbnail. You can also use this functionality to overwrite existing thumbnails.

To upload a thumbnail:

1. Right-click an asset and select Open or double-click the asset to open the Asset Editor.

2. On the right side of the screen, be sure the Renditions tab is selected.

3. Click Thumbnail. The Upload Thumbnail window opens.

4. Browse to the file and click OK to upload the thumbnail.

Viewing References to Assets

To view what pages include reference to a particular asset:

1. Right-click an asset and select Open or double-click the asset to open the Asset Editor.

2. On the right side of the screen, click the References tab to see a list of references for the asset.

Editing Asset Metadata

Metadata is additional information about the asset that can be searched. It is automatically extracted when you upload an image. You can edit the existing metadata or add new metadata properties to existing fields (for example, when a metadata field is blank).

Because companies need controlled and reliable metadata vocabularies, CQ DAM does not allow for adhoc adding of new metadata properties. Although authors cannot add new metadata fields for assets, developers can. See Creating New Metadata Property for Assets.

Editing metadata for an asset

To edit metadata:

1. Right-click an asset and select Open or double-click an asset to open it. The Asset Editor opens displaying all of the asset's metadata. This metadata was automatically extracted when it was uploaded (ingested) into CQ DAM.

2. Make edits to the metadata, as needed, and when completed, click Save at the bottom of the screen to save your changes. You can also click Reset to reset them to the original values.

Note

If a text field is empty, there is no existing metadata set. You can enter a value into the field and save it to add that metadata property.

Any changes to the metadata of an asset are written back to the original binary as part of its XMP data. This is done via CQ's Metadata write-back workflow. Changes made to the existing properties (such as dc:title) are overwritten and newly created properties (including custom properties like cq:tags) are added together with the schema.

XMP write-back is supported and enabled for the following platforms and file formats:

Operating Systems

Linux (Works out of the box on 32bit systems. Needs 32bit application support on 64bit systems)
Windows Server (Supports 32bit and 64bit Architecture)
Mac OS X

File Formats

JPEG
PNG
TIFF
PDF
INDD

Creating New Metadata Property for Assets

Note

Custom namespaces (like myCompany for metadata myCompany:description) must be registered in the repository/CRX. Otherwise, saving the metadata form results in an error.

You can make new metadata properties available for all assets by configuring the metadata dialog box.

Currently, metadata folders reside in /libs/dam/content/asseteditors/ and are organized as follows:

Format-specific metadata reside at the path image/format/formitems.xml: for example, image/jpeg/formitems.xml, which is used for all jpegs.
Metadata for images that do not have a more specific metadata editor reside in image/formitems.xml.

This setup lets site owners better control their metadata vocabularies.

Note

DAM metadata support namespaces (such as Dublin Core). When creating a new metadata property, each property requires a namespace, for example, dc:language, dc:title, or dc:description. These namespaces are added to the appropriate metadata file to create a new property.

To configure a new metadata property so that it is available for any assets that have not been explicitly configured otherwise:

Create /apps/dam/content/asseteditors/formitems (copy the form from /libs/dam/content/asseteditors/formitems).
Add a new control and set the name to ./namespace:property e.g, ./dam:Example.
Save your changes. After saving, all CQ DAM users can view and edit this property.

Note

Custom namespaces (like myCompany for metadata myCompany:description) must be registered in the repository/CRX. Otherwise, saving the metadata form results in an error.

Deleting Assets

To delete existing assets:

Select an asset or multiple assets by pressing Shift+click or Control+click.
Select Delete. CQ DAM asks you to confirm the action.
Click Yes to actually delete the asset, or No to abort the action.

Copying and Pasting Assets

You copy and paste assets as you would pages in CQ. To copy an asset and then paste it into another location:

Select an asset, then select Copy to copy it to the internal clipboard.
Select the location, then select Paste from the menu to paste the asset.

Note

If the original (or another file with the same name) exists in this target folder, then 1 is appended to the file suffix, for example IMG_0001.gif becomes IMG_0001.gif1.

Moving (or Renaming) Assets

The procedure for renaming and moving an asset are the same. You can perform both at the same time or perform these tasks independently.

To move and/or rename an asset:

Select an asset.

In the menu, select Move. The Move dialog opens.

The list shows references to the asset.

In the to field, navigate to or enter the target location. Click the drop-down arrow to navigate to the correct location.

If you want to rename an asset, in the Rename to field, enter a new name for the asset.

If you want CQ DAM to adjust references, so that the original assets points to the new name and/or location, make sure the checkboxes are selected.

Click Move to move or rename the asset.

Activating and Deactivating Assets

CQ does not allow you to use assets on publish that are not activated. You need to activate assets to make them available on publish.

To activate or deactivate an asset:

Select an asset or multiple assets.
Select Activate or Activate later to activate an asset. Select Deactivate or Deactivate Later to deactivate an asset. Activating or deactivating an asset later lets you schedule the action for a specific date and time and click OK. CQ DAM indicates that the asset has been activated or deactivated.

Packaging Assets

Using the Package Manager to package content is covered in detail in the Package Manager documentation. However, when packaging digital assets or installing digital asset packages, there are some important notes:

When packaging digital assets, be sure to use the correct filter definition to ensure all digital assets are included.
Before installing a digital asset package, you need to deactivate an OSGi component (and then reactivate it before using CQ).

To create a new package of digital assets:

On the CQ5 Welcome screen, click Packages.

Click Create Package.

Enter the name of your new package and the group (folder) you would like it to belong to and click OK.

Click Edit to open the package and define it.

Add a filter definition and enter the path /content/dam to include all digital assets and click OK.

You can make additional edits to the package. When ready, you can build the package to be installed on an instance. See Creating New Packages for more information.

To install a package of digital assets:

Navigate to the OSGi console at <server>:<port>/system/console/components and deactivate the WorkflowLauncher (com.day.cq.workflow.launcher.impl.WorkflowLauncherImpl.)

Caution

Deactivating the WorkflowLauncher ensures that the CQ DAM importer framework does not unintentionally manipulate the assets upon installation.

In CQ DAM, navigate to the package you want to install.

Click Install. CQ installs the package on the instance.

When installation is complete, reactivate the WorkflowLauncher in the OSGi console.

DAM Health Checker

Note

The DAM Health Checker is no longer needed in normal CQ DAM operations.

It may sometimes be needed when using other applications such as Sharepoint. If using note the following:

You may get false error readings.
Do not use the Synchronize or Delete functions.

When you upload digital assets a workflow is started to perform several tasks, including synchronizing the binaries and resulting assets between /var/dam and /content/dam. These two directories should always be synchronized, but occasionally differences can occur.

The DAM Health Checker is provided to:

List assets that exist in /var/dam, but not in /content/dam.
List binaries that exist in /content/dam, but not in /var/dam.
Allow you to synchronize items.
Allow you to delete unwanted items.

Note

Metadata is not compared.

To open and use the DAM Health Checker:

Open the Tools console.

Expand DAM in the left hand pane.

Double-click on Health Checker to open the page:

Click either:

Check Assets
To check whether every folder and file under /var/dam has a corresponding entry in /content/dam (only the existence is checked, the metadata is not compared).
For example, when entries are missing:

Note

In the example above the assets have been manually deleted so DAM already (and still) has information related to their original processing.

Check Binaries
To check whether every folder and file under /content/dam has a corresponding entry in /var/dam.
For example, when entries are missing:

Note

In the above example the folder containing the individual files is also missing, the status message reflects this.

Depending on your requirements you can now click either:

Synchronize
To recreate the missing entries.
Delete
To delete the existing entries.

The appropriate workflows will also be triggered and restarted.

Your comments are welcome.

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