San Francisco digital asset management (DAM) provider Canto just announced an integration with an Adobe desktop publishing software application.
The integration between Canto's Cumulus DAM system and Adobe's InDesign (INDD) "creates a tunnel" that will help graphic designers and artists maneuver between the platforms and "saves tremendous time without having to search a separate DAM system and download and upload files separately into INDD projects," according to Leslie Weller, Canto's director of marketing.
The feature is part of Cumulus version 10.1. Canto's V10 update came last July and included mobile updates.
"Links are preserved and assets automatically get tracked as related assets in the DAM, without leaving InDesign," Weller told CMSWire.
Data Exchange
Canto wants to speed up creative designers’ workflows by creating a direct connection from Adobe InDesign to their corporate library of assets managed in Cumulus.
Canto also updated its Cumulus web client and added capabilities for the Cumulus client-branded portals to improve and streamline the user experience in V10.1. Weller called the integration with Adobe InDesign, a tool with a large global following, "one of the most significant in our company’s history."
Cumulus InDesign Client is a software module included with a “Max" enterprise Cumulus subscription. Canto's not the first to integrate DAM with Adobe InDesign. Adobe itself offers its own digital asset management software as part of Adobe Experience Manager. It integrates with InDesign.
But Weller said the Canto DAM integration stands out because of its two-way data exchange with InDesign. It also goes beyond drag-and-drop functionality to allow users to write metadata back into their DAM system from within InDesign. Users can upload completed INDD, PDF, metadata and linked asset files back into Cumulus as a new version of the document or layout.
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Four Cumulus panels — spanning asset categories, asset records, asset previews and asset information — are available for accessing DAM features and functionality within Adobe InDesign.
"Although the integration is new," Weller told CMSWire, "Canto has learned through years of experience how customers want to use such a tool from previous, similar integrations. For example, Cumulus has an Adobe Drive Adapter to work across multiple tools including Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premier Pro and any tool that mounts to Adobe Drive. However the InDesign Client exceeds the Adobe Drive Adapter in performance, feature richness and is available as a regular InDesign plugin."
API Investment
Through the Adobe integration, users can also:
- Personalize fields they want to display
- Choose metadata they see from their list of “record view sets” to ensure the right versions of the right images are selected, stored and shared
- Revert back to older versions of an asset
- Manage files placed from a user’s computer into InDesign that are uploaded and tracked automatically as related assets when the master document is saved to Cumulus
"Canto offers the most out-of-the-box file format support of any vendor, over 300 file types," Weller said. "We are the only DAM vendor that offers every single deployment option you could want — from on-premise, to hybrid cloud, to single-tenant dedicated private cloud, and even multi-tenant SaaS cloud DAM. Cumulus is well known for its feature richness, flexibility and configuration options. It also offers one of the most mature APIs on the market."
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