Searching for Assets

OpenEdit offers several methods of searching for assets within your digital archive, allowing your searches to be as vague or specific as you want. The first, and most simple method is to browse through your assets by category.

Browsing Categories

The Category Browser is accessible from the Find Assets menu. Move your cursor over the menu, and select Browse Categories from the drop-down.

You will now see the Category Tree and some of your digital assets displayed in the Results section of the page. You can click on a category within the tree to limit the results to only assets within that category. Once you have selected the category which you are interested in, you can browse through the pages of results using the page navigation buttons above the images.

Using the Simple Search Box

The Search Box is easily accessible from any page, located on the right side of the DAM header bar.

To use the search box, simply type the terms for which you want to search, and click the magnifying glass icon (or press Enter). OpenEdit will search your assets for any matching results, and display them for you in the Results area.

Using the Advanced Search Tool

You will notice after you run a search using the Simple Search Box, that the results page will now show the advanced search options in the box on the left side of the screen. The Advanced Search is also accessible directly from the Find Assets menu.

The Advanced Search tool gives you many options to narrow your search. As you can see in the below screen shot, you can limit your results by file format, color palette, image dimensions, category, and modification date. The Advanced Search tool is also completely customizable, meaning you can decide to remove some fields that you do not use, or to add new fields that better capture the meta-data you have available for your assets.

Downloading Assets

Once you have found the asset you were searching for, there are several ways to download the asset. The most obvious is to click the Download link underneath the thumbnail in the results section of the page. You can also click on a particular asset's thumbnail to see the Asset Details page. This will show you the meta-data associated with this asset, as well as give you other downloading options. In the screen shot below, you can see the links to download the original image, as well as a resized JPEG version of the image. You can also download assets through the Collection Basket, which is covered in the next section.

Collection Baskets

OpenEdit offers users a way to create customized collections of assets, called Collection Baskets. These Collection Baskets behave in a way similar to a shopping cart on an ecommerce site, by allowing you to add assets to (or remove assets from) your basket at will. However, unlike a shopping cart, you can create as many Collection Baskets as you want, give them descriptive names, and save them for later use.

Your Collection Baskets are accessed through the Basket link on the OpenEdit DAM Header bar. In the below screen shot, you can see that I have a basket called "My Stuff" which currently contains 0 assets.

Managing Your Collection Baskets

If you click on the Basket link, you will be taken to the Collection Basket Management page (see below screen shot). Here, you can create new Collection Baskets, rename existing Baskets, and download any of your Collection Baskets, in its entirety, as a zip file. Using the Collection Basket Management page is very straightforward:

• To select a different basket as your current basket, simply select the desired Collection Basket from the drop-down. Your name of your currently selected basket is displayed in the header bar.
• To delete a basket, have that basket selected, and click the Delete Basket button.
• To create a new basket, enter a name for it in the field that currently reads "new collection", then click the Add New Basket button.
• You can download single assets from your current basket by clicking the Download button corresponding to the desired asset.
• To download the entire collection as a zip file, click the Download All button at the bottom of the page.
• To remove an asset from the current basket, click the Remove button next to that asset, or use the Remove All button to clear all assets from the basket.

Adding Assets to a Collection Basket

While browsing or searching your digital assets, you will see a link below each thumbnail to "Add to Basket". Simply click this link, and that asset will be added to your current Collection Basket. Once an item is added to the basket, the link will change to "Remove from Basket". There is also a Collection Basket box for the sidebar which will display the contents of your current basket.

Voting

OpenEdit includes a system for users to rank their favorite photos using a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down voting method. The votes are displayed on the results page underneath the thumbnails. To vote for an asset, jsut click the thumbs-up or the thumbs-down icon for that thumbnail. In the below picture, you can see a few assets that have been voted on.

Once users have started voting on their favorite assets, you can choose to sort the results display by those votes. This allows you to see which assets other users like, and which assets they don't.