On 9 Sep 2016, The Straits Times published a news about the future Tengah HDB town and this picture was printed on the front page. When I saw the red HDB logo watermark at the bottom right hand corner of the picture, I know that the Digital Asset Management (DAM) system that we implemented for them last year is going full steam ahead now.
Embedding a watermark in a picture is not a very complicated task nowadays. You may think what is so big deal about it. Your graphic designer, or even your student intern, can do it with Photoshop or other image editing software.
When your organisation wants to do a press release, you may simply ask someone, may be you are lucky to have a graphic designer, to place a logo watermark on the images to be sent to mass media.
However, it is a different story if your organisation is large, consists of many autonomous departments and thousands of staff.
- How can you ensure that the correct watermark is used?
- What if the management wants the watermark to be changed. How do you ensure that all departments use the new watermark?
Here are the challenges HDB has overcome after a DAM system is implemented.
Technical Challenges
- Embed the watermark for thousands of images automatically
- Place the watermark at the exact location (bottom right hand corner for this picture) for images of different sizes, file formats, aspect ratio and orientations automatically
- No image editing skill is required
Policy Challenges
- Standardise the various watermarks used across the entire organisation of 16 groups, 70 administrators, 5000 users
- Apply more than 100 permission settings for various image access and download rights
Now you know. Getting that red watermark printed there without mistake is more complex than what you think.