Portfolio 4.0

Portfolio 4.0 is a scalable, digital media asset management tool. Boy, that was a mouthful. What it means is, this software does everything from A to Z when it comes to managing your media files and even lets you automate the process yourself.

Why do you need Portfolio 4.0? The biggest reasons are organization, growth, and asset management. We all want our businesses to grow, organization and asset management are two things that are very important in achieving that goal. Portfolio 4.0 gives you the room you need to grow, without penalizing you when you do. Portfolio 4.0 grows with you. And, for the most part, storing you digital work on a computer means storing the digital files in a folder, maybe even segregating audio, visual, text, and html files into sub folders. When you want to view one of the files, the application in which the file originated needs to be opened. With Portfolio 4.0, the only application that needs to be open is Portfolio 4.0. You can combine html, text, image, movie, and audio files all into one catalog. Instead of having to look for the files you want to view, and opening them one by one, all you need to do in Portfolio 4.0 is open the catalog. All the files in the catalog will be available for viewing.

You only need to skip through the tool bar in Portfolio 4.0 to get a glimmer of what it can do. Don't let all the options intimidate you. Portfolio has an extensive help file to explain all those options when you need it. Unless you are familiar with database type software, you will need to look around for a bit and get acquainted. Once I tried a few things, I saw that it is not too complicated at all.

While trying to get acquainted with the software, I decided the easiest way was to jump in with both feet and start a catalog. It was as easy as clicking on the catalog menu, and then add items. Each time you add an item you can set it's properties, thumbnail size, etc. You can add customized fields to each item under the administration menu, and once the item is in the catalog you can edit its fields.

You can copy data files from one catalog to another, but, like any database type application, you'll want to be sure the data fields in each of the catalogs you are copying to and from match.

There are options on the toolbar that allow you to view the catalog in three different ways. To view a thumbnail in the catalog full size, you only need to right click on it.

View Option 1 

 
View Option 2

View Option 3

Because I work on web pages, I thought it would be interesting to try out the Export to HTML option next. With my catalog on the desktop, I exported to HTML. It created the HTML file for me, and additional pages when the first one was full, naming them automatically in consecutive order and creating the links between them. It shed a whole new light on publishing a graphic library to the web. You can use their html template or create your own template, saving lots of time in html coding. You can now concentrate on creating your images and let Portfolio 4.0 handle the rest.

What you have just seen is a small portion of what Portfolio 4.0 can do. Portfolio 4.0 also supports user scripting.

For Mac, Portfolio supports AppleScript and any other OSA-compliant scripting language.
For Windows, Portfolio supports OLE Automation, which can be accessed by a number of scripting languages such as Visual Basic, Visual C , Java, etc.

You can write scripts to automate Portfolio 4.0. The scripts you write can be accessed from the scripts menu on the toolbar. They work like plugins, in that there is a special folder you put your scripts or applications in and Portfolio 4.0 makes them available through the Scripting menu so they can be applied as regular menu commands.

From the catalog menu, you can create a slideshow of the images in the gallery. The slideshow options menu lets you set up how you would like the slideshow to run, how long to stay on each image and whether or not to loop the slideshow so it runs continually instead of stopping after the first run.

You can have items in your catalog stored on different sources. For example, if you use external disks, Portfolio 4.0 will prompt you for the disk when needed. If source files have been moved or renamed, it will also prompt for those automatically. A great savings in internal hard drive space.

All in all Portfolio 4.0 rated 4 STARS for being a great media management tool, with the added advantage of being scalable at any time. You can start as a single user and move all the way to Portfolio Server 4.0 for intranets, or start right at the top depending on your needs.

As a single user of Portfolio 4.0, I was extremely pleased with the overall performance and recommend that you try it. It is available as a demo download and you can find the link for Extensis Portfolio 4.0 at the bottom of this page.

Features

• Asset Management

• Supports common bitmap formats, vector art, sound files, movie files and more

• Thumbnail previews

• You can customize how you view your catalog

• Clickable URL field

• Easy and complex search options

• Create Custom slideshows

• The ability to customize your catalogs with scripting

• You can password protect your catalogs

• Create and customize your own splash screen implemented when your catalog opens

• Share files with other Portfolio 4.0 users

• And the list goes on

System Requirements

Windows 95, 98, NT - Pentium, 32 MB of RAM
Macintosh OS 7.5.3 - 8.5 - PowerPC, 32 MB of RAM

Estimated Street Price 199.95

Try the before you buy edition, download. You can find it here at Extensis.

Copyright Vikki Olds, All rights reserved