Canto has been a blessing so far for our organization in terms of having digital access management that is easy to use and helpful to our users to be able to access photos and templates fairly easily. Having the ability to use the facial recognition option to tie multiple assets by name or file type is very useful. One of the main business problems we had was having a location that could be accessible to the whole university along with our external partners. With Canto, we can finally curate photos for certain areas like admissions, certain colleges, etc.
Pros
tagging
facial recogition
AI tagging
Cons
better UI enhancements
improved mobile device app
robust template tool
Likelihood to Recommend
Having the ability for faculty and staff to search in a portal within Canto for photos for articles or other types of media content is very helpful. Another helpful scenario is for when clients want to simply create a one-page flyer from a template will allow us to utilize our resources to something more useful
Our office uses Canto as an image database. We have a hard time easily sharing and searching for specific photos, and Cantos folders and tagging features makes this super easy. On a daily basis we use the feature where you can create a share link that can be publicly shared and expire during a certain date or time. We also use Canto to organize event-specific photos so we can easily access them later on. It is sometimes I do not think our marketing office could live without!
Pros
Photo Tagging & Searching
Organizing Options like folders and albumns
easily allows us to share photos with non-canto users in the office
Cons
I do with we could search for colors or items in Canto, for example red shirt photos
We have a small team, but everyone needs different levels of access, I feel like there arent many levels of access as there could be
Likelihood to Recommend
Well suited for sharing photos across networks and departments, especially in a marketing and editorial setting. This is not good if you are wanting a user to just be able to view certain areas, but not everything.
This is the first time we have used a DAM at Mercy College and we need one to organize our decades old archive of photos and videos so that they can be shared across departments. Prior to this, we had been storing everything internally and relying on email sends to share photos. The easy access Canto offers us allows us to collaborate across departments easily. I also appreciate the native editing tools and integrations that make social media posts very quick.
Pros
Asset classifications
Native content editing
Shareability
Ease of use after configuration
Cons
It's been hard without a dedicated person to manage it to configure properly
It's eminently configurable, but the paradox of choices counterintuitively makes it hard to use
In platform photo editing is limited
Likelihood to Recommend
This is our first attempt at having a DAM, so having a central place for the entire organization to look for pictures is important. The sort functionality is good, but has to be configured so all personnel entering assets use the same tags. Failing that configuration, it's just as messy as using another solution. I like being able to use assets directly on social media platforms, and to see what the most recent version of an asset is quickly, but again that needs to be configured internally to work right. Canto is as powerful as you want it to be.
We use it as a DAM for our photos. This tool is intended to enable our school staff to access and download photos for marketing materials and promotions. My team manages the library as we oversee the majority of our captures.
Pros
Facial recognition (now that we resolved the bug in the system)
Cons
UI customization. Would be nice to better integrate the brand of the company using the software as well as more control over some of the out of the box features that are not used.
A more intuitive user experience. Once I train people they are able to navigate the platform reasonably well. But otherwise people have a hard time finding what they need unlike an experience on a site like Getty Images.
Better and more timely support. We had major issues with the facial recognition software after the migration. It took over a year of us asking for help and an escalation of the issue to get it resolved. We are a large customer and it was very frustrating to have our main issue ignored and slow walked to resolution.
When uploading images and going back to bulk tag photos, users do not always remember to select "Overwrite" which means content duplicates. We spend a lot of time cleaning this for people. Unless you use the tool weekly, it's not an easy piece to remember to select.
Would be fantastic to have some sort of algorithm that recognizes objects and other elements in photos to automatically add metatags to the custom field section for use in the open search field. We try to go through and tag but would be fantastic to have that happen automatically. Items like trees, leaves, car etc.
Likelihood to Recommend
For us this is suited for our global community to be able to find images for marketing materials without having to engage the creative team for assistance. We would love to use this for video as well but the storage is prohibitive.
Online database to store high resolution images for use in marketing materials and social media. Canto addressed the need for very dense files to be stored all in one place. Ease of access to multiple users across campus. As a creative professional I use Canto to download images onto my desktop to be inserted into Graphic design layouts.
Pros
Storage
User Interface
Migration
Cons
Too many emails soliciting feedback from corporate
Very expensive
Functionality- needed to select download icon in 2 different screens for image to download.
Likelihood to Recommend
Canto is well suited to store high resolution print ready images. Great feature- An outside / Freelance photographer can upload directly to Canto from a photoshoot. Often the image collection can be 200+ photos, making it easier and less steps for designer.
The first level of implementation for Canto was as a replacement for a previous photo management system. As we continue our deployment of Canto, we are transitioning into using it as our primary photo platform to support the work of designers and content managers, as well as to push photos and other creative assets out to public audiences.
Pros
Photo collection management with full metadata.
Repository of photos made available for outside users.
Cons
Some UI/UX improvements.
The portals feature is a nice start, but the design tools are limited. I wish it would function more like a CMS.
Intermediate user types. Currently, it's regular users (free) and power users ($1,000/per person/year). A user level with a lower cost and fewer administrative functions would be welcomed.
Adobe Connector should be made available for users who are not assigned as power users.
Likelihood to Recommend
Very well suited for being the primary repository of photographic assets. More limited but still useful for publicly facing photo galleries.
We use Canto in mainly in a department for solving the problem of digital asset retrieval inefficiency. Its secondary usage is to act as a hub for the entire organization to use to retrieve curated assets.
Pros
Enable digital assets to be distributed with control
Highly customizable metadata fields to suit different needs
Efficiently publish portals or webpages of curated selections
Cons
Too few useful analytics
Deduplication process is difficult to use
Video functions too slow
Likelihood to Recommend
Canto is one of the most user-friendly and feature-rich DAM software that I've used. If you are just starting out to collect assets, its many functions on customizable organizational fields would and collaboration tools are superb for marketing uses, especially for images (for videos, its functions are on the slower side). If you already have a library of assets that need organizing, it would take quite some time to upload all at once, and require a lot of effort in organizing. Although, that might be similar to moving on to any DAM software. The analytics are a bit lacking and there are some pesky bugs here and there, but overall, it seems better than a lot of other DAM system providers.
It helps us with storing our current digital archive and photographs for the school, which can be accessed by anyone with a login. We appreciate that there are tools that make the process of searching for a photo easier, for example by searching by date, category, or hashtags. We have not found another system that makes this as easy a process.
Pros
Categorizing
Tagging
Cons
Be able to use it for digitised books and publications too.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is good for a school that wants to categorise its photographs and make them available to the community, but not as an external archival system.
VU
Verified User
Administrator in Research & Development (51-200 employees)
My team uses Canto every day for our graphic design projects. It's a great media manager and has really helped us to streamline the process of sorting, tagging, and searching for photography assets. With the Adobe Creative Suite integration, we're able to import seamlessly into our signature print and digital work without having to download it to our devices. When my department first started looking for a DAM solution, we were on multiple
platforms (Google Drive, Dropbox, Internal S: Drive) and it was difficult to find anything.
Pros
Facial recognition technology helps us tag key staff automatically.
The in-tool search and tagging features are very robust, allowing us to find the specific assets we need fast.
The AI driven auto tagging is a nice addition and helps broaden what we can look for.
The ability for outside vendors to seamlessly upload content straight into the tool saves a lot of work for us.
The ability to selectively share out specific assets or folders with other departments or principals is a great way to really capitalize on our assets without creating extra work for my team.
Cons
The price point is a bit high, so I'd like to see either more features to justify that or a price drop.
The Adobe Connector interface is functional but could be a bit more drag and drop, right now it's a little clunky, if effective.
Right now you can't share collections between users, it would be great if we could do that for major projects rather than having to create a new album or tag.
Likelihood to Recommend
Canto is a really great tool for signature publications, like our annual magazine, the Minnetonka Alumni Magazine. While I oversee the design and layout, there is another staff who helps gather photos, make infographics, etc. By keeping everything in Canto, I'm able to really quickly and easily collaborate and locate the assets I need. It has been invaluable in helping my team improve our efficiency.
