DF Studio has raised the bar yet again by allowing the delivery of multiple projects at once through a single Messenger. The new Multi-Messenger has been designed in response to our enterprise customers’ increasing need to send large volumes of data to their vendors and counterparts. This new feature provides a robust, yet simple, method for sharing thousands of assets at once through a single link.
Additionally, our June release brings significant improvements to user role management for business and enterprise customers by providing fine-grained controls over user’s actions.
Multi-Messenger
The Multi-Messenger, available to enterprise clients only, allows users to queue multiple projects and send them all in one convenient Messenger link. For instance, a television network may need to provide the entire coverage of a show season to the producing studio or a design agency. With the Multi-Messenger, the resulting Messenger opens one link with a table of contents containing links to each of the projects or collections. The viewer can navigate from one project to the next in one browser window. And, a Multi-Messenger can be imported through the single link, importing all assets at once and keeping all project and setup organization intact.
User Role Refinements
We’re excited to bring fine-grained control over user privileges to our business and enterprise customers. Previous releases introduced the ability to add privileges such as Delete and Asset API access through user groups. In this update, control over privileges is greatly expanded to include control over specific actions such as Folder Management, Project Management, Project Metadata, Image Edits, Image Download, and more.
Database Architecture Improvements
DF Studio regularly employs new technologies and improves its architecture to handle increasing demand and volume. This release brings a significant “under the hood” improvement to the application by segmenting database activity for asynchronous tasks (i.e. things found on the Activity page) to a separate high-performance database. This change is designed to reduce load on the primary database so it is free to handle front-end tasks such as navigating, viewing, or editing images. This upgrade will allow users’ productivity to stay at optimum speeds even when the application is processing large volumes of asynchronous work such as image processing, cold storage restores, or metadata writing.
Metadata Read/Write Improvements
- DF Studio has improved metadata extraction capabilities, now reading from XMP sidecar files, and reading/writing XMP fields. As with EXIF and IPTC metadata, this information can be viewed in the metadata pane under the “More Metadata” heading.
- Metadata changes made in DF Studio are now written back to DNG files, in addition to the types previously supported.
- For enterprises whose images may contain custom-defined IPTC or XMP metadata fields, clients may request these fields to be exposed in the metadata editor panel in DF Studio. We allow updating of XMP sidecar files or any IPTC metadata field with information entered in DF Studio.
Better RAW Preview Quality
The quality of previews generated from RAW images has improved dramatically by using camera-specific white point information when available. While we still recommend manual RAW processing using tools such as CaptureOne for best control over image color and quality, DF Studio’s RAW image processor produces very good results.
Download Improvements
- DF Studio Downloader has been updated for stability and better performance with large-volume downloads. We have verified downloads of up to 50,000 files in internal testing without any problems.
- Furthermore, the Downloader now has the added ability to preserve the setup structure from DF Studio. For example, if a gallery is subdivided into four setups called “John, Jane, Lori, Fred”, the downloaded files will be organized into the four same-named subfolders on the desktop.
Other New Developments
- The “All Projects” button has been re-introduced to the left navigation bar, reinstating the ability for users to view all of their projects outside of the Library folder structure.
- Added the ability to choose an existing folder with type-ahead search capability when creating a new collection.
- “Added Date” has been included in the list of options available for text export.
- An update has been made to the Messenger to expire a recipient’s session within 2 minutes of link expiration, which is especially important in times when access must be removed quickly. Previously, the recipient could continue viewing the Messenger until their browser session had expired.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a user interface issue where large keyword lists in the Projects and Folders settings would crash the browser.
- Fixed a user interface issue that made it difficult to view the last page of the Messenger Wizard on small screens.
- Fixed a bug with single-file downloads that produced files on the desktop without file extensions.
- Fixed a bug in the assignment creation page that prevented the folders type-ahead field from searching folder names.
- Fixed a bug in the Messenger that prevented downloads from being limited to selected images.
- Fixed a bug that erroneously displayed approvals buttons for view-only cc messenger recipients.
- Fixed a bug that continued to send out notifications to LIVE messenger recipients even after their messengers had expired.
- Fixed a bug in the Library where, during a move, child subfolders did not move with their parent folders