What is Portfolio?

Portfolio belongs to a class of software known as Digital Asset Managers (DAM). DAM software (feel free to call it that) basically organizes, keeps track of, doles out access to and stores information about digital files such as images, sounds, video and so on. If we imagine our digital image collection as a collection of books, Portfolio is the shelving, sorting, circulation and filing system.

Just like a card catalog, Portfolio also maintains information about its collection which is called meta-data (because it's data about the data-or images-in the collection).Examples of meta-data are the artist's name, the medium of a work or its dimensions. Just as a card catalog can't be used to edit the books it records, Portfolio does not let you make any modifications to an image. It can only show you the image and it's accompanying metadata.

Taken together, the image and its data are called a "record", each individual piece of meta-data is known as a field. A collection of records and their accompanying fields full of metadata comprises a "database."

Reed's databases are all stored centrally on a server called "Media". This server also functions as a repository for the digital images and other assets refered to in the databases. For information on how to access a Reed database, go to "How to access a catalog". You can view thumbnails of the images in a catalog whenever you open the catalog, but if you want to view full-size images you need to mount the server's disk on your desk-top using the Chooser (OS9) or the Go menu (OSX).