Experience Manager Assets versus Experience Manager Media Library

Adobe Experience Manager Assets is an integral part of the Experience Manager platform. This smooth integration is seen as a major advantage of Experience Manager and ensures consistency in content management and high productivity for content authors.

Frequently asked questions

What is Assets?

Assets is a capability of Experience Manager that allows users to manage their digital assets (images, videos, documents and audio clips) in a web-based repository. Assets includes metadata-support, renditions, the finder and the administration interface.

What is the Experience Manager Media Library?

The Experience Manager Media Library is a designated part of the Experience Manager WCM content repository where images and other shared resources are stored. The Media Library provides basic digital asset management capabilities to WCM.

What do I get from Assets that is not part of WCM?

Unique features that are only available to customers of Assets are:

• the ability to extract and edit metadata other than title, tags and description.
• the Assets admin, available from the welcome screen.
• all the workflow steps related to Digital Asset Management, such as ingestion, assets deletion, sub-asset handling, metadata extraction.
• libraries including dam in the package space.

Using these features requires a valid license of Assets.

Is Assets available as a separate Package?

No. To ease installation and deployment, all Experience Manager applications and add-ons are delivered in one single package with all functionality included. This does not imply that you have permission to use all features in the package.

I want to edit metadata of digital assets. Do I need Assets?

If you are planning to edit metadata other than title, description and tags, it is required to license Assets.

I want to use the category predicate on my website. Do I need Assets?

Yes, the category predicate is part of Assets and requires an Assets license.

I want to automatically resize images upon import. Do I need Assets?

No. Resizing and automatic workflow-driven transformation of static images as well as the ability to manage renditions are part of Experience Manager Media Library. These features do not require an Assets license.

I want to resize images using a customized image component. Do I need Assets?

The image component is part of WCM. The graphics library that is being used by the image component (but also by Assets) is part of the Experience Manager platform and does not require an Assets license.

How can I prevent my users from using Assets if I did not license Assets?

You can remove all Assets-specific workflows, components, taxonomies, options and the Assets admin from Experience Manager. Doing so prevents your users from accidentally using Assets features that you did not license.

I want to add images to a page and want to crop and resize these images. Do I need Assets?

For this use case it is not required to buy Assets, even the use of the Media Library is not required to use images on a website as the smart image component allows uploading images directly into the page.

A detailed list of features available in Assets vs Media Library

Experience Manager Assets

• Collections and lightbox
• Advanced metadata properties and management
• Adobe Asset Link (connect to Creative Cloud for enterprise)
• Experience Manager desktop app
• Processing profiles
• Adobe InDesign Server integration
• Asset templates and catalog producer framework
• Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign integration
• Multi-lingual asset management
• PIM integration
• Rights management
• Camera RAW support
• Search Facets management and configuration
• Pre-built DAM workflows (for example, photoshoot)
• Asset reporting and analytics called Insights
• 3D asset management
• Connected Assets
• Brand Portal
• Self-service access
• Browse, search, and download
• Collections and folder sharing
• Admin tools and interface
• Smart tagging
• Visual search

Media Library

• Basic metadata properties
• Tag management
• Version control
• Static renditions
• Projects, tasks, workflow authoring
• Activity stream (timeline)
• Query Builder (API)
• Marketing Cloud integration
• UI customization and extension
• Comments and annotation