Understand lightboxes as a contributor

In this video, you will learn how to:

  • Use lightboxes in your daily work
  • Create a lightbox
  • Add assets to a lightbox
  • Collaborate with a lightbox
  • Share the contents of a lightbox
Transcript
Well, let’s go back to our little scenario here. Okay, I’ve got an assignment, I need to create something. Travel brochure, travel magazine, travel ads, whatever it happens to be. I say travel 'cause I’ve got a lot of travel pictures in here, okay? And as I’ve been searching, I’ve been finding things in various folders that I’m going to need to use, okay? There’s a company logo in the corporate assets folder that I want to use. I found an ebook in the marketing folder that I want to pull some information from. There’s photographs that I found in the photograph folder, okay? And I don’t want to have to remember where all of these are and go and download 'em later. Or I don’t even want to download 'em as I find them because then I just clutter up my desktop and make a mess of things. And then I have to still have to sort through things anyway, okay? So what I like to do in Workfront is create what’s called a light box. Now, sometimes these are called a collection. Sometimes these are called a favorites. Just depends on if you’ve used a similar DAM product before. The reason that we use light boxes is we don’t want to be moving assets around. If I take an asset from the photographs folder and create myself a new folder called “Allison’s Travel Brochure” and move stuff in there, then I’ve just moved things out of where they should be. I’ve just messed things up for everybody else who’s using the DAM, okay? Because I physically moved the asset. And of course, we don’t want to duplicate assets because I don’t need, you know, six different copies of Conrad’s headshot floating around, okay, 'cause that just gets confusing. Which one’s the good one? Which one’s the approved one? Which one is just a copy somebody made, okay? So we’re going to make a light box and it’s a way to collect our assets together for a particular project. Particular, maybe the week, the month, or something without moving or duplicating what already exists. And it’s simply going to point back to those assets in their folders, okay? And whenever I think of a light box I always think of an Amazon wishlist, okay? This is part of my actual wishlist but as you can see, you know, I’ve pulled something from pet supplies, home care, toys, groceries, okay? And they’re all part of my wishlist. I haven’t moved them from their departments and we’re in Amazon. I’ve just given myself a way to get to them quickly, okay? And that’s exactly what a light box is going to do for us. Now, light boxes are created and managed down here in this bottom left corner of the window. And you can see right now I have a light box active called “Travel Across The Globe,” okay? And active just means if I were to go in and start adding assets to a light box, this is the light box they would go to. Oh, let’s go ahead and create ourselves a new light box. So we’re just going to hit this little arrow right here so we can get our light box list and create a new one. And we’re going to call this one “Across The USA,” okay? We can put project information if we want in there. We can put description information in there if it’s related to something specific. And I’m going to go ahead and switch to the new light box. So when I go and I start looking for assets it’s automatically going to add 'em to “Across The USA.” I don’t have to worry about which one it’s being added to, okay? So you can see that name right down there in the bottom corner. Now that is there ready for us to use. So how do I add assets to light box? Perfectly, perfectly simple way. Okay, let’s go grab one of the cars first, okay? Anytime you hover over the thumbnail of an asset, you’re going to see this little grid icon and that’s your light box. Just check that, get the little check mark there, and boom that’s automatically added to our “Across The USA” light box. Makes sense we should add a Mustang to the “Across The USA” thing. Okay, let’s drop jump into our travel folder here. Let’s grab a couple things out of Orlando. Okay, so we can’t do Orlando without Epcot.
We’ll grab some flowers here and we’ll go ahead and go into Seattle and grab a picture of Pike Place.
And, oh, here’s the gum wall before they cleaned it. Okay, so you can do things individually. If you would prefer to do them in a group, you can just multi-select, hold down shift, and select. And then just use the icon up here in the toolbar to add them to the light box.
Now, here’s one thing that drives me nuts about Workfront or DAM, okay? And I don’t get to write the code, so this still exists. Notice how I’ve got this selected and they’re still selected. I would think that I could click out here and get them unselected. But what I actually need to do is to come to this selection icon here and do “None.” And that’ll unselect them for me, okay? Don’t ask me why it does that. It just does.
So you can see again that I’ve got those check marks on there to let me know that they’re in a light box. In fact, if I check that, if I click it again, I can take it out of the light box. So we’ve got, we’re back to having our light box icon right there.
Now, what if I want to see, I’m ready to see what I’ve collected? I’ve gone through a couple different folders. Oh, you know what? I need to go back.
Let’s go here, grab some logos. I forgot those were in corporate assets.
Okay, so let’s grab that one and let’s grab this little corner here.
And I’m going to use Conrad here. Okay, there we go. So I’ve got everything added to my light box for my project. Now I want to see it, okay? So all I have to do is come back down here to my light box menu and click on the name of my light box.
And now I can see the contents. I see right here under the toolbar, the name of the light box. And of course there’s detailed information here on the side, as well as an exit button when I’m done looking at the light box. Now, the toolbar up at the top, these tools actually apply to the light box itself, not the individual assets. So for example, this share icon would share the entire light box. We can duplicate a light box. This is really cool. We can print the light box. So we can even print like a contact sheet with all of the assets listed on it and some of their data. And there’s a couple of different formats you can choose from when you do that. We can delete a light box. I was doing that just before class. There were a couple too many light boxes in there, so I went through and cleaned things out. I can remove multiple items from the light box. So if I don’t want to do it one by one just by checking the little box, I can select multiples, okay? And just hit that icon and it’ll take 'em out of there for me, all in a group.
And then the last icon here is a way to export the metadata. Actually exports it as an Excel file. So all of this information over here in the details and the keywords panels would be exported, okay? Looks like I still got Conrad over there. Let’s just do a quick refresh here to get rid of him. Now, one of the nice things about light boxes is you can use them for collaboration.
So if there’s a couple of us that are working on this “Across The USA” project, we don’t all have to have our separate light boxes. We can, one of us can make a light box and we can collaborate that. We can share it with other people and give them permission to add things and take things out. So to do that, we’re going to come over here in the sidebar, the left sidebar, to collaborate and we’re just going to click on the little person icon, okay? And you can see we can add people in by email address. So I’m going to actually add Kendall and I’ve got somebody new in here.
I’ll add Greg, okay? Send them a message if I need to. Now the little check box down down here, “These users can modify.” That is what’s going to give them permissions to add to the to the light box and to delete from the light box. Otherwise, they’re just going to be able to look okay? But since the three of us are working on this project together, I want them to be able to do those things. So I’m going to go ahead and hit “Share” and they will actually receive emails letting them know that they now have access to this light box, okay? In fact, they probably will come to me after class and say, “What’s this email about?” But they should be used to it by now. If you need to modify somebody’s access, I want Greg to be able to modify things but I don’t want Kendall, I can always come in and do that or I can just remove somebody completely as a collaborator, okay? And you’ll notice that those changes are instant. You don’t have to save or anything.
Now, once somebody has been named as a collaborator on a light box, they will see that light box down here at the bottom of the list, okay? And they’ll be able to open it, like I said, depending on the permissions, they might be able to add things or delete things from the light box. But what you can also do is you can comment on the light box, okay? So if we make comments over here in the left sidebar, we’re making comments on the light box as a whole, okay? You know, “Great collection. Great collection. Need more cars. Isn’t there a Mustang museum somewhere?” Okay and those comments on the light box are going to be available, whoops.
Apparently I haven’t even given myself permissions. Okay , but anyway, you’ll be able to post that on there and then anybody who has access to the light box is going to be able to make comments on it.
See if I share it with myself, if I can post a comment now, okay.
I don’t know what’s going on. I’ll tell you guys, this is the first… it worked earlier today, so something’s going on here. But those comments will just stack up over here on the side so you’ll be able to see 'em, okay? Only going to be able to see 'em when you’re in the light box. Now, when it comes to the individual assets in the light box, this is when we can comment on the assets, and you’ll notice it over here in the details panel. There is a new field called “Type in your comment,” okay? So this will let us go in and type comments, questions, concerns about individual assets. You know, maybe you need to vote on something, whatever it happens to be. These comments are going to be visible only in this light box. So if somebody else has this 1966 Mustang folder photo in their light box, they’re not going to see my comments. They’re only going to see their comments. If I go find the car’s folder that this asset is actually in, I’m not going to see the comment, okay? So all of the comments on the light box and the assets get tied to the light box itself.
Now, like I said, we can access our light boxes down here at the bottom, okay? And if we want to switch to a different light box, all we’ve got to do is click the name of it, okay? You can see in here that a comment has been made previously, and right here on this Eiffel Tower picture we can see that a comment has been made on that, 'cause we’ve got the little bubble showing up. Okay? You’ve got your way to exit a light box right here. If you want to go back just to your main assets page. Let’s go ahead and get back into our light box here. I’m going to show you a couple other things here.
Now, we have all of these tools across the top of our light box like I talked about earlier. But also when you’re down here in the list, you’ve got some shortcut tools, okay? So the first one is going to be switched to this light box, and that means make this light box the active one. So if I were to go through and start clicking that little light box icon in the top corner of some different assets, this is the light box they’ll be added to, okay? If you’ve got multiple light boxes down there, when you click that little icon, it’s not going to ask you, it’s always going to add it to the active one. You’ve got to download the light box option here. So if you wanted to download everything that’s in there, you’re ready to go, ready to start working in InDesign or Photoshop, you’ve got that download option, then of course you can go in and edit the information about the light box whenever you need to, okay? Now, collaborating on the light box is going to allow other Workfront users or Workfront DAM users to come in and work on the light box, but you may just need to show it to somebody, or you may need to show it to somebody outside of Workfront DAM. And that’s when you’re going to use the share option, okay? Now you’ve got three options in here. Email a link, okay? And this is just simply going to email, essentially this link up here in my browser bar, to whoever I designate. So in order for somebody to see this light box, they would actually need to have a Workfront DAM login. Okay, but if I do an email download, then what I can do is I’m going to send a secure link to whoever I put in here, and it’s going to give them the ability to download every asset that’s in this light box, okay? So obviously we’re going to put some people in here. I’ll just put myself in there.
We can put a message in and one of the most important things that we want to do here is we want to set an expiration date for the availability of this download. We don’t want it to be available indefinitely, okay? So looks like, let’s see, today is the 11th, it’s bumping out to the 18th. Looks like I’ve got it set on European dates here, but that’s okay. Maybe I want to bump it out to the 20th, okay? So make sure that you get the expiration date on there. So that’s not available to someone indefinitely, okay? You can pick a download size and these are going to be custom sizes that are set up by your system administrator. So you’re always going to have the original file option but for example the glossy option here already has the resolution and the dimensions in the color space selected, okay? You can go in and change 'em if you need to but it’s preset and it’s a great way to make sure that everybody’s exporting the assets with the data that they need, okay? If you have the custom option you can come in and you can set your own specs, okay? Looks like we got a new feature right here that’ll even let us save those settings for later use.
Okay, so when somebody gets this they will get an email that has a link in it. They’ll click that link and all they’re going to see on that page is a Workfront DAM logo at the top and all of the assets on there, and they’ll have a download button, okay? They’re not going to be in your DAM system. They’re not going to be digging around in anything else. They’re only going to be able to see what was in that light box you shared with them.
Now, there is a FTP light box download option. I’m not going to cover this. It’s actually quite complicated. You need all of your FTP information and that kind of thing. So talk to your system admin, see if that is an option that you’re using.

Folders vs. lightboxes

Folders are used for storing and organizing assets. Access to assets is granted by folder. It’s possible there are more folders in Workfront DAM than you see.

Lightboxes are a tool in Workfront DAM you can use to gather and organize the assets you need. You can create a single lightbox for yourself or create a lightbox for each assignment you work on. You only see the lightboxes that you created, unless another user shares a lightbox with you or asks you to collaborate on a lightbox.

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