For the past few months, UNC Greensboro’s University Communications (UC) shifted nearly 150,000 images of campus into Canto. This digital asset management database will provide ease for all faculty and staff to search for images, download them, and then use them across platforms.
The shift to Canto will improve the time spent creating visual assets for telling UNCG’s story across all platforms and for all audiences.
What is Canto?
Canto is a digital asset management (DAM) software. It acquired MerlinOne, UNCG’s previous DAM, in August 2024. According to Canto, “This simple yet intuitive solution gives organizations a visual way to centralize, organize, and share all their digital brand assets, empowering them to save valuable time and gain a competitive edge.”
What can be done with Canto?
Canto offers advanced AI and visual search capabilities, making it easier to find, organize, and distribute brand assets, even if the assets have little to no metadata.
Benefits include:
- The Canto layout provides a more user-friendly search.
- Enhanced organization allows you to more easily search by date, subject, category, etc. or set parameters to find what fits your project.
- The search function lets you use AI keywords and metadata keywords simultaneously.
- AI-powered facial recognition cross-references all images for photos of a specific person. This works even if they are not named in the metadata.
UC is currently building presets which let you crop photos before downloading to match the proper dimensions for the web.
Who can use it?
All UNCG employees will be able to access Canto via a single sign-on (SSO). Students may submit a form to receive a link to approved photos.
UC may work with departments to craft online portals to share selected images with people who do not have permission to access the entire database.
Media members will also be able to access updated campus photography and video using an online portal.
Where can photos be used?
Our students, faculty, and staff in action tell some of the University’s best stories through visuals. UC photographers go out regularly to capture photos for individual news stories, magazine stories, special events, campus beauty, stock of student activities, and more.
Photography can be used in many ways:
- Refresh website imagery
- Web and print news articles
- Social media announcements
- Marketing materials, both print and digital
- Campus posters and flyers
- Portfolios
As with Merlin, Canto will retain the ability to restrict a photo’s use for an embargoed publishing date (such as magazine shoots) and sensitivity (such as the presence of minors). Restrictions will lift once an embargoed date passes.
What’s next?
UC will schedule workshops for all faculty and staff interested in Canto. These can be found here and here.
Canto also has tutorials on its website, where you can learn the basics, more advanced features, and strategies to improve your content creation.
For any questions about Canto, email UC Digital Coordinator Daniella Calero at d_calero@uncg.edu.
