Canto

Canto is a digital asset management (DAM) software platform. It provides a centralized repository for all your digital files, such as images, videos, documents, graphics, and tools to manage those files. With Canto, you can upload assets, add metadata, organize them into albums/folders or by tags, and quickly search for and retrieve content. It also facilitates sharing assets with others and ensuring that everyone uses the correct, up-to-date versions. Think of it as a highly organized digital library for your company’s content, with collaboration features built in

Canto is used by a wide range of organizations, including corporate marketing teams, creative agencies, universities, nonprofits, and government departments – essentially anyone who has a lot of visual or rich media content to manage. It’s particularly favored by marketing and communications teams that need to maintain brand consistency and improve efficiency. Companies that don’t have a whole IT department dedicated to DAM often choose Canto because it’s cloud-based and relatively easy to administer. We also see smaller teams using Canto if managing media is critical to them, as well as huge global brands using it across thousands of users – it scales well for both. In short, if you have more digital assets than you can comfortably track in a regular cloud folder, and multiple people need access to those assets, you are in Canto’s target audience.

Some key features of Canto include a Central Library with structured folders and albums, AI-powered search, Smart Albums and Portals, Collaborative Commenting and Approvals, Version Control, Branding Guide features, Reporting and Analytics, and security and permissions. Additionally, Canto’s metadata handling is very flexible: you can create custom fields (e.g., product SKU, photographer name) and batch assign metadata. It also integrates with common tools – e.g., there’s an Adobe Photoshop plugin to drag images from Canto, a PowerPoint integration to insert images from Canto, etc. One more neat feature: Facial Recognition can identify the same person across photos, so you can quickly find all images of a specific individual. Overall, Canto’s features are geared to make organizing easy and retrieval instant, while keeping content secure and on-brand.

Today, Canto is cloud-based (SaaS). They host your DAM on their servers (with options for US, EU, etc., for data residency). In the past, Canto (the company) offered on-premise solutions (like Cumulus), but the current product, referred to as Canto, is primarily a web application you access via browser. This means you don’t have to install anything on your servers as Canto takes care of updates, security, backups, etc. You can access it anywhere with the internet. For organizations with specific needs, Canto can also be deployed in a private cloud or on-premises environment, but this would require a special arrangement (most clients choose the SaaS option for convenience). The standard offering includes AWS-backed cloud storage, where your files reside. It also means updates roll out regularly, which users have noted – new features appear quite often without needing a complex upgrade process on the user’s part. If you have an older on-premises Canto (Cumulus), the company encourages migration to the cloud version for enhanced functionality and ease of use.

Canto provides a feature called “Portals” for external sharing. A Portal is like a lightweight, branded website that you can create from within Canto to distribute assets. For example, you might have a Media Portal for press journalists to grab approved images, or a Distributor Portal where partners download product shots. You can customize the portal’s look and choose which assets appear there. Portals can be public and are useful for things like a public media gallery, or private if you want to restrict access. The nice thing is that when assets are updated in Canto, the portal can reflect those updates. Besides portals, you can also share individual files or selections via share links directly. These links can be password-protected and set to expire at a specific time. You can also allow or disallow downloading of original files from those links. So, in daily use: if a colleague at an external agency needs a file, you either add them as a limited user in Canto, or more commonly, send them a quick share link with the content they need. This approach ensures that you still control the content (you can revoke the link at any time) and track what’s shared. It’s much better than emailing large attachments or using separate transfer services, because it keeps things within the DAM’s purview.