Transcription
Today we're talking about the amazing app Eagle, which is like a digital asset management program for your Mac, but super simplified. Runs super smooth, and it's just a must-have for any kind of visual artist, any kind of designer. It's awesome.
My name is Martin, and I run a site called RAB is, where we showcase the best of the best in visual art and designs. Over the years, I've looked at many DAM-style apps, and many of them are super bloated. These big enterprise solutions, and the only other real alternative for consumers that we used to have was Adobe Bridge, which is like having a virus installed on your computer. So when I discovered Eagle, it was the breath of fresh air that I can recommend to everybody. It's super fast, and it has some tricks up its sleeve that I'm excited to show you.
Let's start with a high-level overview of the app. So here I have the main app up on the screen. I can take the zoom level down here a little bit, and here I have a showcase folder for you, just filled with assets that we can take a look at. First and foremost, over on the left sidebar here, we've got some overarching categories and some extra functionality. We've got smart folders here, which is a collection of different assets, and then we've got your main folders here. Your main folders can be nested, they can change icons and colors, and they will display how many assets you have within the individual category.
Here in the middle, we've got the actual asset view, which contains our assets that we've collected. And here on the right, we've got some info about the individual asset, including color scheme, name, tags, notes, the URL that it might have been snatched from, depending on how you got the metadata down, and some folders that it pertains to. You can see that it can pertain to many different folders.
In the main window here, I've prepared some demo assets for you, just to showcase some main functionality. We've got a couple of videos, we've got some GIFs, and we've got some 3D objects. So as you can see, as I scrub across this video here, we get a preview of the video. As I scrub across, works with this one here too. As we mouse over GIF, it starts playing, and here too. And as we double-click on a 3D object, we actually get a preview where we can take a look at the 3D item and spin around it.
Up here at the top, we've got some extra filtering options. We can filter by color, and we can even change the range to define what it means to be a part of a color to really drill down. We can filter by tags, folders, EXIF camera data, even the crop of the individual image or video. There's of course ratings and many more.
As a visual artist, you know firsthand the importance of being able to turn around the project fast. And I see my personal library as kind of my personal competitive advantage that lets me stand on the shoulders of giants and get inspiration and get a project started really quick. It also allows me to organize my own projects to use them as stepping stones for new projects. So if I finish a project and I see that there's assets in there that can be reused for other projects, I make sure to screenshot them or save them into Eagle so that later on I have them right at my fingertips. I don't have to go to Figma, for example, and start digging through old files to find the reusable assets. I have them right there.
And the key way that I gather inspiration is by taking the spark of the inspiration and re-utilizing it when it strikes. So at the start of a project, I actually look at my personal Eagle database for inspiration instead of going out there and spending a bunch of time on finding individual inspiration. And that usually gets me 50 to 80% of the way there to the beginning of the project, for example, setting up a mood board or a stylescape, just from assets that I already have collected from when inspiration strikes. So I'll be browsing some kind of travel website and I see a nice way that they've set up the UI or something. I take a screenshot of that, make sure the metadata is filled out, put it into Eagle.
Now, Eagle is built around this library structure, and that's the reason why it can do these advanced things like color filtering and all the metadata. I personally use two libraries: a video library and a still frame library. So if I click Command L, I can choose between those two libraries. Here, you can still drag and drop assets right out of the app, so don't worry about getting locked into some kind of proprietary library format.
For the main asset view, we have four main views, and they go as follows. This is "All Option 2," which is the justified way of viewing your assets. There's also "All Option 1," which is the waterfall, which is more of your traditional masonry view. Then there's "All Option 3," which is your grid, so some wasted space here as it tries to put everything into a grid. And then there's the list view that makes it easy for you to sort by metadata over here.
An additional use case for me is to sort my mock-up packs, so products that I've bought in the past to have them handy instead of trying to deal with big PSDs or trying to find the things that you've purchased in the past. I take a screenshot here of the hero images of the individual mock-up pack, and that way I can quickly get to the point of finding which mock-up would work for the individual product and then start utilizing it right there instead of trying to dig into huge PSD files and try and opening things and visualizing them. I have them right here at my fingertips.
Another use case is quick access to royalty-free photos. So oftentimes I find myself using the same free photos over and over again, and going to Unsplash or other stock sites and downloading them again and searching for them. It's just cumbersome. It's easier to just drag and drop them into my favorite design app. So here I just keep a library of the best of the best that I found on stock library sites to be able to use them quickly. And here, of course, I'm using the justified view, the option two, which is my favorite. It kind of maximizes space of the assets.
I just want to highlight the color filtering option here with Eagle because I think it's one of the things that makes it special, and it's a little nice way of finding, for example, the right color options. So I'll be in the middle of a project and be like, "Oh, I wish I had the right green shade for this here button, for example." So I'll go to my "All" view, I'm gonna filter by green, now make sure that the accuracy here is quite high, and then here I just have a whole bunch of green options for me to peruse through and find the perfect way to visualize the thing that I'm working on.
As you can probably tell, I'm a massive fan of this app. I think it's a no-brainer for any kind of visual artist, even for people that deal with a lot of video. It runs super smooth, it's fast. What more can you ask for?
The Eagle app has a free trial for 30 days for you to check it out and see if it's something for you. And after the 30 days, if you find that it's useful in your workflow, you pay $29.99 for a lifetime of free updates. And isn't that just a breath of fresh air in the world of subscription everything? If you use my trial link here below the video, you support the channel and the work that I do here at RAB is, and I would really appreciate it.
This has been an overview of the Eagle app for Mac, the awesome digital asset management app for your personal computer. The no-brainer purchase of the year. Go and get it today. See you next time.