Central Asset/File management

[CC Hogan]

One of the good things, but also one of the bad things, about the Adobe suite of apps is the Creative Cloud storage system.  The upside is that is is a central point for everything, but the huge downside is that it is yet ANOTHER cloud package with a cost.

I am sure this has been addressed before, but here is my thought.

A very simply app which runs on Windows/Mac/iOS.  Basically, it is an asset manager that you can link to ANY cloud service (plus local storage).  But, on top of being available as a standalone system, it also is built into all Affinity apps on all platforms.

In my head, you would set up a series of defaults.  This would be a default cloud (like OneDrive or pCloud etc) where everything is stored unless told otherwise.  However, on each device, you would also be able to set up default local storage that overrides device defaults.

The cloud storage would, initially, be three folders:

• Assets
• Projects
• App

Assets would include as asset library (as we already have, but being on the cloud, it is shared between devices), and a resource folder which can be used for brushes, palettes and other resources that are application and device wide.  I would love to "install" a brush there and know it will be available to all my applications on all my platforms when I next launch them.

The projects folder would be simply for projects and could contain multiple files, project assets and so on.  But again, available from all apps on all platforms.

This would make moving from Desktop to iPad, for instance, much more intuitive.  

In the future, I suppose this could include the ability to share with other users, but that might be problematic depending on the cloud platform.

The APP folder is simply where the app stores any additional data needed to make sure the app on all devices are saying the same thing!  That might not be necessary, I suppose, depending on how the system works.

My main thought about this approach is that it should use existing cloud solutions rather than selling yet another one. Firstly, I think people are fed up of having multiple cloud accounts with multiple subscriptions, and secondly, it allows people the choice of working with the environment they are happy with.  Lastly, of course, I am not sure Serif want the pain and overheads of managing a cloud solution!  Managing an App solution is much more attainable.

In addition, I do have problems with jumping between apps on the iPad (it is fiddly) and how different all that works between the iPad and desktop.  Something like this would, from the user perspective, iron out all those wrinkles by making it appear to work the same everywhere.

I don't see this app needing to be integrated into a cloud system.

I am certain this has all been said before, but this is just my take.