A newly-announced partnership between ConceptShare and OpenText looks to make collaboration easier and workflow smoother thanks to new systems that allow for easier annotation and markups on documents and images, as well as a centralized storage system for easier access later.

OpenText's Media Management system allows for easy markup--the addition of lines and drawn shapes to highlight certain areas of a document or an image-giving, in turn, a simple way for multiple users to collaborate on media works with minimal risk of misunderstanding. The old adage, a picture is worth a thousand words, is no less true now, and when trying to relay discussion about a document or image with words, misunderstandings can come about.

Now, instead of depending strictly on words to get the point across, images can be appropriately augmented to more closely match the user's intent in terms of modification. "Move this thing a little more over this way" becomes a visible red circle around the "thing" in question, complete with arrow to a visible red X on the image itself, showing both just how much "a little more" is and which direction "this way" is.

The resulting comments can then be threaded, showing everyone's perspective at once and allowing for both discussion of the results and synthesis to be achieved, or for opinions to be dismissed as needed. It even offers additional features like intelligent zoom to more closely inspect finer details, image comparison systems to see the progression of time, and support for RAW files and high resolution files in general.

It's a pretty powerful system for anyone who needs to do a lot of image editing, or for document editing as well, though this probably truly shines as an image editor over its document capabilities in terms of digital asset management. But still, the sheer amount of features involved here will likely do a good job for most any collaborative venture, especially if remote users are involved. ConceptShare has already worked with a variety of firms, including Disney (News - Alert), Under Armour and Johnson & Johnson, so the variety of potential uses is impressive in its own right.

A free trial can be had at ConceptShare's web site, with more information available in terms of getting the software available from there.