Growing team needed one reliable home for club history

Sporting Kansas City competes in Major League Soccer’s Western Conference, representing the Kansas City metro area at the highest level of the sport in the United States. With a constant cycle of games, press obligations, and social content demands, the club’s creative team generates and distributes a high volume of visual assets year-round. As the organization’s digital presence grew, the team identified the need for a more robust, centralized asset storage solution to protect their expanding library.

The challenge: Scaling accessibility at the speed of the game

Tyler McBee, Social Media Manager, pulls from the club’s visual archive to fuel content across Sporting KC’s social channels, sourcing the right shot from both current and past seasons. Alex Lorenzo, Staff Photographer, captures everything from game day action to behind-the-scenes moments, fielding a steady stream of image requests from across the organization. To meet these demands, they required a sophisticated system built for modern speed.

• Establishing a single source of truth. Previously, the club’s visual archive was distributed across various physical and cloud storage accounts. The team recognized that a centralized, cloud-native platform was essential to ensure every image was accessible in a single location.
• Meeting high-velocity press demands. Game day means constant movement and tight turnarounds for press releases and social posts. Alex noted the importance of agility: “We often manage urgent requests for high-profile news agencies and need to deliver professional-grade images on a moment’s notice.”
• Protecting a multi-decade legacy. To safeguard the club’s historical narrative, the team prioritized a reliable backup system. Alex recalled that the move to PhotoShelter was sparked by the desire to create a permanent, secure digital home for the club’s entire visual history.
  

“In a high-velocity sports environment, our visual identity is our most valuable currency. We realized that to maintain the standard of excellence Sporting KC is known for, we needed to move beyond simple storage. PhotoShelter has become the central nervous system for our creative department, allowing us to stop ‘searching’ and start ‘storytelling’ at the speed of the game.”

Nate Saathoff, Creative Director, Sporting Kansas City

The solution: Workflows built for game day speed

What used to involve searching through distributed drives now runs through a single platform designed for the precision a professional sports team demands. PhotoShelter gave Sporting KC the structure to organize and activate their assets instantly.

• Custom metadata for precise indexing. The team built custom filters for players, venues, and kits, turning broad searches into precise results. Pulling the exact image for a press request now takes seconds rather than minutes.

• Al auto-tagging for instant distribution. “We’ve maximized Al tools and facial recognition so players can access their photos immediately after the game,” said Alex. “It’s a massive efficiency gain for our entire workflow.”
• Al Visual Search for one-off requests. For specific needs like sponsor logos or sideline props, Al Visual Search finds assets that haven’t been manually keyworded. “When we get a unique request for something like ‘Coca-Cola,’ Al Visual Search pulls those photos instantly,” Alex shared.
• FileFlow for mobile connectivity. During games, Tyler uses FileFlow to find and download photos directly to his phone. “Being able to stay connected and move assets while I’m away from my desk has been a total game-changer,” he said.
• Simultaneous FTP workflows. The team utilizes an FTP workflow so multiple photographers can upload images simultaneously. “The process is incredibly straightforward, allowing us to get images exactly where they need to go fast,” noted Alex.

“I’m constantly mining our archive for this season and past club history. The ability to filter by player or even specific kits makes it easy to find exactly what I need to keep our content fresh and relevant.”

Tyler McBee, Social Media Manager, Sporting Kansas City

Sporting KC scores with a modern DAM that supports the whole organization

By implementing a modern DAM, the team has streamlined how they find historical moments and fulfill last-minute requests. The library grows every game, and the club’s visual heritage is fully protected.

“As we manage over 950,000 assets, the challenge wasn’t just where to put them, but how to make them actionable. By integrating Al-driven tagging and specialized FTP workflows, we’ve empowered our entire organization with instant access to our brand’s most iconic moments. It’s not just a tool; it’s a competitive advantage for our creative team and the Sporting organization as a whole.”

Nate Saathoff, Creative Director, Sporting Kansas City

“PhotoShelter allows us to provide a polished, finished product to the people who need it. I can maintain the integrity of our raw files while giving our associates direct access to the final deliverables they need to do their jobs effectively.”

Tyler McBee, Social Media Manager, Sporting Kansas City

Photos provided by Alex Lorenzo / Sporting Kansas City

Unifying the brand across a diverse campus

The University of Vermont is a top-tier, R1, research institution focusing on liberal arts, health, and the environment. It occupies a sweet spot in higher education, offering the resources of a large university with the mentorship feel of a small college. To keep their brand consistent across dozens of departments, UVM needed a better way to manage their massive photo library. The Strategic Communications team required a single system that worked for the entire campus.

The Challenge: Silos that made finding files impossible

Creative Director Cody Silfies manages the university’s visual identity and handles internal requests for photos. Days were often consumed by hunting down files scattered across different drives and inboxes. Without a central system, retrieving assets was a slow, manual process.

• Files were hidden in too many places. Images lived on shared drives or individual hard drives, so there was no single place to browse the library. If the central team needed photos from Student Life, they had to email staff and wait while someone dug through folders manually.
• Locating original high-res files required detective work. Staff often sent tiny, pixelated web images to Cody asking for the original high-resolution version. He had to hunt through thousands of photos and guess search or metadata criteria like the creation date and/or filename to find the right one.
• Six years of photos were effectively lost due to bad tagging. The labeling system was haphazard and inconsistent, making it impossible to search the archive reliably. Because nothing was tagged with a standard system, the institution’s visual history was gathering dust instead of being used.
• Separate accounts wasted money and time, and made collaboration impossible. University units like the College of Medicine and Athletics originally bought and managed their own separate systems because they needed strict privacy settings and specialized workflows. 

“We had six years of photo and video assets, and no one could find anything because nothing was tagged appropriately.”

Cody Silfies, Creative Director, University of Vermont

The Solution: Getting the whole campus on the same page

Before, the team was constantly reacting to problems and searching for lost files. Now, they operate proactively with a smart system that makes assets easy to find.

• The team built a true home base for all content. They pitched the platform as an easy, self-service system for anyone at the university. Cody notes, “Having a central location, the UVM portal, for people in the university community to find assets has been incredibly helpful.”
• Single sign-on controls who sees what. Single sign-on (SSO) lets the team ensure that “what’s private stays private, and what’s available to the public or media is ready to go,” Silfies explains. It gives them total control over permissions without manual upkeep.
• PhotoShelter AI stopped the manual digging. With AI Visual Search, users can now search for a description like “purple blouse” and instantly find the right photo. And with PeopleID, “senior leadership or media experts automatically feed into their respective galleries.”

• Smart Galleries automate public collections. By tagging a photo as ‘Stratcom Select,’ and utilizing Smart Galleries, selected/approved photos automatically appear in a public gallery without anyone moving files. The media relations team can simply open a link and grab what they need immediately—or share it with their media contacts without worrying about low-quality or incorrect photos being in the mix.

“For anything flowing through our office, I make sure it’s properly tagged so five or six years down the line we can still find it.”

Cody Silfies, Creative Director, University of Vermont

Solving the silo problem with partitioned libraries

Departments originally bought their own separate digital asset management systems because they needed control over strict privacy requirements and specialized workflows. But this setup wasted time and money, and made cross-collaboration difficult.

UVM used the PhotoShelter separate teams feature to merge everyone into one while keeping their data totally isolated:

• Privacy is guaranteed. The medical school (Larner College of Medicine) kept its own private portal within the system. No one sees their files unless invited, which satisfies potential HIPAA issues and proprietary asset requirements.
• Costs dropped immediately. As Cody Silfies noted, “You don’t need to be paying $10,000 for your one little instance” when you can share the main license for a fraction of the price.
• Contract management is simple. The “nightmare” of managing multiple renewals months in advance is gone. There is now a single agreement for the university that covers all departments.

A picture-perfect future with a connected campus

Moving to PhotoShelter fixed the structural problems between departments. By using partitioned libraries, units such as Athletics and Medicine maintain their independence and privacy without requiring the university to purchase duplicate software.

“PhotoShelter is our central repository for our premium assets. The best of the best. Not a dumping ground. The crème de la crème of what best represents UVM.”

Cody Silfies, Creative Director, University of Vermont

CCAD declares its major: Efficient asset control

Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD), a private art school founded in 1879 and located in Columbus, Ohio, educates approximately 900 full-time students. With a nine-acre campus comprising 11 buildings, its dynamic environment generates a vast quantity of visual assets. Managing this growing library presented a significant operational hurdle, prompting CCAD to seek a centralized platform that would empower its creative teams and streamline asset management.

The challenge: Digital assets out of focus

Art Director Ryan Feeney is responsible for Columbus College of Art & Design’s collection of visual assets, a core part of the institution’s daily creative and marketing operations. His team frequently encountered problems in efficiently managing this extensive library. Locating specific files quickly and collaborating on projects were persistent operational challenges.

• Disorganized and inaccessible local storage. Assets were difficult to locate as the team was “storing things in folders on a local hard drive.” According to Ryan, “The quantity of files was outrageous,” which also limited broader team access to necessary assets.
• Time-consuming asset searches. The team wasted valuable time because there was “no real way to customize the metadata or search it simply.” Their system made finding specific assets a time-consuming task, directly impacting project timelines.
• Workflow bottlenecks made collaboration slow. Asset contribution and management were slow, as the process relied heavily on a few key individuals. Without an easy way for contributors to upload assets directly, Ryan’s process became a bottleneck, which delayed project timelines and made delegation difficult.
• Lack of asset security and controlled sharing. There was inadequate protection for sensitive content and insufficient control over external sharing. This was a particular concern for “projects that we’re documenting behind NDAs,” and when needing to ensure only approved images were accessible.

“We had this terrible system of dating the asset, and then if we needed to go back and find it, we had to research what date the event took place, and then search for it that way. That just wasn’t working for us.”

Ryan Feeney, Art Director, Columbus College of Art & Design

The solution: Picture-perfect workflows

Storing, finding, and sharing visual assets was once a daily struggle for CCAD’s creative team. Implementing PhotoShelter provided a centralized, intelligent solution that directly addressed their previous pain points. This new approach enabled several critical improvements:

• Simplified access eliminated previous bottlenecks. PhotoShelter enabled various users, including departments, student workers, and freelancers, so “As we shoot something, it’s easy to have whoever’s working on it just add it directly into PhotoShelter.” This means assets didn’t “have to come to me as a director or project manager. That’s a step saved right there,” Ryan explained.
• Enhanced organization accelerated searches. Metadata features and AI-powered search dramatically improved file discoverability. Ryan found that “Being able to customize the metadata is great,” adding, “It’s really nice being able to tag our President, so all we have to do is type in her name, and we can get all of the images that she’s in.” During a major website rebuild, Ryan shared that, “The AI search function saved us, I don’t even know how many hours of trying to find the right images.”

• Streamlined collaboration made workflows smooth. Centralized access and direct uploads through PhotoShelter removed critical chokepoints. This allowed Ryan to “outsource a lot of that work to my designers too, who might not know exactly what to look for.” He confirmed, “We were able to cut out a lot of steps that way,” illustrating improved project efficiency.
• Modern security and controlled asset sharing. PhotoShelter provided essential security features, meaning “Pretty much everything we have is behind a password, except for a couple of galleries which are public facing,” Ryan stated. He emphasized, “That security is important for sure,” especially since “A lot of projects that we’re documenting are behind NDAs,” ensuring content is protected and shared appropriately.

“I can see AI Similarity Search working really well for us… We have a monthly meeting where we do website governance. We take a look at around 10 of our web pages and do an image and headline evaluation to make sure they’re still updated. This is gonna come in really handy for updating that. We’ll have a picture of our art sculpture in the middle of campus, for example. We can just use this when we need to find a new one.”

Ryan Feeney, Art Director, Columbus College of Art & Design

Graduating Summa Cum Laude in creative ops

At Columbus College of Art & Design, the hard days of messy files and long searches are gone. By finding a better way to handle their pictures and videos, CCAD now works faster and with more creative energy. The school’s teams can now easily find, use, and protect their many visual files. This helps them do their best work and share CCAD’s story.

“PhotoShelter does a really good job of being a DAM that’s tailor-fit for visuals stored by bigger institutions… It’s really straightforward and it works really well.”

Ryan Feeney, Art Director, Columbus College of Art & Design

Graduating from an outdated asset management system

Harpeth Hall is an independent, college preparatory school for girls in grades 5-12 in Nashville, Tennessee. The school serves over 720 students across its 44-acre campus. As the school’s marketing team produced more visual content, its existing system of server drives became a significant operational bottleneck. The team needed a centralized, searchable platform to manage its growing asset library and improve its creative workflow.

The challenge: A disorganized and unsearchable asset library

Jessica Bliss, the Director of Marketing and Communications, oversees an in-house team that functions like a small agency for the school. Her team’s previous workflow for managing photos relied on disconnected server drives, which made finding assets a frustrating and manual process. A subsequent move to a different asset management platform failed to solve their problems; the system was unreliable and slowed down their production schedule. The team faced several key obstacles to an efficient workflow.

• Finding the right photo took too long. Their server drives had no search tool, which was a “big suck on our time.” The team had to manually “go back and try to find specific archival photos, or photos of specific students from years ago.” 
• Their old asset management tool wasn’t unreliable. They tried another platform, but it was often unusable. This was “hampering our ability to do our jobs” and “slowing down our production schedule.” 
• Working with other teams was difficult. The marketing team had no single place to work with departments like admissions on school projects. Sharing photos and getting feedback was a disconnected process.

“When we moved forward as a school and hired our full-time photographer/videographer, it was clear to me that we also needed to take a look at how we were organizing our photos, because we knew the influx of photos was going to be greater. [Our old platform] was with a small company, and there were days when we could not use the system appropriately.”

Jessica Bliss, Director of Marketing and Communications, Harpeth Hall

The solution: One place for everything, powered by AI

Unreliable tools and time-consuming searches fractured the team’s workflow. Now, PhotoShelter provides a single, organized platform for their visual assets, improving productivity across the department. Here’s how the team uses PhotoShelter to improve its daily workflow:

• Finding photos is easy with AI search. The team finds AI Visual Search “really, really useful for us.” Instead of guessing folder names, they can “simply search for ‘girl with a microscope,’ for example,” to find exactly what they need.

• Team projects are simpler with Workspaces. The ability to share a Workspace with other teams at Harpeth was one of the key “functionalities that put PhotoShelter ahead of the rest for us.” They can share photos for a project, and other teams can access and comment on them in one place.
• Tagging students and faculty in photos is now automatic. The team uses PeopleID to automatically tag faces in their photos. Jessica calls the AI “scary good with how accurate it is.” It helps them quickly find all photos of a certain student or faculty member, which she says is “really nice.”

• Gathering photos from students is easy. For a school program that involves student travel, participants submit photos using Google Drive. The PhotoShelter integration automatically adds those photos to their library. Jessica says this was a “real bonus for us” and one of the features that “really sold PhotoShelter above some of the other platforms.”

“We use PhotoShelter as a storage and archival system for all of our assets, and we use it day-to-day… Everything that we take on campus is uploaded into the folder system in our library. And we’re going back and transferring our archival photos, too.”

Jessica Bliss, Director of Marketing and Communications, Harpeth Hall

Telling the school’s story, faster

PhotoShelter gives the Harpeth Hall marketing team the tools to manage photos and work better with other departments. Hours once lost to searching for the right image are now reclaimed. That speed allows the team to be more responsive and productive, easily handling requests from across the school. With the workflow friction gone, they can now focus on what really matters: telling the compelling stories of Harpeth Hall’s students and faculty.

“PhotoShelter has definitely made our team more efficient. We’re always looking for ways to improve our productivity. We serve our entire school, community, and departments across campus. We have a lot of requests that come in, and a lot of things that we produce every year, so to be the most responsive, in the best way that we can, helps us all. That way, we’re not bogged down for hours, searching for photos. PhotoShelter has directly impacted our ability to do that more quickly, which then helps us do our jobs better.”

Jessica Bliss, Director of Marketing and Communications, Harpeth Hall

Campus Collaboration Starts with Smarter Digital Asset Management

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, a flagship public research university, proudly supports its state with excellence in education and research. Serving a diverse community of students, faculty, and partners, the university creates an environment of innovation and collaboration to inspire change and improve lives. As the university’s visual storytelling needs grew, its outdated Digital Asset Management (DAM) system fell behind, creating inefficiencies and barriers to collaboration.

The Challenge: Old School Systems Weren’t Working Anymore

Steven Bridges, Manager of Photography for the Office of Communications and Marketing at the University of Tennessee, oversees the creation and management of branded photography for university communications, websites, and marketing materials. As his department supports a wide range of campus partners relying on visual assets, the shortcomings of their outdated DAM system quickly became a significant obstacle.

• The outdated system couldn’t keep up. Steven likened their old DAM system to “being on your grandparents’ cell phone plan, where it was free nights and weekends and no data.” Though it was a budget-friendly option, it lacked essential features and was on the verge of becoming obsolete. The system’s limited capacity for growth left the team struggling to efficiently serve their campus partners. 
• No AI to simplify search. Without AI capabilities, locating specific assets meant Steven had to manually tag images, relying solely on his foresight to anticipate search terms. He explained, “When we have over a thousand people looking for random assets, I don’t have the time to write in every possible tag they may think to look for.” The labor-intensive process left users without the results they needed, making the search for assets a frustrating task. 
• Slow and unreliable uploads. Uploading files became a drawn-out ordeal, often requiring prolonged wait times that halted productivity. Steven recounted, “Our other system was extremely slow… 30 minutes after beginning an upload, the window would still be rolling.” The time spent waiting on the system to complete uploading added another layer of inefficiency. 
• Poor accessibility for campus partners. Collaboration suffered as campus partners, from social media managers to faculty and even the Chancellor’s office found it challenging to access necessary assets. Steven noted that if campus partners faced difficulties, “they’re just going to ignore it,” resulting in underutilization of the available content. The barriers to accessing resources isolated departments and hurt university communication efforts.

“We were using another system that was basically like being on your grandparents’ cell phone plan, where it was free nights and weekends and no data. We had a cheaper plan with an older system that was becoming a dinosaur and needed to be replaced…. It was about to go unsupported. It worked great if you were just doing metadata, but it did not have the extra options or the more useful things that we needed to help us, my campus partners, and office cohorts be able to find images.”

Steven Bridges, Manager of Photography, University of Tennessee

The Solution: Better Storytelling Through Smarter Workflows

Before adopting PhotoShelter, inefficiencies bogged down workflows and limited collaboration. Now, Steven’s team enjoys streamlined processes and innovative AI tools that make asset management seamless. Here’s how PhotoShelter addressed their needs:

• AI Visual Search transformed efficiency. The introduction of AI Visual Search drastically simplified asset retrieval by eliminating sole reliance on metadata. Steven explained, “When we have over a thousand people looking for random assets, I don’t have the time to write in every possible tag they may think to look for.” Users can now quickly locate assets using visual recognition and natural language, significantly reducing the time and effort required for searches while ensuring even the most specific requests are met. 
• Simplified uploads with integrations. Integrating Photo Mechanic with PhotoShelter transformed the process from a frustrating bottleneck to a seamless experience. Steven shared, “I just select the pictures, hit the hotkeys, and pick my folder—BAM, it’s up there.” The days of waiting on a locked-up computer to complete uploads were gone, allowing the team to focus on delivering high-quality visuals without interruptions. 
• Seamless access for partners. PhotoShelter broke down barriers by providing unlimited users. Now, all faculty and staff in the university’s SSO have direct access to the visual resources available. Steven highlighted the impact: “We have everyone from campus social media accounts to the Chancellor’s office using assets to talk about the university.” 
• Canva integration simplified content creation. The Canva integration was a transformative addition, particularly for users without graphic design expertise. “For social media managers and other departments without designers, this plug-and-play Canva integration was a game changer,” Steven noted. Users effortlessly create polished graphics with university assets, saving both time and effort across the board. 
• Facial recognition enhanced archive searches. PhotoShelter’s facial recognition feature added another layer of efficiency, particularly for locating VIPs in archives. Steven explained, “If somebody just won a Nobel Peace Prize, I could put their face in and see where they may have been in our archives.” This ensured quick access to images of key individuals, reducing the time needed for extensive manual searches.

“One of the other things that has been really helpful – and I had cheers when I announced this – is the Canva integration. While our department has dedicated graphic designers, most people across campus are using Canva. Professors use it for class presentations and social media managers are making graphics. It is a staple for non-designers. For our campus partners to have this plug-and-play Canva integration is another game changer.”

Steven Bridges, Manager of Photography, University of Tennessee

A More Connected and Creative Campus

PhotoShelter transformed how the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, manages and shares its visual assets, creating ripple effects across campus. By simplifying workflows with tools like AI Visual Search, Photo Mechanic and Canva integrations, Steven Bridges and his team not only saved time but also made it easier for campus partners to access and utilize the university’s visual content. From professors creating engaging presentations to social media teams showcasing the university’s vibrant community, PhotoShelter made their jobs easier and more impactful.

“With PhotoShelter, I’m getting time back. I’m more efficient because of the ease of delivery and spending less time on metadata with AI Visual Search. Everything I’ve done has been about efficiency and ease. That’s the deal.”

Steven Bridges, Manager of Photography, University of Tennessee