A digital asset editing computer program is computer program software or other computer-executable instructions for loading, editing, or otherwise processing digital assets. One non-limiting example of a digital asset editing program is the Adobe® Photoshop® computer program, available from Adobe Systems Incorporated of San Jose, Calif. Typically, a digital asset editing program provides a graphical user interface with which a user can command the editing program to load, edit, or otherwise process a digital asset. For brevity, a digital asset editing computer program is referred to hereinafter as just an “editing program”.
A digital asset is information that can be loaded, edited, or otherwise processed by an editing program. Examples of digital assets include, but are not limited to, digital images, digital video, digital audio, digital documents, and other types of digital information. A digital asset typically conforms to a particular digital media type. One non-limiting example of a digital asset media type is the Adobe® Photoshop® Document format, also known as the .PSD format. For brevity, a digital asset is referred to hereinafter as just an “asset” and a digital asset media type is referred to hereinafter as just a “media type”.
It can difficult, tedious, and time consuming for a user to accomplish certain tasks with some editing programs. For example, to load an asset for editing in an editing program, the user typically uses a file browser application to browse through a file system file-folder hierarchy to locate the file containing the asset of interest. To find the file quickly using the file browser application, the user must remember the location in the file system file-folder hierarchy where the file is stored. Even if the user does remember the exact location, using a file browser application to locate the file can still be tedious, requiring the user to navigate through multiple levels of the file-folder hierarchy to finally arrive at the file.
The file browser application-based loading process can be even more frustrating, for example, if the user does not know or remember where in the file system the file is stored. In this situation, the user may guess at different possible storage locations and use the file browser application to navigate to each guessed location individually until the file is found. This can be frustrating to the user, for example, if the user navigates to multiple file system locations before finding the file or even overwhelming, for example, if there is a large number of files and folder the user must consider.
Further, it is often the case, that in order to find the right file using a file browser application, the user is required to recognize the file of interest by its file system file name. If the user does not know or recall the file name, then the user may resort to loading assets from different files until the asset of interest is loaded. Overall, current approaches for loading an asset for editing in an editing program are inefficient.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.