Posts Tagged ‘digital’
Stock photography industry changes
Ever since Photoshelter announced it would stop selling stock on their website I’ve been looking for other stock photo licensing opportunities. I currently sell food based stock through StockFood USA and are very happy with the relationship I have with them. But I’ve been trying to find a way to get my non-food based stock images out there in a relatively painless manor. I don’t have a lot of this type of work so signing on with a traditional agency really wouldn’t work and I don’t have the time, expertise (or web traffic) to set up my own online sales engine. For a while I thought that digital railroad might be an option, oh wait, they’re liquidating. Then today I read a note on Rob Haggart’s A Photo Editor blog about a new option, ImageSpan allows content creators (like me) to publish work with the licensing terms embedded into the file. The files are then shared with aggregators like base.google.com and Adobe Stock Photos. I’ve just listed a few images with them and we’ll see how things work out. I think this could be a great opportunity to open things up for relatively low volume image producers like me. The challenge for ImageSpan (or any small stock agency) will be to break through the entrenched subscription base the big players in the industry have. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Getty and Jupiter, in fact a lot of my Stockfood stuff is sub-represented at Getty. I just like competition in the industry, it makes us all work harder.
Digital standards for photographers
RGB, CMYK, SWOP, JPG, LZW, FTP, ICC
More acronyms than a report from the federal government. If you’re in, or close to the imaging industry you’ve probably seen these and more. But what do they mean, and which ones are right for your appliction? This question and others like it have led to a group of imaging professionals and manufacturers, along with their associated trade groups, to form an ad-hoc consortium. This group is dedicated to establishing a set of best practices guidelines for working with digital images. Known as UPDIG (Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines) they have published their recommendations on everything from monitor calibration to long term storage of digital images available at www.updig.org. As much as we artists like to “march to our own beat” and to “think outside the box,” it’s nice to have a set of guidelines that we can agree on and work within. No use in re-inventing the wheel every couple of days.
Digital Asset Management
A picture may be worth a thousand words – but which words? Does the image have enough resolution for my needs? Do I have the proper rights usage? Many of our clients have large numbers of images that they work with on a regular basis. Many of them from different suppliers and in different formats. Programs such as Adobe Bridge, Apple’s Aperture and Adobe Lightroom can help manage digital assets. Even without these Digital Assett Management (DAM) products you can still take advantage of technology to help keep things under control. Using IPTC metadata, users can add keywords, copyright notices and a whole slew of other information. Most metadata tags also include the resolution of the images and creation information such as date, time and camera used. Accessing this data can be done via Photoshop, Bridge or even the Mac OS Finder using the “Get Info” command. Regardless of the DAM system you use, if you have a large number of images to keep track of, having a consistent, simple program in place is crucial.
