May 19, 2007 by pmelcher.

I don’t understand. When images first started to appear on the internet way back in the 1990’s, photographers and agencies were up in arms about how web browser had to cache images in order to display them. It meant, and still does, that a copy of the images is downloaded into a computer, thus making everyone who sees your images, an infringer. Many tried, in vain, to find a way to display images without going through this process, even asking users to delete their cache after a visit.

That was a failed battle. Then, when Picture Search company Ditto.com launched, another segment of the photo industry raised their battle shields and even brought them to court. Obviously, when Google did the same, more people joined in. Displaying thumbnails without licensing them was, after all, a copyright infringement. Thanks to the Fair Use law, that battle was soon lost too.

Today, hundreds, if not thousands of images are continuously being stolen from either agencies or photographers’ online portfolio. Most drop their arms in despair in front of the quantity of known cases and live with this constant pain as if it was a normal part of doing business.

Yet, these are the same people asking, screaming and complaining about DRM in music. The same that downloaded free music from old Napster or the current Kazaa. They have MP3’s up the wazzoo, listening to stolen music while editing their images on hacked version of Photoshop. They cannot understand why a music company would not even let them copy ad nauseum music that they purchased legally.

There are two critical aspects at play here: one, the total lack of DRM initiative in the photo industry. Run a photo or photography DRM search in Google and you will find nothing, zero, nada, niente, zilch. There is the Plus initiative of course, but it is mostly a catalog of licensing terms, not a Digital Rights management. Maybe one day, someone, somewhere, will use it to create a photo DRM.

Second, it is the total lack group initiatives from this industry. Photographers and agencies have multiple association but not one of them has taken the initiative to start a DRM program. Everyone suffers from stolen images and ridiculous laws like Fair Use or the potential Orphan works, but yet everyone seems to believes its the others problem. Or maybe that it will fix itself.

Farmers used to go out together hunting for wolves when those came too close to their farms, yet this industry expects his neighbors to get rid of the danger. Retail stores invested a fortune into security cameras and other thief deterrent systems. Besides a hackable name and password, a visible erasable watermark, sometimes an invisible also erasable watermark, the photo industry takes little or no effort to protect their images. You would think it would be their priority number one, considering it is their livelihood.
It doesn’t make sense.

Posted in No sense, photoshop, finance | Print | No Comments »

January 12, 2007 by pmelcher.

For the upcoming week end, I thought I would share some links to a few web application I have been dying to play around with. Some are still in there infancy, others well on there way, but all our certainly a part of the evolutionary process of the FAWM project.
LightBox network : A very simple, yet efficient professional work flow management system. Mostly built for commercial stock, studio and assignment photography, this on-line application is widely used in to bridge communications between a photographer and an assigning editor. Speed, simplicity, extreme ease of use are some of the key aspect of this product that will certainly see many more releases in the future.

TrueColor: A freeware PHP based online photo editor that you can add to your website for non commercial usage. There are no specification of what you need to do to buy a license. Simple, to the point, quick, small, doesn’t replace photoshop but certainly simple and easy to use. Could be handy for a photographer on the road, using someone else’s computer, who need to do quick and simple adjustments.

Much more advanced is PIXN8 . One of the most horrible names in the industry but certainly one of the sexiest tools out there. A very advanced user interface that you can customize if you put t on your site, with a lot of option. The free trial versions has links to Flickr or Webshots to store images after you are finished, but I an sure you can change these destination to your favorite database.

FAUXTO has gone through great length to copy the user interface of Photoshop which obviously minimizes the learning curve for most users. No so sure what there business model is, if only to have an online paid version of Photoshop in the long term. again, simple, easy to use and does a what is says it will do. Nothing more, nothing less.

Thumbnail generator and Resizr : Two down and dirty simple , one function apps. Resizr can even be a firefox extension, which is useful for on the fly resizing.

One of my favorite, Myheritage.com who does a pretty good job at identifying faces. for a celebrity or spot news photographer, and with a lot of tweaks, this could be a great tool to automatically identify a subject and automatically caption an image.

All these Webdgets have one obvious drawback, is it that you have to upload your images. if you are stranded in a place with poor internet connectivity, you are all alone . Also, there might be some issues with copyright infringement as you are uploading images to some servers over which you have absolutely no control.

Finally, a great thank to one of my favorite website, Lifehacker.com who constantly post great info.

Posted in flickr, filter, photoshop, editorial | Print | No Comments »

December 20, 2006 by pmelcher.

Hard to avoid working with Photoshop if you are in this industry. And a great product too, with so many possibilities that shelves of books are available in book stores, numerous websites, classes, courses, workshops, video and soon, after the “certified” they will have a PH.D for it. My oldest son learned how to use it in school. I remember playing with my 2.5 version back in the early 90’s and having to figure it out alone, with the useful help from photographers who were doing the same. We should receive a medal from Adobe.

Anyway, I found this great tool : FAUXTO, and it is amazing. It is a proto version of an online photo enhancing tool. Of course, it is still in Beta right now but they are on the right track and soon, instead of using the 800 Lbs. gorilla that Photoshop has become, web based tools like these will allow for quick and efficient edits, either as a pay per use or subscription.
Since web browsers only handle sRGB color space, I am assuming that is the only color space available right now, but it is strong enough to enhance an image for web usage. Soon enough, color management will make it to web browsers, at least in Open Source at first.

We are getting closer to a fully web based workflow that could allow anyone one to use any computer to manage their entire workflow from start to finish. How does that help us ? Not sure as computer are going faster and space is becoming cheaper at a much faster pace than web access is improving. Web browsers are not improving very fast and offer many limitations, while broadband is not becoming neither cheaper nor faster.
Other notes:

The winners of UNICEF Photo of the Year have be announced. Not my favorite organization but always a very good selection of images.

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