New Technology

AI Headshots Will Replace Real Photos

By Jim Pickerell | 402 Words | Posted 9/20/2019 | Comments
A huge percentage of ads both in print and online use portraits of someone who is using or endorsing the product or service in the add.  Shutterstock has 134,636 headshots in its collection and AdobeStock has 156,560. Many of these individual frames show 16 to 25 different headshots in the frame so the total variations is much greater. Alamy has 107,506 women and 62,011 men headshots. Getty has a total of 1,156,443 images with the keyword “headshot.”  

PhotoShelter And Greenfly Announce Strategic Partnership

By Jim Pickerell | 531 Words | Posted 9/4/2019 | Comments
Libris by PhotoShelter and Greenfly Inc. have announced a strategic partnership to empower effortless content sharing across social media. This relationship unites Libris’ digital asset management platform for visual storytelling with Greenfly’s new product, Greenfly Connect, which fully automates the last-mile content workflow for social media. With the power of Libris and Greenfly, brands can now tap into the networks of their influencers and exponentially boost their reach across social platforms.

Fake Images

By Jim Pickerell | 419 Words | Posted 6/27/2019 | Comments
When I got into photography one of the strengths of the profession was that what a viewer saw in a picture really happened. When a reporter wrote a story the reader often could not be sure that what was described was an accurate reflection of the truth. The photograph provided a level of truth. The viewer knew that what they were seeing really happened. The photograph may have been out of context with the general tenor of the overall event, but at least it was an accurate reflection of what was happening in the instant it was created.

Direct Selling Of Stock Images

By Jim Pickerell | 2110 Words | Posted 1/25/2019 | Comments
The stock agency sales model no longer works for most photographers trying to earn a portion of their living from the images they produce. Prices for the use of photos have declined so dramatically that it no longer makes much sense for professional photographers to spend much time or effort producing stock images on speculation.

Shooting Down Private Drones

By Jim Pickerell | 319 Words | Posted 10/22/2018 | Comments
The U.S. Senate has passed the FAA Reauthorization Act that will give authorities permission to shoot down private drones that are determined to be “threats.” The proposed law has sparked an outcry from civil liberties organizations.

20,000 Adobe Stock Contributors To Get CC Photography Plan Free In 2019

By Jim Pickerell | 388 Words | Posted 10/9/2018 | Comments
To incentivize Adobe Stock image and video contributors Adobe intends to provide the Creative Cloud Photography Plan (worth $120/£120), to 20,000 to them for free in 2019. You must already be an Adobe Stock contributor and either have had 300 or more photographs accepted, or made $500/£375 or more from sales.

Adobe Stock Releases Preview Crop

By Jim Pickerell | 236 Words | Posted 10/8/2018 | Comments
Designers and content marketers alike are familiar with the multi-step process of finding the perfect stock image and optimizing it for multiple dimensions to deliver a seamless experiences across platforms. Ahead of the Adobe MAX Creativity Conference that will take place in Los Angeles next week from October 15th thru 17th, Adobe Stock has released Preview Crop, a new feature that streamlines designer and social media marketer workflows.

Can Getty Repair Its Relationships With Creators?

By Jim Pickerell | 1129 Words | Posted 10/4/2018 | Comments
Recently, in a discussion with a stock photo agent the subject came up as to what it would take for Getty Images to repair its relationships with the Creator Community. I raised the issue late last year in “Why Creators Are Dissatisfied With Getty.”

Getty To Supply Amazon Echo Users With Photos

By Jim Pickerell | 520 Words | Posted 9/17/2018 | Comments
Getty Images, has agreed to make Getty’s award-winning collection of sports, news, entertainment, archival and creative images available to enhance the voice responses from Alexa on all Echo devices with a screen. Exactly how image creators will be compensated for this use of their images has not been explained.

WebPurify: New DMLA Sponsor

By Jim Pickerell | 306 Words | Posted 8/14/2018 | Comments
WebPurify, a full-service digital content moderation and review company with over 12 years experience is a new sponsor of the Digital Media Licensing Association (DMLA). The Irvine, CA based company’s mission is to maintain the quality and integrity of media libraries. WebPurify’s offers a combination of live content moderators and AI technology that can be a huge asset to stock photography websites in helping to curate, manage and moderate the copy associated with images and videos.

More on GDPR

By Jim Pickerell | 283 Words | Posted 5/23/2018 | Comments
The General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR, that goes into effect on Friday, May 25, 2018 will require companies that do business in the EU to provide a form to the companies that they are dealing with. It is not clear if it is necessary to supply such a form to each and every individual that a company deals with. A survey by CompliancePoint shows that 76% of U.S. businesses are not prepared for the enforcement deadline. (Check out previous story.)

CEPIC Congress Coming In Berlin

By Jim Pickerell | 263 Words | Posted 4/25/2018 | Comments
It’s about a month before the 2018 CEPIC Congress, the premier annual meeting of commercial still and moving image suppliers, will take place from 30 May to 1 June at the Maritim proArte hotel in Berlin. Currently 250 delegates from 150 companies and 29 countries are scheduled to attend.

Imatag: A Better Way To Protect Your Photos

By Jim Pickerell | 706 Words | Posted 4/6/2018 | Comments
A visible watermark on your photos distracts from the impact a non-watermarked photo might have and may discourage people from using it. However, the real problem arises when the photo is actually licensed to a customer. Customers are only interested in using un-watermarked photos on their websites. When someone else sees the photo, and decides they would like to use it, they can easily copy and paste it to their own site. Imatag offers photographers a better way to protect their images.

VRmeta: New Video Keywording

By Jim Pickerell | 530 Words | Posted 3/22/2018 | Comments
One of the issues these videographers face is accurately tagging their video clips so they can be easily discovered by customers. Microstocksolutions LLC has released its VRmeta® app for iOS and Android that is designed to make it easier for videographers to accurately tag their digital video and 360°/ VR clips with time and location-based metadata.

ICL vs Plus Registry

By Jim Pickerell | 1472 Words | Posted 2/13/2018 | Comments
After I published my article proposing the development of an Image Creator Locator or ICL, several readers pointed out that the Plus Registry is designed to accomplish the same goal. See here for how ICL differs from Plus in its aims.

Pursuing A Stock Photography Career

By Jim Pickerell | 1036 Words | Posted 2/8/2018 | Comments
I’ve been hearing more and more complaints from experienced photographers about the low royalties they are receiving for the use of their images – often less than $1.00. In many cases these low figures result because the primary agent with whom they placed their images is using a secondary distributor to actually handle the licensing to the customer.

Pray Your Images Won’t Be Used Online

By Jim Pickerell | 1094 Words | Posted 1/22/2018 | Comments
If you want to earn more for the images you produce, and for there to be less unauthorized use, maybe you should be praying that your images won’t get used by customers online. For many this may sound like heresy, or at the very least, ridiculous. Doesn’t everyone want more people to see and use their images? Consider this analysis.

Kodak Announces Photographer-Friendly Cryptocurrency

By Jim Pickerell | 783 Words | Posted 1/10/2018 | Comments
Kodak and WENN Digital, in a licensing partnership, have announced the launch of the KODAKOne image rights management platform utilizing blockchain technology and KODAKCoin, a photo-centric cryptocurrency to empower photographers and agencies to take greater control in image rights management.

Finding Photographers

By Jim Pickerell | 835 Words | Posted 12/27/2017 | Comments
Most commercial users want to be honest. They don’t set out to steal. They certainly don’t want to be chased by a photographer and his/her legal team once it is discovered that they have used an image without permission. If photographers want to license more images to professional users – and get better prices – then they must make it easier for customers to find them once the customers finds an image they would like to use. The process is easy enough if the customer finds the image on a stock agency website, but more and more customers are finding the images they would like to use by searching Google, Bing, Flickr or by randomly searching Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, other social media sites or various publications.

Blockchains Are Coming

By Jim Pickerell | 480 Words | Posted 12/22/2017 | Comments
Photographers and stock agencies may want to start paying a little attention to all the news about blockchains and cryptocurrency. Promoters say that blockchains can cut out some of the middleman costs and provide a more efficient and less costly payment system between image creator and buyer. With many cryptocurrency transactions it is possible to immediately convert the currency into green backs that can be used at any local store, or hold onto the cryptocurrency with the hope that it will increase in value.

Joomag Customers Get iStock Images For $2.99

By Jim Pickerell | 509 Words | Posted 11/6/2017 | Comments
iStock has done a deal with Joomag that allowed Joomag users to purchase as few, or as many, images a month as they would like to use for $2.99 each. Joomag provides a graphic design service to over “500,000 businesses across all sectors” that allows customers to create digital newsletters, magazines, catalogs, brochures, ebooks and more and deliver these products either online or in printed form.

20/20 Software Offers New Tools For Working With Footage

By Jim Pickerell | 295 Words | Posted 10/10/2017 | Comments
20/20 Software, a leading provider of multi-media websites and image/business management software to media libraries, museums, corporations, institutions, and newspapers, has outlined some of the newest tools it offers for working with footage.

How Technology Helps Identify Needed Imagery

By Jim Pickerell | 410 Words | Posted 7/20/2017 | Comments
In a story by Rick Boost published in Campaign Asia-Pacific, a publication providing insights and intelligence into the ideas, work and personalities shaping Asia’s marketing-communications industry, Kumi Shimamoto, Asia vice-president for Getty Images, says that one of the reasons for the company’s position as the largest image supplier in the world is its audience research methods.

Multi-Tier Pricing Model

By Jim Pickerell | 946 Words | Posted 3/22/2017 | Comments
Given the declines in stock photo prices, it may be time for the industry to look for a new image pricing strategy. Yesterday I made an argument for why the industry needs to price based on performance, or demand for certain images. There also needs to be a price floor for certain images that are in greater demand. Price should have little, if anything, to do with whether the image is exclusive or non-exclusive.

Programmatic Advertising At Getty Images

By Jim Pickerell | 747 Words | Posted 1/31/2017 | Comments
Getty is adding Programmatic Advertising content to its site. In June 2016 CEO Dawn Avery pointed out, that “Over 97 per cent of visitors come to our websites to look at – not purchase – amazing imagery.”  Getty is trying to find a way to earn some money from this 97% of users.