Underexposed

Getty Images' Flickr collection is now live.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Getty Images, one of the stock photography powerhouses, has switched on a program by which selected Flickr photographers can license their images to paying customers.

In earlier days of the microstock business, in which photographers license images over the Internet for relatively low prices through sites including Getty's iStockphoto, there was speculation Flickr might jump into the market. After all, there's plenty of good material, and it's often already tagged for easier categorization.

Instead, though, Flickr and Getty announced a partnership in which Getty taps Flickr photographers it believes have potential to sell their photos through Getty. Invitations started going out in January, and now the Getty's Flickr collection is live, Yahoo announced on its blog Tuesday.

One complication, though: many photographers at Flickr offer their images under Creative Commons licenses that permit copying and redistribution of the photos.

According to the Flickr help section on the Getty program, Yahoo switches Creative Commons-licensed photos to all rights reserved if they're submitted to Getty:

Can I sell my Creative Commons-licensed content?

There is a chance one of your Creative Commons-licensed photos may catch the eye of a perceptive Getty Images editor. You are welcome to upload these photos into the Flickr collection on Getty Images, but you are contractually obliged to reserve all rights to sale for your work sold via Getty Images. If you proceed with your submission, switching your license to All Rights Reserved (on Flickr) will happen automatically.

If you're not cool with that, that's totally cool. It just means that particular photo will need to stay out of the Flickr collection on Getty Images.

Ben Metcalfe launched a discussion of the Creative Commons issue, pointing out that Creative Commons licenses are perpetual.

In response, a Getty Images representative said, "We would never expect anyone to revoke a license. We know that your image is being used with your permission by those who licensed it through CC (Creative Commons), which is why we are placing CC images we choose in RF (royalty-free licensing) only. We couldn't place it in RM (rights-managed) because rights management would not be possible. We came to this so as not to exclude inviting CC images."

SAN JOSE, Calif.--iStockphoto, which helped pioneer the "microstock" market for inexpensive, royalty-free imagery, plans to launch an audio-licensing business Wednesday.

The Getty Images subsidiary already offers photography, illustrations, Flash animations, and video. iStockaudio was a natural extension--one the company's customers had sought, iStock Chief Executive Bruce Livingstone said in a speech here at the User-Generated Content Conference and Expo.

iStockphoto CEO and founder Bruce Livingstone

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

"We're introducing iStockaudio on Wednesday this week," Livingstone said. The company announced the iStockaudio plan last May, but the actual arrival was delayed by a suddenly necessary overhaul to the site's search system, he said.

Initially, the audio service--think background music or the sound of a shattering window--will be available through public beta testing. Interface changes are possible before the final launch, scheduled for the South by Southwest conference that begins March 13.

So far, there are about 10,000 audio clips at the site, Chief Operating Officer Kelly Thompson said in an interview. "There's a lot of pent-up demand," he added.

Disruptive
iStockphoto, and the microstock industry in general, is an example of what can be done to harness the power of large numbers of people. Many in the traditional stock art business have been displeased that a bunch of amateurs willing to see their work sold for less than $1 a pop are eroding their business. But the hard economic reality is that microstock companies have put images on the market from photographers who are good enough to sell a few images now and again, even if not good enough--or devoted enough--to quit their day jobs.

iStockphoto now has about 65,000 photographers contributing to the site. Because Getty Images went private last year, the company won't reveal its 2008 financial results. The results were better, though, than in 2007, when the company garnered $71 million in revenue and paid contributors more than $21 million for their work.

The company is, of course, a technological phenomenon. It uses the Internet not only to connect large numbers of buyers and sellers, but also to help them view and distribute digital photography. "When iStock really started to take off is when the Canon Rebel came out," making it "affordable to shoot really good digital," Livingstone said.

Getty Images, which has a more traditional rights-managed image-licensing business, has a program to try to recruit new photographers from Yahoo's Flickr photo-sharing site, a partnership Livingstone helped set up.

Ups and downs
Thompson and Livingstone shared some of the ups and downs of their business' history at the conference. The lesson for companies such as iStockphoto that rely on user-generated content: pay close attention to what users and customers are asking for. They were asking for video, for example, and that now accounts for 10 percent of the subsidiary's revenue.

iStockphoto plans to launch its new audio clip-licensing site Wednesday.

(Credit: iStockphoto)

The flip side is launching something people haven't asked for. Livingstone had the iStock Forumeter idea, for example. It let people label forum contributors as grouchy crabs, helpful superheroes, comedic clowns, and unconstructive trolls.

"The problem with this is, the community didn't ask for it, didn't want it, and it was too accurate," Livingstone said. "People didn't really want to know how they were seen in the forums. It was a flop. We got rid of it in about 30 days."

Another bad idea: the Buy Request program for setting up custom photography shoots. In the company's core business, "99.99 percent of our sales are done unassisted. This little brainchild was the exact opposite. We had to help customers 99.99 percent of the time. It just didn't work," Thompson said.

The company also has struggled to keep up with growth of its computing infrastructure.

"It's important to be wrong as often as you are right, as long as you learn from the mistakes," Livingstone said. And when things go wrong, it's important to tell your users you're sorry. "Sometimes, the community needs to hear you acknowledge that there was a problem and apologize for it."

Once, the site went down after a truck cut the fiber line to the company's headquarters in Calgary, Alberta. "We did manage to get a check out of the company that supplied the fiber optics. Instead of keeping it, we decided to disburse to the community--the people who would have sold photos. It wasn't a lot--maybe $45,000--but I think people really appreciated the gesture," Livingstone said.

Growth strains
"Mostly, we plan for a reasonable amount of growth. Too much bandwidth is costly, but not enough is a disaster, and we know," Thompson said. "Early in our life, we got a bit behind the curve, and it was tough to catch up."

The company pushes what the MySQL database software can do, but this year, it concluded that it just couldn't handle the site's search operation. So in what was something of an emergency, it rewrote it in the C programming language.

"Our search was failing. We had to put everything on hold, surgically extract search from our Web site, and put it back in," Livingstone said.

Now, though, instead of 30 overtaxed search servers, the company has a single machine handling the chore, with four backup machines to handle potential problems.

The company hopes that new software called Dexter, which lets customers license images directly without using the Web site, will offer further help. A Mac OS X version is in private testing with people who license many images now, and a version running on Adobe's AIR software foundation is under development.

Apparently, it wasn't as easy to launch a microstock site for lower-cost photography sales as Corbis thought it would be.

Corbis, one of the established powers in licensing stock photography, launched SnapVillage in 2007, arguing that the microstock market was still young. But on Thursday, Corbis announced that it will phase out SnapVillage by the end of the year.

Contributing photographers and illustrators, along with customers and existing imagery, will be moved to a new microstock part of Corbis' existing Veer property called Veer Marketplace. Veer, a stock art agency Corbis acquired in 2007, offers both royalty-free and rights-managed imagery.

"We recognize that as the market has rapidly evolved over the past two years, we need a bigger, better offering to achieve success in microstock," Corbis said in a blog post. "In the months ahead, we'll be inviting SnapVillage contributors and customers to Veer Marketplace. Once Veer Marketplace is launched and fully operational, it will become Corbis' only microstock brand."

SnapVillage competes with a host of microstock competitors that arrived on the market earlier. Those include iStockphoto, acquired by Getty Images; StockXpert, acquired by JupiterImages; Fotolia; Dreamstime; and ShutterStock.

In one of the larger consolidation moves that have been sweeping the stock art business, Getty Images has agreed to acquire Jupiterimages, a subsidiary of Jupitermedia, for $96 million in cash, the companies said.

Getty will keep the Jupiterimages brand and will augment its collection of imagery with Getty stock, the company said. It's unclear, though, what will come of the two companies' royalty-free microstock sites, iStockphoto and Stockxpert.

"We'll be able to discuss questions like that when the deal closes," said Kelly Thompson, iStockphoto's chief operating officer, in a forum posting after the acquisition plan was announced.

The consolidation reflects tough times sweeping the stock-art business--times that led Getty to go private earlier this year in a $2.4 billion acquisition by Hellman & Friedman.

And the times aren't getting any easier. Gary Shenk, chief executive of Getty's top rival, Corbis, said Saturday at the PhotoPlus Expo that it will cut the royalty rate it pays photographers for rights-managed images, according to Photo District News.

Photoshop Elements 7 prominently promotes Adobe's Photoshop.com online service.

Adobe Systems has begun shipping its enthusiast-oriented Photoshop Elements 7 image-editing software and Premiere Elements 7 video-editing software--and is offering a promotion to try to lure users to its online Photoshop.com site as well.

The Elements software costs $99.99 each or $149.99 as a bundle. New with this version, Adobe also is offering a $179.99 price that includes a one-year Photoshop.com Plus membership. Ordinarily, a Photoshop.com Plus subscription costs $49.99 a year, so you're basically getting a $20 price break, at least until the time comes to renew for another year.

Photoshop.com offers tutorials, online albums for backing up and sharing your shots, and access to the Photoshop Express online editing tool. The free basic version comes with 2GB of storage, and the Plus level comes with 20GB of storage.

Pricing isn't the only promotion. CNET reviewer Lori Grunin found it annoying how prominently Elements touts the online option in the software itself.

• Olympus E-430 rumor: Photography Bay - "Rumors and photos of an alleged Olympus E-430 have surfaced on the web." If true, the wacky, swoopy design breaks new ground for an SLR.
• Nikon D300 firmware 1.02 fixes rare issue - Nikon says this addresses a problem that "in rare cases, caused vertical bands (lines) to appear in images captured at shutter speeds slower than 8 seconds."
• Corbis makes marketing push for its microstock site SnapVillage | about the image - Corbis says it will now start to "aggressively target customers, including introducing its first advertisements, launching direct marketing activities and expanding its search engine marketing."
• Nikon Canada cuts price on D40, D80, D200, 80-400mm F/4-5.6 lens - Lower prices on the old SLRs.
• Big privacy changes at SmugMug - Don MacAskill - SmugMug responds to privacy concerns. "Your new galleries, photos, and videos are more private, and secure, than ever before."
• Sigma issues firmware update for SD14: Digital Photography Review - "Sigma has released firmware v.1.06 for its SD14 Digital SLR. The update improves the accuracy of the custom white balance and the review image quality on the LCD and includes another couple of minor modifications"
• A wealth of Lightroom tutorials - John Nack - "Digital photography experts Rob Sheppard and Tim Grey have created a wide range of Lightroom tutorials for the Adobe Design Center." There are also lots of third-party tutorials.
• Legal Primer for Open Source and Free Software - Software Freedom Law Center - How programmers can deal with the legal system "with a minimum of cost, fuss and risk...a starting point for lawyers and risk managers for thinking about the particular, at times counter-intuitive, logic of software freedom." V1.5 copyright (!) SFLC.
• The return of the Yashica brand with new digital cameras - 1001 Noisy Cameras - "Four new Yashica-branded digital cameras to go on sale in the U.K. around March 1, 2008"
• Unphotographable: a text account of pictures missed - "This is a picture I did not take of..."
• Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen's lavish severance package - Along with stock and other benefits, "a cash payment in an amount equal to the product of (i) the sum of his salary and target bonus, multiplied by (ii) 2 plus 1/12th for each year of completed service with Adobe (not in excess of 12)."
• Naked Light beta 2.1 - New rev of a Mac OS X graphics app. "This release is more focused on bug fixes, but also features some speed ups and an unfortunate speed regression (one speedup is still too buggy to be used)."

A Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir self-portrait

(Credit: Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir)

Update 4:15 p.m. PST: I added a comment from Guðleifsdóttir and corrected that the earlier incident involved selling eight individual photos.

An Icelandic photographer has for a second time encountered the ugly side of Internet photo sharing, finding photos she published at Yahoo's Flickr site being sold by somebody else through the iStockphoto Web site.

Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir, a professional photographer, found a picture she took of three frolicking horses on iStockphoto, a "microstock" site that licenses images for relatively low prices.

"I mean for crying out loud, out of 31 images this particular user has on his 'portfolio,' 25 of them are mine, and at least 3 are of me," she said in the caption for a screenshot of the iStockphoto page.

iStockphoto, a division of Getty Images, removed the photo and the user, named "vulcanacar."

"As soon as we get a report of something like that, we investigate right away," said iStockphoto Executive Vice President Kelly Thompson. "We have a compliance officer right here. It's important, and we have to do it." Usually the shoe is on the other foot, he added: iStockphoto sends several takedown notices per week to go after unauthorized use of iStockphoto images.

As for justice, Thompson said it would be tough to pursue this particular iStockphoto user. "He is in a country where it would be very difficult to do too much to him, which is unfortunate," Thompson said.

And on Guðleifsdóttir's side of the equation, "iStock will strive to make the situation right...We'll have to talk with Rebekka and see what needs to be done," potentially including paying her royalties.

iStockphoto did indeed get in touch, Guðleifsdóttir said. "I have been contacted by the CEO of iStockphoto, and the matter will be handled in an appropriate way, I'm sure," Guðleifsdóttir said, though she declined to comment on specifics.

This is the second time Guðleifsdóttir has found images she posted on Flickr for sale elsewhere. In 2007, she discovered a company selling eight landscape pictures. She complained about the incident on Flickr only to have her image and the discussion below it deleted because, Flickr told her, "Flickr is not a venue for you to harass, abuse, impersonate, or intimidate others."

Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield later issued an apology; Guðleifsdóttir decided to restrict her Flickr uploads to a maximum width of 800 pixels.

Thompson said it's "very, very, very rare" for iStockphoto to sell photos that have been uploaded without the copyright holder's permission, but given that the site has "almost 3 million images" available, it's also inevitable.

"We usually catch these way before the images are even sold," not the few months that happened in this case, Thompson said. "The community is pretty amazing at finding things like this. And our inspectors are usually pretty good at it too."

(Via Thomas Hawk)

Eugene Berman's plug-in lets Lightroom users export photos directly to iStockphoto.

(Credit: Eugene Berman)

Photographer and programmer Eugene Berman has released version 1.0 of a Lightroom plug-in that enables photographers to export pictures directly to iStockphoto, a "microstock" Web site that sells images for relatively low cost.

Adobe Systems' Lightroom is gaining in popularity as a way to edit and catalog the unprocessed "raw" images from higher-end digital cameras, and Adobe in 2007 released a beta version of a software developer kit (SDK) that lets anyone write plug-ins for exporting photos.

Other Lightroom plug-ins also exist that permit uploads to Flickr, Picasa, Zenfolio, and SmugMug.

Exporting to iStockphoto is a different matter, though. Photographers might be more inclined to take their shots on a trip through Photoshop for more careful noise reduction, edge sharpening, or selective editing not possible in Lightroom.

The plug-in provides the ability to enter keywords, upload multiple photos, and include model releases, Berman said.

However, Lightroom expert Sean McCormack rightly gripes that it would be improved if it exported the photo's title from the metadata title field rather than the filename, which is more likely to be something obscure such as DSC7893.jpg.

(Via Lightroom News.)

SnapVillage, owned by Corbis, is one of a host of 'microstock' sites for inexpensive downloads of stock photos.

(Credit: SnapVillage)

SnapVillage, a microstock site founded in June by stock-art sales company Corbis to compete with rivals such as Fotolia and Getty Images' iStockphoto, has expanded to include international sales.

Although the site now works beyond the United States, the Web site is English-only for now. The company plans to localize with more languages later, a representative said. The site is still officially in beta testing.

The site receives about 10,000 new image uploads a week, SnapVillage said in a statement Wednesday. Although there are several rivals already better established, Corbis believed it would be better off starting its own site from scratch.

The company wouldn't release specific download statistics, but said sales are growing. In the last three months, the number of image downloads per week has increased by a factor of 8 and the number of new accounts created per week has increased 60 percent.