Webware

Flickr on Tuesday entered a partnership with Getty Images to offer its users a way to potentially make money off their photography.

The Yahoo-owned photo-hosting community will be a new resource for Getty, which can now contact Flickr members directly through the site and ask them if they want to share one or more of their images for use in a special Flickr-branded Getty collection.

Flickr members interested in getting their images featured in the special Getty gallery will have to simply wait to be contacted. Otherwise, Getty and Flickr are encouraging aspiring photographers to post their content on the Getty-owned iStockphoto, which also happens to have been a hotbed for Flickr photos in the past.

Flickr-hosted images that have been chosen to be included in the new collection will get a special link to the Getty page where they can purchase a license to use the shot.

In order to get paid and allow their images to be used, Flickr members must sign a Getty Images contributor contract, which stipulates that the photographer is the owner, and has any necessary model releases and originals. It also outlines the various rates based on size and intended commercial usage.

Those rates, not yet available, are likely to follow some of Getty's standard rates. As part of the deal, the only transaction is being shared directly between the photographer and Getty, meaning Yahoo will not be getting a share of that fee. According to Yahoo's rep, "Getty and Flickr have a separate business relationship."

The move is a special deal for Flickr, which currently does not allow for commercial transactions on the site outside of using partners for services such as photo printing. It's long been expected that Flickr would get around to implementing a system like this, if only to take advantage of the size of its collection, which averages thousands of user uploads every minute.

Update: Changes have been made to this article since it first posted regarding the link to the Getty purchase pages on Flickr as well as the nature of the business partnership between Getty Images and Yahoo.

Adobe Creative Suite users will soon have to turn to other Web-based or local stock photography services to get their stock photo fix.

Adobe on Monday quietly announced the end of its stock photography service. The Stock Photos service has been a part of the popular Creative Suite since the introduction of Adobe Bridge in version 2. The cutoff date is March 31st, giving users a little less than two more months to use the service to acquire legal shots to use in design work.

According to Adobe's FAQ on the matter, the company is getting out of the stock photography business to "concentrate its efforts in other areas." The service acted as a go-between to other stock photography services without a markup. It's easily comparable to iTunes for stock photography, as it offered users a one-stop shop with live previews that could easily be put into Adobe's various design applications right after purchase.

Since the front end for the photo service is part of the Creative Suite software, Adobe's created a special uninstaller that gets rid of it in Bridge. Current users of Bridge are greeted to the below message, telling them how many days are left before the service cutoff, along with links to Adobe's customer service center.

To curb any latecomers, Adobe is also cutting off the search function of the stock photo tab on March 4, which will keep new users from even being able to get to the photos that are for sale.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

In the past several years, the rise of Web services that offer stock photography has been speedy. With Bridge, it appeared that Adobe was taking notice and making it easier to parse through them.

However, between this and Adobe's foray into publishing to other stock services, killing off the intermediary (Stock Photos on Bridge) to save some hours to work on future products makes good business sense.

PhotoShelter's new PhotoShelter Collection is challenging the standard business model for stock photos.

(Credit: PhotoShelter)

Last Saturday, the online image backup and storage website PhotoShelter officially launched its new stock photography outlet PhotoShelter Collection, which will compete with high-end stock houses, such as Getty Images and Corbis. With established stock image providers feeling serious pressure from microstock sites, such as Fotolia, which offer their images for as little as $1, it might seem strange for PhotoShelter to enter the game now, but they plan to distinguish themselves from the competition by giving photographers a larger commission, control over pricing, and by promising that they won't participate in what they see as the devaluation of photography by microstock sites and Getty's recent decision to offer the vast majority of their images for online use at drastically reduced prices.

While PhotoShelter will let photographers set prices and offers tools to help with pricing so photographers can more easily set an appropriate rate for their photos, they do set a lower limit of $50 for the images offered on PhotoShelter Collection. They also have a team of photo editors that review and approve submissions to the site, to maintain a high level of images so that photo buyers can expect quality images from the service. Unlike a lot of stock agencies, which offer commissions of 50 percent, or often much less, for photographers on sales of their images, PhotoShelter is offering 70 percent commissions, with a special promotional rate of 85 percent for photos accepted before November 4, 2007 and sold within the first six months when the site launches for sales on November 5th. Also, the sales process is entirely transparent, so photographers know who buys their images and what they paid for them. Many stock services don't share such information with their photographers, leaving them little recourse if they think that the company is being less than honest with them.

Since a good search function is essential for a stock service, PhotoShelter has gone to great lengths to create what they think is a top-notch search engine for the site. As they are fond of expressing it, the system can tell the difference between a search for orange the fruit and Orange County New York. They also have three categories of images--Contemporary, Pro Stock, and Editorial. When a photographer uploads an image, the company's system automatically reads and incorporates EXIF and IPTC metadata and photographers can add more information, such as captions and keywords to any images that are accepted into the system.

Though the system has only been accepting images for less than a week, they have already received almost 9,000 images from over 1,000 photographers. That's a big vote of confidence for a new agency. It probably doesn't hurt that the service is free to join and doesn't require a PhotoShelter membership to participate. If you want to give it a whirl and see if you can sell some of your images, go to the PhotoShelter Collection sign up page, fill out the application and upload some images.

Photographers' trade groups are speaking out against Getty Images' new online stock photo pricing plan.

Just last week, CNET blogger Stephen Shankland, shared his thoughts that recent changes affecting the professional photography market have a "silver lining that shouldn't be overlooked." While his optimism is a nice respite amid increasingly weary economic times, six professional photographers' trade associations are now speaking out against a new pricing scheme by stock photo giant Getty Images that offers its high-end Rights-managed and Rights-ready images, alongside its lower-priced Rights-free images, for the same low price of $49 when used on the Web. For all but the Rights-free images, this represents a price reduction of more than 90 percent for images that used to fetch anywhere from $550 to $1,460 for their use.

In a press release issued yesterday, the Stock Artists Alliance (SAA), along with the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), the U.K. Association of Photographers (AOP), Advertising Photographers of America (APA), Editorial Photographers (EP), and the Canadian Association of Photographers (CAPIC), expressed their worries that Getty Images' "extreme competitive response presents huge risks to the image licensing business, and threatens the livelihoods not only of Getty contributers, but of professional photographers industry-wide." What makes matters worse is that in many cases, the photos Getty offers are owned by the photographers who shot them. The SSA statement goes on to say, "As the market leader, Getty's actions affect the entire industry. We therefore expect that your action of devaluing digital usage risks the long-term earning potential from image licensing, whether it be stock or commissioned."

It's no secret that Getty Images has been having a hard time of late, with its stock at $30.40 as of this afternoon, compared with a 52-week high of $57.28. As such, the company is likely slashing prices in an attempt to increase sales volume and boost overall revenue. However, it could be a dangerous path to tread for a company that has become known for its high-quality images to alienate the people who provide those images while simultaneously devaluing their work and threatening their livelihoods. Meanwhile, as is usually the case with big corporations, Getty's CEO Jonathan D. Klein seems to have a pretty sweet deal, making a cool $1 million for his annual salary, with up to a 70 percent bonus as well as copious stock-based bonuses, should the company be able to meet its goals. Too bad his plan to meet those goals seems to come at the expense of the photographers who helped build the company up in the first place.

One of the companies showcasing its wares at the Web 2.0 Expo is LuckyOliver, a stock photography service that sells user-submitted digital photographs for use on Web sites and printed materials. The service has a kitschy carnival/circus theme, right down to calling its users 'carnies.'

LuckyOliver employs several Web 2.0ish technologies to categorize photos, including tags, a cloud of similar or related images, and a prestige system for heavy users of the site. Esteemed photographers also get special badges. Other users can comment on their work, and browse through their portfolio.

As a photographer, submitting photos to the service is fairly straight forward. You've got to upload three of your best shots, which get scrutinized by LuckyOliver's human quality control agent. If they think you're good enough, they'll get back to you to add more to the service.

Each photography sale on LuckyOliver is divided up into tokens. Smaller sizes of a print will only cost a few tokens (valued at $1 each); all the way up to the high resolution versions, which run up to 50 tokens for buyers interested in using the shot on things like promotional materials or product packaging.

LuckyOliver is one of many online stock photography services, and has been around since late 2005. For Web site designers, sites like these are a quick and easy resource for art. For photographers who take good pictures, they're a chance to sell and promote their work. Sites like iStockPhoto, ShutterStock, Fotolia and Dreamstime provide a similar 'you shoot it, we sell it' service, they just don't do it with nearly the peculiar sense of humor LuckyOliver is bringing to the table.

>> Google Reader and the Google home page now provide readerships. Google's popular RSS reader and personalized home page now lets publishers know how many people have subscribed to their content feeds. Most of the Web has patiently been awaiting Google to provide advanced traffic data, and this might be the first big step. On a related note, if you're using either service you can subscribe to the Webware RSS feed using the link under 'Webware Feeds.' (Official Google Reader Blog)

>> Google snags AdScape for $23 million, source says. AdScape does in-game advertising, the kind that can be changed ad hoc, meaning the ads that ship on your game disc can be replaced by an ad feed from AdScape's servers. Creeped out yet? Assume this means we'll be seeing Google ads in all the next-generation video games. (CNET News.com)

>> Microsoft, Mozilla look into browser flaws. There are security vulnerabilities for both browsers that attack your browser's cookies and can change how you view Web sites. The big difference is that the one for Firefox has already been fixed by Mozilla's open-source development network. (CNET News.com)

>> Sell your photos via Flickr? We originally guessed video was the next step for the popular photo service, but Flickr could be getting into the stock photography business. There are certainly a lot of pros using the service to share their shots with the world, so is Flickr taking on others like iStockphoto with a paid distribution model? (CNET Yahoo Blog)

>> Soccer champs announce YouTube content deal. British footballer club Chelsea has its own YouTube channel. For now it's only filled with news updates, but plans to expand into providing highlights as well. There's currently no way to add user content unless your own clips are marked as favorites by the channel providers. A similar YouTube sports campaign has been done by the NHL. (CNET News.com)

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Flickr member Hamad Darwish is now a part of computing history, with two of his photographs included in Windows Vista. Usually Microsoft doesn't approach people with (we're assuming) large checks unless they're vying for a name or settling a lawsuit, but Darwish's work wowed Microsoft so much they hired him for a photo shoot.

Apparently there are three more images from Flickr users shipping with Vista, along with a few from Microsoft employees, too.

This is a cool use of services like Flickr. While Corbis, iStockPhoto, and Getty Images are all a hotbed for finding good wallpaper material, Flickr and other photo hosting services are a great place to find budding photographers who likely will be eager to have their work showcased and purchased.

[Found on Flickr blog]