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Digital Stock
How To Market Your Images
By Joe Farace • July, 1999
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Many
digital stock companies, such as Photosphere, have web
sites that allow photo buyers to purchase individual images
or CD-ROM collections.
Photos © 1999, Joe Farace, All Rights Reserved
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A tree is a tree is a
tree
--Max Sennett
That silent film pioneer
may have been talking about why shooting movies on location in Hollywood
was a good idea for the fledging film industry, but he could have just
as well been talking about stock photography.
The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) defines a stock image
as “available photography, in the file, which may be licensed
for use.” This concise definition works just as well for digital
stock photography as it does for silver-based images. Stock is one of
the few areas in commercial photography where the financial reward is
greater the harder that you work. Unlike assignment photography where
you have to be on the “top three” list of every Art Director
in town in order to make a buck, stock lets you shoot what you want
when you want. The way to financial success is not just in creating
great stock photographs, but in how you sell them.
In the January ’99 Shutterbug, Peter K. Burian wrote about the
opportunities for stock photographers and presented 10 tips to improve
the marketability and marketing of your stock photographs. The information
in this story expands on those tips by showing you how to directly market
your stock images in digital form.
Royalty Free Or Preview? There are two ways to market your digital stock
images directly to potential photo buyers: CD-ROM and the Internet.
If you plan on selling just one or two images at a time, your best outlet
will be the World Wide Web (WWW). If you prefer to sell many--up to
100 or more--images at the same time, CD-ROM is your best choice, but
that doesn’t mean that the Internet isn’t a great place
to sell your discs.
Before you digitize even one image, you need to make a decision on how
you will license or sell your images. Creating CD-ROMs containing preview
images is one way to provide sample images for viewing by potential
clients. Typically, the images supplied are low resolution and suitable
for layout or FPO (For Position Only) only. If a client wants to pay
to use the image, they will contact you to obtain the original slide
or you can e-mail them a digital image.
You can also sell discs or downloads of images on a royalty free basis.
In this case when a client buys a CD-ROM full of images, they actually
purchase the right to use a particular image, or collection of images,
as many times as they want. That doesn’t mean you give up all
rights on how your images can be used. Few royalty-free agreements grant
total rights to the buyer and you can write an agreement that specifies
only those uses that you are comfortable granting. Some common exceptions
are that purchasers are not permitted to use the images to create obscene
or scandalous works of art. The subject of what constitutes “obscene”
fills many law libraries, but a good rule of thumb may be to paraphrase
a Supreme Court justice’s ruling that, “I know dirty pictures
when I see them.” Images with readily identifiable photographs
of people may not always be used in such a way as to constitute an endorsement
of a product or service. This is less a problem for the editorial use
of an image than a commercial one.
Some consider the choice of selling royalty-free stock images to be
controversial but I prefer to stay out of this argument. The choice
of how to license or sell your stock images is ultimately up to you.
I believe that any photographer has the right to sell their images in
any way they wish without dictates from anyone. Assignment photographers
are free to set their daily or hourly rates however high or low as they
choose and I think stock photographers--including digital stock photographers--have
that same right.
The choice of what form you intend to offer your stock images will also
determine the file format you will use. For previews, JPEG (Joint Photographic
Experts Group) format is probably best. This will enable you to post
images on the Internet or have a large collection on a CD-ROM disc.
TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) files will be best for royalty free
discs or Internet downloads. Because a TIFF file for a particular image
will be larger than a JPEG compressed file, you will be able to get
fewer files on a disk. These two file formats are only suggestions--you
can offer them in whatever format you want--but because they are cross-platform,
people will be able to use them on Mac OS or Microsoft Windows-based
computers. Another suggestion is that your file names should use the
three-letter suffix .TIF or .JPG that is used by Windows. While not
required for Macintosh systems, the suffix will help identify a file
for Mac OS users and is required by many Windows graphics programs.
Whatever choice you make, the techniques that follow are just as applicable
for creating low resolution JPEG preview files as they are for producing
royalty free discs containing TIFF files.
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To
create an interface for your stock photography CD-ROM, you
can use cataloger program, like Kudo Image Browser, to create
a group of your images that can be viewed with the company’s
freeware browser.
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Take A Spin. Because
they can hold over 600MB of data, CD-ROM is a perfect format for storing
digital stock images. CD-ROM drives are also ubiquitous and every new
PC or Mac OS computer is equipped with one. Best of all, CD-ROMs are inexpensive
to produce and have low storage and shipping costs. Discs can be created
in Mac OS, ISO 9660 for PCs, or you can use a hybrid format that will
run on both kinds of computers. When creating your “master”
disc, software, such as Adaptec’s Toast, lets you specify which
kind of disc you want to make.
Once you’ve created the original photographs, your next costs involve
scanning, interface design, and producing the discs themselves. If sent
to a photo lab or service bureau, typical 35mm scanning costs can range
from $1-$15 per scan, with scans made with Kodak’s Photo CD process
being at the low end of that scale. If you have the time, you might consider
purchasing a film scanner and doing the scanning yourself. Information
about scanners can be found in Shutterbug’s Photography Buyer’s
Guide.
Your disc’s interface can be as simple or as complex as you want
to make it. The disks can have folders stuffed full of images that are
arranged by categories, and buyers can simply drag the files onto their
hard disks to paste into a document or preview with an image-editing program.
An alternative is to use one of the cataloger software packages I mentioned
in last month’s Shutter-bug. Some companies offer a stand-alone
browser that lets anyone look at all of the images on a catalog that was
created with their software. For example, the free browser software included
on the latest versions of Extensis Portfolio 4.0 lets purchasers read
catalog files created with the program. You could also include a copy
of a freeware or shareware image browser utility on the disc, such as
IMGALL2, which is available from all of the usual shareware suspects including
www.shareware.com.
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Ulead
System’s Photo Impact has a SmartSaver plug-in that
lets you save images in JPEG, GIF, or PNG formats for use
on the WWW.
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To make your original or “master”
disc, all you need is a CD-R or CD-RW (CD-ReWritable) drive. You can copy
the files to your hard disk then use the appropriate software, such as
Toast, to write them onto a CD-R disc. Since hard disk space is always
a problem for many photographers, I like to write all of the images that
will be transferred onto CD-ROM first to a 1GB Iomega Jaz cartridge and
then write the master disc from that. You can even make the CD-ROMs yourself.
After your master disc is created, you can actually copy it from one CD-ROM
to a writable disc in a CD-R or CD-RW drive. This is not as expensive
as it sound. My newest Windows computer includes an internal 36x CD-ROM
drive and internal CD-RW drive that only added a little over $250 to the
cost of the system. This setup enables me to create limited runs of market
specific topic CDs. The key to making this work is that you need a fast
enough CD-ROM drive that can send data to the CD-R drive. If it’s
not fast enough, you will get disc errors and instead of creating stock
photo discs you’ll be making Frisbees. A 16x drive is about as slow
as you can go without problems.
If you make your own CDs, then you’ll want to put some kind of label
on them to distinguish them from the generic discs you’ll be buying.
The least expensive way I know to do this is to apply a label to the CD-R
which will also add a little stiffness to the thin disc. Neato, a company
that makes media labeling products, offers MediaFace label design software
for use with Mac OS or Windows computers. Along with the software, the
company includes a label applicator and several sheets of labels that
are compatible with most ink jet or laser printers. Their new photo quality
labels produce professional quality results without a big investment.
If you have dozens of CD-ROMs to label, the downside is that it can be
a s-l-o-w process. If you make large quantities of CDs, you may want to
consider a printer that’s been specifically designed to print on
white, printable CD media, such as those available from Eastman Kodak
and Ricoh Digital Media Systems. Discmatic offers a seven color, 1200x600dpi
Windows-compatible ink jet printer called the Opal7 for $1998. In addition
to printing photo quality output, the Opal7 has an automatic numbering
feature for adding serial numbers. It also allows text to be written around
the inner and outer edges of the disc.
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Discmatic’s
Opal7 printer is designed to print photo quality images
on printable CDs such as are available from Eastman Kodak.
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.With CD-R discs costing about
$1 each in quantities, making your own discs is inexpensive but can be
a time consuming method. If you want to produce 1000 or more discs a slightly
cheaper and much faster way to do this is to use a mass duplicator, such
as CD-Lab. When 1000 discs are ordered, they will create a glass master
disc which is used to actually stamp out the new CD-ROMs, then do two
color printing to label your disks for 77¢ each. Prices are lower
for larger quantities. Other duplication companies offer similar prices
and some will even produce CD-ROMs in quantities as low as 500. Some,
like CD Duplication Service, which specializes in small run CD duplication,
will even produce a few discs using CD-R media. Even if you don’t
have a CD-R drive, companies like this enable you to make a few test discs
to see if creating a stock photo disc is how you want to market your stock
images. Visit the company’s web sites to get information or call
them about their policies and practices. Each ones does business a little
differently and what some include as standard others may offer as options.
Before having a thousand or more discs pressed, do your homework just
as you might do when checking out a new photo lab. Don’t forget
to ask for references for any photographers whose stock photo discs they
may have produced.
Weave A Web. Large marketers of digital stock photography
such as Corel, PhotoSphere, and PhotoDisc have web sites where they sell
images one at a time. What can’t you? Setting up a web site is easier
than you think. All you need is to create a design and find a company
to host it. Many Internet Service Providers (ISP) include space on their
servers for a site when you sign up and if the space is not adequate you
can pay for more or look to a company that specializes in hosting commercial
sites. Not all hosting services are as Mac OS friendly as they could be,
so I urge Macintosh users to shop carefully and only sign with one that
is. Most local computer publications have ads for people who host sites
and the cost is most affordable. In my area, the cost of hosting a site
varies, but $75 a month is a common number that also includes unlimited
Internet access.
Software, such as FileMaker’s HomePage and Adobe PageMill, can make
creating a web site for your stock photography as easy as working with
desktop publishing or word processing software. You can click and drag
your way to producing a home page without even knowing what HTML means.
(HyperText Markup Language, in case you’re interested.)
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Photographs
of people are always in demand, especially one that has
space at the top for a cover graphic.
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One of the most important aspects
of designing your home page is preparing images for web use. You already
have your images in digital form, but they need to be converted into a
file format that will display well and fast. Windows users should pick
up a copy of Ulead’s PhotoImpact, which includes a plug-in called
SmartSaver that lets you preview the image before and after it’s
compressed for the web. The plug-in lets you save images in JPEG, GIF
(Graphic Interchange Format), or PNG (Portable Network Graphics) formats.
Mac OS users can use Adobe Image Ready, which is also available for Microsoft
Windows, or any one of the many Export plug-ins that allow you to save
images in web friendly format. BitJazz, for example, offers PhotoJazz,
a $99 Windows and Mac OS file format plug-in that enables you to save
photo quality image using lossless compression with reductions in size
of two and one-half times. Designed for use with any Photoshop-compatible
application, the technology in PhotoJazz cuts image file sizes by less
than half their original image size for efficient transmission and storage-with
no quality loss. PhotoJazz uses a technology BitJazz calls condensation.
Based in quantum thermodynamics and information theory, condensation enables
a lossless compression ratio that averages 2.5 with Kodak’s standard
color test photographs. The plug-in uses the same amount of memory for
any size image and compresses three times faster than PNG (pronounced
“ping”). Imagebase programs, such as Extensis Portfolio, let
you export a complete catalog as an HTML file for use on your web site.
The actual mechanics of setting up a web site are beyond the scope of
this story and is the subject of many useful books on the subject, including
my own. Check out Amazon.com for books about building a web site. When
designing your web site, keep in mind that it is more like a daily newspaper
than a brochure and needs to be updated regularly--especially if you intend
to sell stock images directly. If you only intend to use the site to sell
your discs--which is also good idea--then it should be a constantly changing
billboard showing images from your latest disc and offering a way to order
them directly. You can have people call your office to place an order,
but many credit cards companies, such as Visa, will help you set up your
site to take credit cards and a give you a merchant account that deposits
the credit card purchase directly into your checking account. Contact
you local bank for information on setting up your web site to accept a
credit cards.
Digital Theft
The biggest
fear many photographers have about getting involved in digital stock photography
is the potential for copyright violations. The sad truth is that no matter
what method you choose to market your images, opportunities exist for
theft. Once a photograph leaves your control, anything can happen to it.
If you send duplicate slides to a company for evaluation, they can be
copied or scanned and used without permission. If you provide low res,
FPO images on disc or the Internet, they can still be used because whoever
is going to steal your work doesn’t care what the photograph looks
like anyway. The problem with image theft is not limited to digital images;
it happens with analog images, too. I had one client (at least one that
I know of) call to complain about their quality of the prints I made for
them from an assignment. When they showed me what was an obvious copy
of my work, I realized someone had copied my prints. To show them the
difference, I handed them an original print from my files and diplomatically
pointed out to them that someone within their organization had illegally
copied my photographs. Because they could see the difference, they were
able to understand the advantages of ordering prints from me--instead
of stealing them. Nevertheless they would have kept on ripping me off
if the magazine they sent the print to hadn’t refused to use it
because the quality was so bad.
There are Photoshop-compatible plug-ins available that will let you place
a copyright symbol in the middle of a digital image, and cautious photographers
may want to use it for their preview images, but the truth is that any
competent Photoshop user can make it disappear. A better choice would
be to use the DigiMarc system that’s bundled with Adobe’s
Photoshop and ImageReady, Corel DRAW and PHOTO-PAINT, Micrografx Graphics
Suite, Webtricity, and Picture Publisher. Whenever an image is opened
or scanned into an application carrying a DigiMarc reader, the user is
reminded that your image is copyrighted. When a viewer reads the embedded
message in the pixels of the image, it directs them anyplace on the web--your
home page or any destination you choose. DigiMarc-enhanced images are
easy to create and the images look untouched. Each photograph carries
a unique ID embedded directly into the file. There are no visible bylines
or tags to interfere with image quality. For more information about DigiMarc,
visit their web site at: www.digimarc.com.
Manufacturers/Distributors
Acutrack Software Duplication
3109 Castro Valley Blvd.
Castro Valley, CA 94546
(888) 234-3472
fax: (510) 581-7386
www.acutrack.com
Adaptec
691 S. Milpitas Blvd.
Milpitas, CA 95035
(800) 934-2766
(408) 945-8600
fax: (408) 262-2533
www.adaptec.com
Adobe Systems Inc.
345 Park Ave.
San Jose, CA 95110
(408) 536-6000
fax: (408) 537-6000
www.adobe.com
BitJazz Inc.
PO Box 570
San Geronimo CA 94963
(415) 642-4829
fax: (415) 642-4839
www.bitjazz.com
CD Duplication Service
(336) 584-4969
fax: (336) 584-4969
http://cddupe.netpath.net
CD-Lab
5455 N 51st Ave., #36
Glendale, AZ 85301
(602) 931-0467
www.cd-lab.com
CD Solutions, Inc.
PO Box 536
100 W Monument St.
Pleasant Hill, OH 45359
(800) 860-2376
(937) 676-2376
fax: (937) 676-2478
www.cds.com
CMS Duplication, Inc
(619) 587-9756
fax: (619) 552-4426
e-mail: sales@cmsduplication.com
www.cmsduplication.com
Custom Duplication Inc./ComChoice
3404 Century Blvd.
Inglewood, CA 90303
(800) 742-7264
(310) 670-5575
fax: (310) 412-2731
http://needcdroms.com
Discmatic
55 Mall Dr.
Commack, NY 11725
(800) 422-6707
(516) 864-9700
fax: (516) 864-9710
www.discmatic.com
Duplication Masters
11533 Slater Ave.
Fountain Valley, CA 92708
(714) 434-1200
(800) 750-0406
fax: (714) 434-7186
www.duplicationmasters.com
Eastman Kodak Company
343 State St.
Rochester, NY 14650
(800) 235-6325
www.kodak.com
Extensis Corp.
1800 SW First Ave., Ste. 500
Portland, OR 97201
(800) 796-9798
(503) 274-2020
fax: (503) 274-0530
e-mail: info@extensis.com
www.extensis.com
FileMaker, Inc.
5201 Patrick Henry Dr.
Santa Clara, CA 95054
(800) 544-8554
(408) 987-7000
www.filemaker.com
Imspace Systems Corp.
3089-C Clairemont Dr., Ste. 349
San Diego, CA 92117
(619) 272-2600
fax: (619) 272-4292
www.imspace.com
Iomega Corp.
1821 W Iomega Way
Roy, UT 84067
(800) 697-8833
(801) 778-1000
fax: (801) 778-3748
www.iomega.com
Neato
250 Dodge Ave.
East Haven, CT 06512
(800) 984-9800
(203) 466-5170
fax: (203) 466-5178
www.neato.com
Oasis Duplication
659 Zachary Taylor Hwy
(Box 721)
Flint Hill, VA 22627
(888) 296-2747
fax: (540) 675-2500
www.oasiscd.com
The One-Off CD Shops, International
4910 W Amelia Earhart Dr.
Salt Lake City, UT 84116
(801) 531-7585
fax: (801) 531-7567
http://oneoffcd.com
Ricoh Disc Media Systems
1100 Valencia Ave.
Tustin, CA 92780
(714) 566-3235
fax: (714) 566-2683
www.ricohdms.com
Software Duplication Services
2471 Autumnvale Dr., Ste. C
San Jose, CA 95131
(408) 956-9650
fax: (408) 956-0429
www.softdupe.com
Ulead Systems, Inc.
970 W 190th St., Ste. 520 Torrance, CA 90502
(800) 858-5323
(310) 523-9393
fax: (310) 523-9399
e-mail: info@ulead.com
www.ulead.com
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