Many of you probably don’t know this but I have been a photographer for 30 years and have done occasional professional work. One thing that has always worried me was how I would showcase and market my images on the Internet and, at the same time, make sure people wouldn’t just take them and use it as they wish.
Well, recently I ran into a company called PicScout and realized that I really don’t need to worry at all. PicScout offers a service that “fingerprints” my images so they can be identified even if they have been photo-shopped and modified. Their service also goes out on the Internet and will find my pictures and let me know where they are being used.
This in itself is great but they do much more than this. People often use Google image search to find pictures to use in their digital marketing and creative work. Say my pictures are being used all over the web, when someone searches with Google image search they may find my pictures but still it is hard for the searcher to figure out who owns the rights. The PicScout firefox add-on displays rights information regarding images directly within the Google search results. This makes it easy for anyone who sees one of my pictures to license it. And when it is easy for someone to do this, it is much more likely that they will. If it would be difficult they would either just take it or find another.
I know this because I am guilty. My team and I grabbed some images off the web to use as placeholders in a website we were developing and one of those images made the final cut without us realizing that we hadn’t secured rights. All was fine and dandy for about six months and then we got a letter from Getty Images informing us that we were using one of their images without securing rights to it. Hah, I wonder if they were using PicScout technology. We were slapped with at $2000 fee that we easily could have avoided.
Now I can allow my images to be spread throughout the web, giving my work more exposure and linking them all back to a commerce engine so that they could be easily licensed.
I better get to work and spread my images!
Since we are talking photography, just for fun you might watch what Nigel Barker, professional photographer and judge on America’s Next Top Model, had to say to me from CES
First of all, the video is HILARIOUS. I love that NIgel Barker gets so obviously peeved at you at the beginning.
Second, I like the idea of digital rights management for photography, but I have to be honest, after reading your article I got excited about PicScout, but I’ve been having a lot of trouble navigating the Web site and getting a clear idea of how they work, what they do, and how they’re different from other digital watermarking technologies. Very difficult to tell where they fit in the digital photography landscape or more importantly what they could do for me…
Perhaps they could use some help from a qualified branding professional?
Cheers.
Hi Dennis,
I think Nigel was acting, at least in part! He obviously enjoyed answering the question and was passionate about what he was talking about. That is where good interviews come from – striking a nerve, although that was not my intent.
As for PicScout, perhaps their site is clear to designers and other people who have the problem that they solve, I can’t say. Perhaps some designers, photographers, stock houses and other creative folks will weigh in and let us know what they think.
Cheers and thanks for the comments
Like the video and the fact that Nigel tells it like it is. Also, digital rights and usage of photography is more important than ever. At our company, the Concept Farm, we make extensive use of digital photography and are very careful to make sure we use all the proper procedures. Also, we could not have created our Asset-Based Thinking book series without the the use of rights managed digital photography and picture sharing. People that read our book often use the images in our books in presentations and blogs. Like the sound of PicScout and will check that out as soon as possible. Nice post. Thanks for the info.
Hank Wasiak