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Acquiring Images Legally by Gerik Parmele
File posted on Jun 22 by Myra Ferguson

Adobe User Group Presentation Notes

Image Use

1. Introduction
    Hello. This evening I'm going to talk you though finding images for your designs and projects. Hopefully I'll help you navigate past some of the pitfalls that creative people might face when they are searching for photos for your projects.

2. Copyright
    What is it?
    It's complicated so I will do my best to explain it to you, although I know that it won't be a perfect explanation.
    "Copyright is the set of exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work. These rights can be licensed, transferred and/or assigned."
    When a creative person makes something they automatically own it through copyright. This gives them the right to license it, or transfer it or assign it to someone else. This is how a creative person earns money with what they create. They license or sell the copyrights to what they make.
    For example, if you buy a book to read that doesn't give you the right to republish the book because the author has sold you not only the paper it's printed on but the license to privately read it. Or music where the musician sells you the CD with music on it along with a license to privately listen to it.
    This allows people like you and me to consume creative work at a cheaper cost than if we hired a musician to write and record a music CD just for me that I could then go out and sell. Imagine how much money it would take to pay a writer for a year to write a mystery novel just for yourself or one that you could then print off and sell yourself?
    Maybe a different way to explain that would be renting a car. Let's say you travel to Los Angeles once a year for business and you need to drive from the airport to an office building down town. You have two options. You can rent a car for $29.95 a day. Or you can buy a car, license and insure that car, pay for parking and pay for maintenance.
    How does that fit in with what we are talking about tonight? Well this how most creative professional photographers run their business. They license their work to make it less expensive for their clients. They hope that one day they will be able to re-license their work to someone else. The other option of course would be to transfer, for a fee, the full copyright to whomever is hiring them for their photography. In essence they just bought a car.

So why does this matter to you when you need a piece of art to put in to one of your designs? It matter because by now you should understand that a lot of published photography is licensed for a specific use and still owned by the copyright owner and not available for use in any other way.

3. Fair Use
     So what can a person easily find and use? If it's posted online can't I use it as fair use? Most people throw out the term fair use. I've heard many times that because they found a picture on a web site they can use it and cite "fair use."
    Let's look at a definition of fair use.
    "Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as for commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching or scholarship."
    Anything beyond that opens you and your company to liability. Courts judgments can reach as much as $150,000 for willful copyright infringement.
    So you need to be careful and know that just finding whatever online that suits your needs could lead to trouble.

4. How to avoid trouble
Feeling discouraged yet? Don't. Let's look at some practical ways for you to actually get what you need.   
Don't be evil. Be nice. If you find a photograph you want to use you might want to first try getting in touch with the creator and talking about it. You might be surprised that you can reach a pretty agreeable solution for both of you.
    But be careful. Don't beg and or try to work out an unfair deal. A worker deserves his wages.
It can be taken as an offense and it reflects poorly on you.
    What if you don't know who took the picture? Try using Adobe Photoshop and looking in the IPTC fields to find any information you can. There is also a great web site called Tineye (www.tineye.com) that is a reverse image search engine. If you still can't find out who took the photo it will become a judgment call on your part and you might have to consider using a different photo.
    Try searching the creative commons.
    Another way to avoid trouble is to hire a photographer to produce original artwork for you that you can then license from them for your specific use. Let's see how some photographers get hired.

Seriously though start budgeting for photography for your projects. Don't leave it out. We are a very visual society these days and images are very important for most any type of project you might work on. It's vital, in today's day and age, to place more importance on the quality and originality of the photography you use. Yes it can get expensive when you go that route. You should get what you pay for. Let's look at what some advertising agencies are being billed for photography work.
http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2009/09/11/advertising-estimates-regional/

There's another way to get an idea of what licensing an original photo my cost. Let's check out a website called Photo Shelter (www.photoshelter.com) and use it to estimate what the licensing would be for a project. Search for a photo and click to purchase it and then click download. Fill out information and you you'll get an estimate. Now we're not talking about creative fee here, but just what a photographer might charge you to license an image for a particular use for a limited time.

End the end it's important to realize that photographers are business people too. They own expensive camera gear and other equipment and they invest a lot of energy in to learning their craft. So all that I ask is when you are negotiating please don't be like these people

5. Lesson in choosing stock photography
    You might ask, "What about microstock? I can buy photos for just a few dollars for me to use. It's cheap and easy! Indeed it is. In fact you can pretty much find the perfect photo at one of the many free or micro stock sites.

But be careful. You are not the only person or company buying microstock. Let's take a look at this example.
http://fairtradephotographer.blogspot.com/2010/03/microstock-why-would-reputable-company.html

6. Places to find photography
   
http://www.loc.gov/pictures
    Let's say you need a picture of the Columns on MU's campus. Search "columbia missouri francis quadrangle"

http://www.archive.org
    Let's say you need video footage of President Obama speaking in Missouri. Search "obama missouri"

http://flickr.com
http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

Or try the complete creative commons search engine
http://search.creativecommons.org/
But be careful, even they acknowledge that finding free photos is a flawed process "Do not assume that the results displayed in this search portal are under a CC license"

http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/
Here's descriptions of the different CC licenses, but I still find them confusing

http://www.everystockphoto.com/ searches a lot of free stock deposits, however notice their disclaimer.

In other words if you commonly go this route you should definitely take the time to learn how to decipher these things so you don't have your project pulled over a rights issue.

----------
Fun videos that help explain a few things.

Mark Focus - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWoFqbYBo6M

Harlan Ellison -- Pay the Writer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE

Vendor Client Relationships http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=R2a8TRSgzZY&feature=fvw

CS5 Launch Slide Show
File posted on Aug 26 by Myra Ferguson

You're welcome to download the PowerPoint that was used in the CS5 Overview. Also, the links to the videos that we watched (and those we didn't see because we ran out of time) are listed below:

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/flash-catalyst-cs5-feature-tour/top-5-flash-catalyst-cs5-features/
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/illustrator-cs5-feature-tour/top-5-illustrator-cs5-features/
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/indesign-cs5-feature-tour/top-5-indesign-cs5-features/
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/cs5-production-premium-feature-tour/cs5-production/
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/photoshop-cs5-feature-tour/top-5-photoshop-cs5-features/
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/dreamweaver-cs5-feature-tour/top-5-dreamweaver-and-flash-cs5-features/
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adobe-creative-suite-5-launch-event/cs5-services

Fireworks Master Pages and Shared Layers
File posted on Jul 27 by Myra Ferguson

This is an excerpt from Adobe Fireworks CS4 How-Tos:  100 Essential Techniques by Jim Babbage.

InDesign CS5 - September 2010 Meeting
File posted on Nov 03 by Myra Ferguson

Adobe MAX 2010 Review
File posted on Dec 01 by Myra Ferguson

Link to the eLearning Suite & Adobe Captivate 4 Presentation from the May meeting
Bookmark posted on Jun 16 by Myra Ferguson

Here's the link to the presention from our May meeting which featured a pre-recorded session with Senior Product Evangelist RJ Jacquez as he describes the newest addition to Adobe’s product family, the Adobe eLearning Suite and also the new features in Adobe Captivate 4. 

The eLearning Suite enables educators, trainers and learning professionals to create highly engaging learning experiences, complete with quizzes, simulations, and interactivity.  These learning experiences can then be delivered on the Web, mobile devices, Learning Management Systems, and the desktop via Adobe AIR.

Photoshop CS5 Tips and Tricks
File posted on Mar 01 by Myra Ferguson

Create Content for Multiple Screens
File posted on Apr 18 by Myra Ferguson

Using Premiere CS5with Dynamic Link toCreate Effects in After Effects and Edit Audio in Soundbooth Without Extra Rendering
File posted on Apr 18 by Myra Ferguson

Holiday Treats
File posted on Mar 01 by Myra Ferguson

Here's a look at links members submitted as their favorite games, animations, websites—whatever that was cool and was made with Adobe tools. Some links that were shared were our own members' projects!

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