Archive for the ‘About fotoLibra’ Category
SPQR
March 18th, 2009
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Tags: delivery, logistics, photo print services, price, quality, reliability, Roman, Rome, speed, SPQR
Roman legions conquered the known world carrying banners emblazoned with the letters ‘SPQR’ — Senatus Populusque Romanus, or The Senate and the People of Rome. It is the motto of the Eternal City to this day; it still comes as quite a surprise to see manhole covers emblazoned with SPQR.
I’ll come back to SPQR later.
Up till Version 4, fotoLibra offered a print service. You saw a picture you liked, clicked on the frame icon and had the choice of various sizes of print or other merchandise based on that image.
Unfortunately the company providing the service for us, PrintButton, couldn’t make it sufficiently profitable, so they stopped doing it just after fotoLibra Version 4 was announced. They gave us advance warning, so we didn’t build their API (Application Programming Interface) into our new system.
Since then we haven’t been able to offer the service because we haven’t found a supplier who can deliver what we need. We’ve had plenty of offers, but reviewing the latest one, from Peter Wright, it occurred to me that the ability to run off prints is perhaps the least vital part of the entire process.
Firstly, you need a huge selection of images. OK, fotoLibra has that. Then you need to get the following in place:
1. Someone (not us) needs to write an API to enable site visitors to order the goods with one click
2. A trusted and reliable ecommerce system has to be in place to collect payments
3. Fulfilment needs to be white labelled (as if “From fotoLibra”)
4. Packing and despatch must be sound and reasonably weatherproof
4. Delivery needs to be within 24 hours in the UK
5. A variety of products (mugs, T shirts, caps, mouse mats, plates etc.) need to be available as well as straightforward prints
6. A framing service must be offered
7. US delivery really needs a US-based plant to create the product
8. Deliveries need to be 100% reliable to at least 158 countries across the globe
In our experience, reliability and speed of delivery count for more than the quality of the finished product, assuming it’s reasonably good and fit for purpose. If there is a problem with the client’s perception of the quality, the printer must reprint and redeliver at his expense, and without argument.
All this need to be in place before the image is chosen and the print button is pressed. It’s a big hill to climb, and even thought they apparently had 400 customers like fotoLibra, PrintButton couldn’t make it work.
So who can?
Getting back to the Romans, fotoLibra adopted the SPQR motto when we started up. But for us, it stands for SPEED, PRICE, QUALITY, RELIABILITY (and now RANGE, as well). Concentrate on those aspects, then think about getting a product to sell.
Whatever it is, it will be secondary to the service you provide.
SPQR applies to everything you make or do.
Proto-foto-Libra
March 13th, 2009I recently found this remarkable web site called Web Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20030407123333/http://www.fotolibra.com/ which records snapshots of websites in history.
Intrigued, I searched for fotoLibra (as one does) and came across this:
It forms several parts of our original home page, designed and coded by me (rather poorly, I am now prepared to confess). The 976 appalling images we proudly offered were taken by me. And I’m not a photographer.
It’s dated six years ago tomorrow, when the idea of fotoLibra was just over a year old and we were still over a year away from getting a workable site. God, the frustrations! The expense!
And just when we think we can discern a carrot at the end of the tunnel (thanks, Dede) we get whacked by the global credit crunch. So six years on it’s still God, the frustrations! The expense!
But because we run such a tight ship and provide a unique service, I think we’ll pull through.
We just have to let people know we exist. I never realised how hard that bit would be.
Three hundred pixels per inch
March 12th, 2009
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
300 ppi. That’s the resolution we demand for images uploaded to fotoLibra.
Lots of people say 300 dpi instead of 300 ppi. That’s dots per inch, which is what printers use, but digital images appear on digital screens, which use pixels. So we say 300 ppi.
As soon as you know a little bit about digital photograpy, you will learn that the resolution of an image makes not a blind bit of difference to the quality or size of the image. The majority of cameras deliver their digital images at 72 ppi, whether you choose the RAW or the Basic mode.
Why then is fotoLibra so cussed as to insist members go through the palaver of converting their images from the perfectly adequate 72 ppi to 300 ppi?
We do so for two perfectly valid reasons. And one utterly compelling one.
Firstly, I’ll answer the question our poor Support team has to fend off more than any other — How do I convert my images to 300 ppi?
It’s a doddle. You can probably do it with the software that comes with your camera, but as they all differ I’ll describe the process in Adobe Photoshop. Don’t have Photoshop? Try Adobe Elements. Don’t have Elements? Irfanview is free and does the same thing, and much more besides. If you have a digital camera and you intend to sell photographs through fotoLibra, then you must have image processing software. It’s your darkroom.
This is what you do in Photoshop: go to Image> Image Size> UNCHECK the Resample Image button, and change the Resolution to 300 pixels / inch. Save the image. If you go to File> Automate> Batch… you can easily apply this to all your images.
That’s it.
If you see 118.1 instead of 300, you’ve chosen pixels per centimetre instead of pixels per inch. It’s exactly the same.
We don’t often reveal the first two reasons why we impose a resolution of 300 ppi (no more, no less), because when we do we usually manage to upset both buyers and sellers. This doesn’t apply to YOU, of course. So apologies in advance.
- Our buyers, who in the vast majority of cases will be printing the images they buy at 300 dots per inch, do not care for the extra work involved in carrying out this operation, and they complain when they get an old 72 ppi image which they have to convert. So we like to supply them with the resolution they prefer.
- It makes members think before uploading the moment they snap an image, and to look carefully at their photographs to see how they can be improved, and if they are uploading truly saleable pictures.
I know you know all this, and I know your images are always 300 ppi and you’ve never had any problems uploading, but spare a thought for a few of your fellow members in difficulty. I hope this helps to explain things.
In the background I can still hear whispers. “It’s really not relevant. Why make such a song and dance about it?”
OK, here’s the cruncher.
Have you ever discovered porn on fotoLibra?
No?
Yet it’s the world’s first Open Access image library. Anyone can upload anything.
Why is there no porn? Because 99.9% of it falls at the first barrier. What self-respecting porn merchant is going to go through the admittedly very minor hassle of converting his 72 ppi images (which are only ever viewed on a screen) into 300 ppi so he can upload them to fotoLibra? He’s going to go somewhere less stringent, less careful. Somewhere he can harvest mugs. He won’t find them on fotoLibra.
We also check every image uploaded. One or two may get past the 300 ppi barrier; they won’t get past our picture vetters.
Since the first upload to fotoLibra in March 2004, we have only had to reject four images.
We must be doing something right.
And that’s why we ask for this tiny imposition on your time.
Compression
March 5th, 2009On January 21st we started (gradually) to convert all the TIFFs on fotoLibra to top quality (Photoshop Level 12) JPEGs.
This will save about a terabyte of space with our current number of images, and provide far more room for members to upload photographs. All buyers seem to prefer JPEGs nowadays. Long gone are the days when the 24 MB TIFF was the only path to salvation.
The big debate we had in-house was how much compression should we apply? We want to preserve of much of the original image as commercially possible. Rumour has it that one very major picture library saves its JPEGs at Level 8, which is 60%.
We are more perfectionist. I was against anything less than Level 12, which holds between 90% and 96% of the original data. This will reduce a 24 MB TIFF to an 8 MB JPEG, a substantial saving. It is impossible to detect a visual difference on a computer screen. We settled on 94%.
JPEGs work well where there are large areas of the same colour, such as the sky. To put it as simply as possible, a TIFF file of a photograph of blue sky would read as follows:
- blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel,
whereas the JPEG file of the same image would read
- blue pixel x 24
Which as you can see is much more concise. Hence it’s smaller.
Here’s an image shown as a TIFF, then at Level 12, Level 11 and Level 10 JPEG compression:
Frankly, I can’t really tell the difference. Only when compression gets down to Level 7 can a difference be detected.
Worries about the degradation of the JPEG image through repeated copying are unfounded because the original upload is always used as the source asset for image sales. The purchaser will always be getting a Level 12 JPEG.
Why camera makers never adopted the much more sophisticated JPEG2000 standard I’ll never know.
Of course, any Pro or Platinum members who have uploaded TIFFs to fotoLibra and who do not want them converted to JPEGs only have to tell us and their uploads will remain untouched. Only one so far.
Power Outputs, Bit Depths, Damn Lies & Statistics
February 26th, 200938 years ago I spent a great deal of money on a good hi-fi system. At its heart was a QUAD 33/303 pre-amp and power amplifier combination.
I have used it every day since then. It has never been serviced or repaired. It simply works, and it sounds as good as it ever did. Which for me is great. I’m still playing the same music on it.
But it’s a measly 30 watt amp. You can break glass and dislodge substantial chunks of masonry with its sound output, but the spec doesn’t lie.
Shortly after I bought it, I saw Japanese-made 120 watt amplifiers at half the price. OK, they didn’t sound anywhere near as good, but just think of all that power!
I listened to a few. Cranked up, they didn’t seem to be any louder than the old QUAD (Little Feat’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Doctor is the benchmark).
Then I discovered the reason. The QUAD’s output was measured as “the closest approach to the original sound” — that is, the clearest and loudest you could go before any distortion was audible.
That was 30 watts. The Japanese, on the other hand, took their 30 watt amplifiers and figured that as they were stereo, the 30 watts should be 60 watts. And forget fidelity of sound, just crank it up as far as it will go. So the 60 watts became 120 watts — there was no volume control as such, simply a distortion intensifier.
Faced with a 30 watt amp and a 120 watt amp, which would you buy? Right. That’s why the average IQ is 100.
Now something similar is happening with cameras. fotoLibra only accepts 8 bit images. The next step up is 16 bit, but few commercial printers can use 16 bit files, and JPEGs can’t be saved as 16 bit.
So we ask for 8 bit images to be uploaded.
Members contact us to say “You won’t accept anything other than 8 bit images? But my camera produces 24 bit images!”
Well yes it does, in the same way that those old Japanese amps pumped out 120 watts. The marketing department of the camera manufacturers have reasoned that if a digital image is a combination of a Red, a Green and a Blue channel, each of those is 8 bits, therefore 8 + 8 + 8 = 24.
And which would you rather buy? A 24 bit camera or an 8 bit camera? Right. You will almost certainly have an 8 bit camera. Unless of course you have an expensive 48 bit camera, in which case you actually have a 16 bit camera — lovely, but you’ll have to convert the images to 8 bit to upload them to fotoLibra.
Going back to those amps for a moment, the Beatles performed using 30 watt Vox AC 30 amps. 30 watts is plenty loud enough for most needs, although Vox did build them special 100 watt amps for their performance out of doors in front of 55,000 fans at Shea Stadium.
Nobody could hear them anyway.
RSVP
February 23rd, 2009
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
If you made any attempt to contact anyone at fotoLibra between 17:00 GMT on Saturday February 21st and 09:40 GMT on Monday February 23rd, please resend your message as our email server was down and your message will not have been received.
Apologies, but these things happen.
Picture Calls
February 16th, 2009
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
This was sent to Jacqui Norman:
I just wanted to thank you and Yvonne and everyone else involved for hosting this important service. I sell my images on several sites, and while I am just getting started on fotoLibra and haven’t made any sales yet, I am very excited about our new “relationship”. The reason?
Photo Calls.
No other agency that I work with has provided a service as thorough as this for the photographers. It not only gives us a clear opportunity to get shots into the system BEFORE a buyer makes choices, but also provides a wealth of shooting ideas for enhancing our portfolios. I submitted my first shots for picture calls this weekend, and hope that they bear fruit. Even if they don’t, though, I look forward to participating in many more.
— Al Wasserberger, Chicago
fotoLibra DND & Checker 2.1 Released
February 13th, 2009
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
There’s a radical new version of the useful fotoLibra DND application released today.
It has all the functionality of the previous easy drag ‘n’ drop upload facility, but with the added bonus of checking every file to ensure it meets fotoLibra’s stringent Submission Guidelines.
Up till now, we allowed you to upload anything to fotoLibra, because only after we’d received it and looked at it could we tell if the file met our standards.
height=”500″ fotoLibra DND Version 2.1
Now DND 2.1 allows fotoLibra members to check their files before going through the long and disheartening process of uploading files and being told an hour later that they have been rejected because they’re not 300 ppi (the most common cause).
We hope you like it. Please let us know what you think.
A behind the scenes note: because this is such a radical step forward I wanted to call it fotoLibra DND v.3.0, but the developers argued against it. This is what they said:
We believe it is DND2.0 with a big new feature. We know that the version number has a psychological impact on people, but as software engineers we follow the rule: major version number increases if and only if a fundamental and structural evolution has occurred. We have not re-designed it. We have updated and extended the earlier great job. Which is why we only recommend increasing what we refer to as the “minor” version number.
If you believe it’s got to be called 3.0, we will rebuild it.
We have spent some time on packaging it, most of the time compiling and building the core software (with support for JPEG, colour, etc) because the binaries provided are not suitable for the average user (and that’s the reason why it is much bigger now).
Faced with such logic (they are technical folk, after all) I capitulated and agreed that it’s to be called fotoLibra DND & Checker Version 2.1.
I commend it to you.
Drag ‘n’ Drop Upload Checker
February 3rd, 2009
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
It’s our job at fotoLibra to make uploading as easy and painless as possible for our members.
It’s our job at fotoLibra to make sure the images we sell are print repro quality, ready to go without endless expensive manipulation by the purchaser.
How do we reconcile these two sometimes opposing forces? By publishing our Submission Guidelines, and enforcing strict parameters on uploaded image files. If we say we want 300 ppi, we won’t accept 200 ppi or 400 ppi. If we say we want 8 bit, we won’t accept 16 bit. if we say we want a minimum width or height of 1750 pixels, we won’t accept 1700 pixels.
Tough but fair.
The snag is, how can we tell if your images won’t made the grade until you upload them?
And that can take hours.
So what happens is that a member collects his images together, does what he can to ensure they meet our specifications, then drags them across to the fotoLibra DND (Drag And Drop) window. An hour or so later he gets the message “Image is 1514px high. Minimum height is 1750px.”
The upload has been rejected.
How annoying is that? I know I would throw something at the screen and storm off in a sulk. Yet we couldn’t figure out a way round it. How could we tell what members’ images were like BEFORE they were uploaded to us?
“We can’t, so let’s ask the members to do it.”
“But we do, and they don’t always do it. Then they get annoyed. With us.”
“So make them do it.”
“Yes, but how?”
“Make the pre flight check part of the upload process.”
THAT’S IT!
If we build a piece of software that reads an image file and checks that
- it’s 300 ppi
- it’s a top quality uncompressed JPEG
- it’s 8 bit
- its shorter side is longer than 1750 pixels
- it’s between 1 MB and 100 MB in file size
then it can report any errors back to the member before all that time is spent uploading a file which will be rejected.
So that’s what we’ve done. We’ve built it for Windows Vista and XP, for Intel and PowerPC Macs running OS X, and for Linux. We’ve built it into the forthcoming fotoLibra DND v3, so all you will have to do is to drag the files you want to upload into the DND window. The app will check your images and tell you what’s hot and what’s not.
Then you can upload safe in the knowledge you won’t get those nasty unfriendly error messages after a failed upload.
Is this a dream? A fantasy? Or simply vaporware?
No. It’s here, it works (I’m using it right now on an Intel Mac running OS 10.5.6) and we’re testing it at the moment. When we’re confident it’s bug free, we’ll release it.
Jacqui will tell you when it’s available for you to download. It should be in the next couple of weeks.
We haven’t yet got the resources of a Microsoft or an Apple, so we don’t have the facilities to test to exhaustion. But we think it will work well.
And if by chance it doesn’t, no doubt you will tell us.
Releases
December 4th, 2008Now there’s less money around, the nastier type of person is going to start scrabbling about for some of yours. We’re OK because we haven’t got any.
Seriously, if we don’t have cleared rights for an image, we’re not going to be able to make a Commercial Sale — which, in picture library terms, means a sale to an advertising agency or somewhere where the image could be assumed to endorse a product.
So that’s all the Royalty Free images gone, for a start. Never mark a picture as Royalty Free unless you’ve definitely got the Model Release, and best get the Property Release as well, unless you were standing on public ground.
The great majority of the sales we make are Editorial Sales, mainly to book publishers, so there’s less of a worry. But we’ve noticed recently that increasing numbers of publishers are demanding model and property releases when they buy images. And an image which comes with full authenticity and proper releases will be more valuable.
Our downloadable Model Release and Property Release are laughably simple, and would doubtless be shredded by any Noo Yoik attorney needing to feed his Coke (acola) habit. Here’s an extract from a US model release:
For good and valuable consideration of ____________________________, herein acknowledged as received, and by signing this release I hereby give the Artist and Assigns my permission to license the Images and to use the Images in any Media for any purpose (except pornographic or defamatory) which may include, among others, advertising, promotion, marketing and packaging for any product or service. I agree that the Images may be combined with other images, text and graphics, and cropped, altered or modified. I acknowledge and agree that I have consented to publication of my ethnicity(ies) as indicated below, but understand that other ethnicities may be associated with Images of me by the Artist and/or Assigns for descriptive purposes.
I agree that I have no rights to the Images, and all rights to the Images belong to the Artist and Assigns. I acknowledge and agree that I have no further right to additional Consideration or accounting, and that I will make no further claim for any reason to Artist and/or Assigns. I acknowledge and agree that this release is binding upon my heirs and assigns. I agree that this release is irrevocable, worldwide and perpetual, and will be governed by the laws of the state of California excluding the law of conflicts. I represent and warrant that I am at least 18 years of age and have the full legal capacity to execute this release.
And here’s ours:
I hereby assign full copyright of the photograph(s) taken of me by the above-mentioned photographer to that photographer together with the right of reproduction either wholly or in part.
I agree that the Photographer or licensees or assignees can use the above-mentioned photograph(s) either separately or together, either wholly or in part, in any way and in any medium.
The Photographer and licensees or assignees may have unrestricted use of these for whatever purpose, including advertising, with any reasonable retouching or alteration.
I agree that the above mentioned photographs and any reproductions shall be deemed to represent an imaginary person, and further agree that the Photographer or any person authorised by or acting on his or her behalf may use the above mentioned photographs or any reproductions of them for any advertising purposes or for the purpose of illustrating any wording, and agree that no such wording shall be considered to be attributed to me personally unless my name is used.
Provided my name is not mentioned in connection with any other statement or wording which may be attributed to me personally, I undertake not to prosecute or to institute proceedings, claims or demands against either the Photographer or his or her agents in respect of any usage of the above mentioned photographs.
We don’t seem to be so concerned about the model’s ethnicity. Should we be? And the American release assumes payment of the model(s) in some form, difficult when you’re faced with a rioting mob. But then getting any rioting mob to stop and sign model releases has always posed a problem.
Let’s face it, this is the boring side of photography. But people who have a high boredom threshold have the capacity to succeed in politics and to make money.
So sorry, but it has to be done.