Best Business Practices for Photographers [220]
Figure 26.5
PLUS website License Generator webpage Part 1.
At any time, we could change the generator mode from Basic to Expanded if we felt we did not have sufficient customization options. By clicking Continue, we end up at the Permissions section. In this case, our client is an editorial magazine client with a single full-size image going on the cover of the magazine, with up to a 1 million circulation, with a one-month grant of use in North America, specifically the U.S.A., in English, non-exclusively.
Figure 26.6 shows the drop-down menu choices.
Figure 26.6
PLUS website License Generator Permissions selector.
When we click Continue, we are presented with the concise list of usages, and we can have up to 12 different types for a single license, which is really more than enough. Figure 26.7 shows how it looks.
Figure 26.7
PLUS website License Generator Permissions summary.
Choosing Continue brings up the usage in a natural language format (see Figure 26.8).
Figure 26.8
PLUS website License Generator Permissions review.
All that remains is to specify the license start and end dates, the status of any model/property releases, credit line requirements, and image information (see Figure 26.9).
Figure 26.9
PLUS website Other Info data entry panel
The next screen provides you with the XMP file with all that information tucked neatly away, in both natural language formatting and machine-readable formatting. If this is your first time doing this, and you don't have an application such as Lightroom, which has a plug-in that allows you to automatically embed this license metadata when you ingest the images, you can download the PLUS License Embedder and Reader. The plug-in is an application that was created by photographer/developer Timothy Armes. If you're not using the plug-in, just click the Save XMP License File, as shown in Figure 26.10.
Figure 26.10
PLUS website License Generator Summary panel and License Generator
The file then is downloaded onto your hard drive and is only a few hundred bytes in size.
If you want to read or view the contents of that file, you can do it in a variety of ways. Figure 26.11 shows the first screen of that file, located on the desktop of my computer.
Figure 26.11
PLUS XMP sidecar license as read by PLUS License Embedder & Reader application.
Down in the lower-right corner is the View Media Usages button, and by clicking that, you are immediately taken out to the Internet to have the Media Summary Code "decoded", as shown in Figure 26.12.
Figure 26.12
PLUS website decoder of the "machine-readable" code
Returning to the Embed License in Image option from the application screen (or within the plug-in in your favorite image editing application, like Timothy Armes' Lightroom plug-in), you see the screen shown in Figure 26.13.
Figure 26.13
PLUS License Embedder & Reader that allows you to embed the license into a file's metadata.
Clicking the Embed PLUS License button gives you the affirmative response shown in Figure 26.14.
Figure 26.14
PLUS License Embedder & Reader confirmation notice
Later in this chapter we'll go into exporting XMP using standalone applications. Figure 26.15 shows one such application—HindSight's Licenses solution, which is a part of their InView and StockView suite of solutions. It is PLUS standardized.
Figure 26.15
HindSight's License Exporter in the XMP format
Thus, by opening Photoshop, choosing File > File Info, and going to the Advanced tab, you see what is shown in Figure 26.16.
Figure 26.16
Once the PLUS License Embedder & Reader has embedded the XMP that was generated by either the PLUS website or the HindSight export, that information appears as shown here
And tucked away in that folder is all of the information you entered, which will travel with your image. What is amazing about this is that clients are already building into their enterprise-level digital asset management systems PLUS solutions that will allow these clients to either read our PLUS codes that we have embedded or, where