Best Business Practices for Photographers [223]
Media: Editorial | Periodicals | Magazine (All Magazine Types) | Printed
Placement: Single Placement on Any Interior Page
Size: Any Size Image | Any Size Media
Versions: Single Issue
Quantity: Any Quantity
Duration: 30 days from date of first publication
Region: Northern America | USA
Language: All Languages
Industry: Publishing Media
Exclusivity: Exclusive
These modifications might be better, but they could be interpreted to suggest that if you took 10 images, and they published one, the other nine are still exclusive until they use them. So, perhaps the duration could be:
30 days from date of first publication, or 90 days from date of assignment, whichever comes first
The key is to utilize the system. Further, it is important to have a start date to accompany the duration and to let the client specify the start date. When clients may not know the start date, which is often the case, ask them to make their best guess. Now, in the event that you have these templates that are not client specific, they do not include the client information. While not optimal, time pressures may require you to ship out or upload the images.
Figure 26.20 shows how you might have placed metadata in the Description tab.
Figure 26.20
The Description tab under File Info in Photoshop
The next tab over is the IPTC tab, and several of the metadata fields, once entered in one tab, are automatically populated into other tabs. For example, the Description field becomes the Caption field, and so on. Here's where you would cut and paste the natural-language templated block of licensing text into the Rights Usage Terms field, as shown in Figure 26.21.
Figure 26.21
The IPTC tab under File Info in Photoshop, showing the PLUS licensing information location.
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NOTE
I graphically expanded the form field for the purposes of this example. The height of the form field in Photoshop is closer in size to the Copyright Notice field. Other elements may expand and contract depending upon the size of the content within the field
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Figure 26.22 shows that same metadata as it appears in the Library module of Lightroom.
Figure 26.22
The PLUS language as it appears in the metadata panel in Lightroom.
It is important to reiterate that this metadata is only human readable, and while best practices call for both human readable (that is, the natural language version) and machine readable, time pressures in the field may dictate otherwise. Remember, too, that while you are one person generating thousands of images a year, clients are using dozens or hundreds of photographers in that same year, receiving tens or hundreds of thousands of images, and they just can't open/view each image's license to read the rights. So, wherever possible, utilizing a machine-readable license is very important.
In instances where you are ingesting all your images without a known license at the time of ingestion, it would be extremely valuable to apply PLUS Pack PICR, which is "Internal Review - Use restricted to internal business review for inspection and/or editing purposes only. Excludes reproduction in comps or other design prototypes. No reproduction, distribution or other use of the image." This way, unless and until you actually do change the licensing language, no one will have a blank Rights Usage Terms field. Even so, including the end user, duration, and start date will be of value. You might write something like this in the Rights Granted metadata field:
PLUS Pack "Internal Review (PICR)." The use of this image is restricted to internal business review for inspection and/or editing purposes only. Excludes reproduction in comps or other design prototypes. No reproduction, distribution, or other use of the image, and this right is for the commissioning client only and shall expire no later than 30 days from the creation