Best Business Practices for Photographers [224]
Note that in all cases, it is possible for some software to strip (remove) all metadata, including the camera data, IPTC data, and the PLUS embedded code as well.
PLUS in Standalone Applications
Suppose you don't want to go to the web to generate your licenses. The ability to create these licenses on your own computer, without connectivity to the PLUS website, has its pros and its cons
I'll address the downside first. On the occasion that there is a revised PLUS standard and additions of universally accepted licensing terminology (such as the evolution of images for blogs, and so on), there is the possibility that you won't have the latest update to the PLUS standard. At this time, that's really the only significant downside.
The upsides are significant. The first is the most obvious—the PLUS standard has been established, with a glossary printed in book form and online—however, in the unlikely event that the PLUS web presence goes away, having the ability to maximize your use of the standard with a standalone application is a significant benefit. Let me make one really important point here: Even if the PLUS website were to disappear and the PLUS Coalition were to dissolve, the terminology and standards developed would survive because it is a consensus system that no one group foisted upon another.
Further, you can produce licenses, codes, and so forth on your computer, store them for future use, and manage all your licenses. One answer is HindSight's InView and StockView solution. While you can generate your licenses online and paste the natural language text and/or machine-readable summary code into the Rights Granted metadata field using a word processing contract/estimate/invoice, so too could you use that language in applications such as Lou Lesko's BlinkBid or fotoQuote author Cradoc Bradshaw's fotoBiz. It is my sincere hope and desire that both BlinkBid and fotoBiz integrate PLUS into their software in future releases. InView/StockView integrate the PLUS license generator into their system with their currently available solution.
Click the Terminology button from their main menu, which HindSight calls Flow Chart (for a good reason), as shown in Figure 26.23.
Figure 26.23
The main menu of HindSight's In View & Stock View application suite
Figure 26.24 shows the screen that would allow you to write any type of license you wanted, but when you mouse over the word Custom, the text at the bottom of the window says "You are viewing the Custom panel. Click here to switch to the PLUS panel."
Figure 26.24
The Custom Licensing window in the Terminology panel of HindSight's suite
Once you switch to the PLUS panel, there are 12 drop-down menus that, as you make your selections, the license builds both in natural language and in machine-readable text (if you choose), as shown in Figure 26.25.
Figure 26.25
The PLUS Licensing window in the Terminology panel of HindSight's suite
Once the license details have been specified, you next switch to the License Constructor, which allows you to enter other details about the license (see Figure 26.26). The benefit of this is that all of this information will be inserted into the file's metadata.
Figure 26.26
The PLUS Licensing Constructor window in the Terminology panel of HindSight's suite.
What I've outlined here is one example of a best practice. Suppose, though, you decide that you only want to create one license and have that language be a part of your ingestion process in an application such as Photo Mechanic, Lightroom, Aperture, or any other such one. You could generate a generic license. Figure 26.27 shows an example of a generic license for one year for the U.S.A.
Figure 26.27
The PLUS Licensing window Media Summary in the Terminology panel of HindSight's suite, showing a one-year license for all uses.
Generating this license in HindSight's Terminology, on the PLUS website, or in any other solutions you are using then allows you