This article is adapted from the new book, Licensing Photography,
by Richard Weisgrau and Victor S. Perlman, published by Allworth Press of New York (www.allworth.com). At the advent of the digital age that we all now find ourselves immersed in there was a common belief that digital technology would call for a change in the way photography is licensed. Today we know that it caused little change in licensing practices and agreements except to distinguish between print and digital electronic uses in licensing agreements. The major difference that digital technology provided was in the tools we have at our disposal to make and to license our photographs. Computer hardware, software programs, imaging technology, the Internet and World Wide Web, the scanner, and the digital camera have developed to a point where they can contribute great benefit to the licensing process. Digital technology has brought new ways to capture and process photographs. During those actions you can add information to your digital images. Digital database technology now allows you to store and retrieve that information along with photographs. The ability to link a photograph with technical and copyright information is the most important innovation in licensing since licensing began.
Photography Processing Software There are dozens of software programs that are touted as photographic processing and editing tools on the market today. But, if you are licensing your photography, many of those programs are inadequate for your needs. Whether you are working with scanned film or digital camera images, the software you use to process digital photographs should have the facility to add copyright data to the image file. Many programs allow you to include technical data, which is a good feature, but it has nothing to do with licensing. Whatever program you select, be sure it has the added facility to add IPTC data to the digital image.
IPTC is the acronym for International Press Telecommunications Council, a worldwide consortium of major news media companies. You can learn more about IPTC from its Web site (
www.iptc.org). But you don’t need to know about IPTC to benefit from the use of its standards. Major software manufacturers have incorporated IPTC data fields into their software. For example, Adobe has created a metadata framework called Extensible Metadata Platform—XMP. It is available in Photoshop and other Adobe products. XMP reads data recorded at the time of shooting of digital images. That data is attached to the digital image and stays attached unless you decide to remove it.
Photoshop also provides synchronization between IPTC and XMP data. The combined data elements offer a complete range of information about each image. Since Photoshop has become a standard professional imaging tool many other professional-level software manufacturers are incorporating the IPTC and XMP data features for either compatibility or competitive reasons. You want to be sure that any imaging software you use incorporates IPTC and XMP tables.
XMP and IPTC Data Tables The following list describes the categories of information that can be attached to a digital image in a program like Photoshop with XMP. These are only categories. In each category there are numerous fields of information that you can select or deselect.
• File Properties—Description of characteristics of the file, including the size, creation, and modification dates.
• IPTC—The only editable category allowing the addition of a caption for your files, as well as copyright information.
• Camera Data (EXIF)—Information including the camera settings that were used when the image was taken as assigned by the camera.
• GPS—Displays navigational information from Global Positioning System-enabled cameras.
• Camera Raw—Displays camera raw file format data.
• Edit History—A log of changes made to images
Why IPTC? IPTC data is the only editable data that you can change at will, and it offers fourteen record fields for your information including copyright, credit, keywords, caption, location, and others.
The Caption field in an IPTC table offers the most space for recording data. With 2,000 characters, you can include a brief caption for the image and detailed license to use the image. The Caption field might contain information like this: Sunrise over New York City from the West bank of the Hudson River. Use of this image is licensed only to XYZ Magazine and only for use in its May (year) issue on the magazine’s cover. All other rights are reserved. Please see the accompanying invoice (insert invoice number) for complete licensing terms and conditions. Do not reproduce this image in any manner unless you are familiar with the complete license.
By using the IPTC tables you can attach information about your license to the photograph. This is no substitute for a separate written license. It is an adjunct to a written license. It lets anyone, other than your client, who might acquire a copy of the digital image know that they have no right to use it. Since most image users are using Photoshop or similar software to process images for publication, your licensing message will appear in the XMP/IPTC file display when your image is on screen. That won’t guarantee that they will look at it, but it will guarantee that you have made every effort to alert anyone who has a copy of the image as to the nature of the rights licensed and to whom. That can be a formidable weapon, if you ever have to take legal action because of an infringement.