Category: News
News
Dreamstime releases “Stock Rank” an interactive stock photo review tool
Dreamstime, a Brentwood Tennessee based micro-payment stock photography business, has announced that it has introduced a new feature called “Stock Rank” that pairs two images on the screen and challenges the user to select the best photo—the photo most worthy of purchase or download—based on concept, subject, aesthetics, lighting, composition, etc. This feature was initially established as a quality assurance system utilized primarily by the agency’s editors as part of their training to review the commercial aspects of stock submissions. “We’re making the feature available to all members. It’s fun and will allow all users to learn to understand the difference between the images, degrees of quality and what actually sells,” said Serban Enache, CEO and co-founder of Dreamstime.com.
News
Sodapix sponsors image editor’s meeting and supports German Advertising congress
Sodapix, a stock photography company from Switzerland, has announced that it has teamed up with the press agency Remotephoto in sponsoring this years image editor’s meeting on July 18th in the “Trend quarter” Zürich Binz. The meeting is an annual convention; Getty Images supported it last year, after Keystone backed it in 2007.
News
Vario Images exhibiting at German Book Fair in Frankfurt
Vario Images, a stock photography agency based in Bonn Germany has announced that it will have a presence at The Frankfurt Book Fair, an annual event billed as the largest book fair in the world. Historically The Frankfurt Book Fair hosts more than 7,300 exhibitors from over 100 countries and is the one of the most important marketplaces worldwide for books, media, rights and licensing. The event will be open for professional visitors on October 14th – 18th.
News
Getty Images adds Flickr photo clouds feature to site
Getty Images, who first announced a deal with Flickr to monetize user-generated content from the photo-sharing site in July 2008, has just announced a new phase in the company’s campaign behind The Flickr Collection by adding a Flickr photo clouds feature to its site. This new feature lets users visually group images that catch their eye and share them as part of a social networking/creative inspiration experience.
News
AudioMicro upgrades music licensing platform; Teams with SlideRocket
AudioMicro.com, a micropayment licensing platform for audio clips and sound effects, has announced that it has upgraded its music licensing platform with a cleaner, smarter interface, and improved search tools. In addition, AudioMicro has teamed with SlideRocket and added its extensive library of stock music and royalty free sound effects to the SlideRocket marketplace. Utilizing AudioMicro’s new API, SlideRocket users can now license tracks from the AudioMicro archive and incorporate them directly into their SlideRocket presentations. “SlideRocket’s beautiful design and powerful communication capabilities made a natural fit for the AudioMicro music and sound effects library”, said Ryan Born, founder and CEO of AudioMicro. “At least 50% of the entertainment value of visual media comes from the audio. With over 125,000 tracks to choose from, SlideRocket users are now able to create more compelling, attention grabbing presentations, utilizing AudioMicro music and effects to engage their audience.”
News
iStock launches high-end collection Vetta and projects gross revenue of $200MM for 2009
The leading micro-stock web-site, Getty’s iStockphoto, has announced the launch of a new premium collection of imagery that will command higher prices than their regular collection. Prices for images from the new collection, called Vetta(TM), will range up to 70 credits, the equivalent of $96.25. iStock has also announced it projects gross
revenue to reach US$200MM this year.
News
Blend Images now offering rights-managed Flex Packs
Blend Images, a stock photography agency specializing in ethnically diverse business and lifestyle imagery, has announced that it has begun offering Flex Packs for users licensing the same rights-managed (RM) image for multiple usages. Getty Images and other stock photography companies offers similar pack licensing products which are intended to simplify the licensing process while providing a competitive price for users seeking broad use of RM images. “Our Flex Pack options were created in response to the way our clients want to license imagery, and are specifically tailored to their commercial needs,” said Robert Henson, Director of Channel Relations and Sales. “With aggregated uses, our clients retain the latitude to use in their projects while obtaining a great price.”
News
PictureNature launches RM subscriptions
PictureNature, a small niche rights-managed (RM) library from Scotland launched in 2006, has announced that it is now offering tailored subscriptions based on rights-managed usage for various type of image buyers. The subscriptions are targeted at customers in the world of educational, merchandise, not-for-profit, or publishing who use a high volume of images and can benefit from bulk pricing.
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Global ImageWorks now representing Soul Train TV clips
Global ImageWorks, a stock footage company from New Jersey, has announced that it has been appointed the exclusive worldwide clip licensing representative of the iconic television show, Soul Train on behalf of Direct Holdings Americas Inc. The deal includes the clip licensing of over 1100 weekly Soul Train Episodes, 20+ Soul Train Award Shows , and all the Specials and Anniversary Shows . Best remembered for its indelible cultural impact, Soul Train (1971-2006) is also one of the most successful shows ever created, holding the record for the longest, first-run, nationally syndicated television show ever.
News
Image Quest Marine launches new website
Image Quest Marine, a specialist stock photo library from the UK featuring marine and freshwater images, has announced that it has launched a new website. The company boasts that users no longer need unnecessary extra clicks to access bigger images when browsing – a new hover tool instantly displays a larger version of each eye-catching thumbnail. In addition the new site includes an enhaced lightbox functionality.
News
Bridgeman now represents The Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute
London based Bridgeman Art Library, a specialty library featuring fine art, history and culture related images, has announced that it now represents Over 200 fine art images from the The Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute. From 19th century American art to French Impressionism, the Clark houses a world-class collection. In 1955, Sterling and Francine Clark established a museum near Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts where they would store their vast collection of paintings, prints, sculpture and porcelain.
News
iSyndica releases video syndication tool for microstock distribution
iSyndica, a cloud-based digital media distribution platform based in Nashua NH, has built a business allowing mictrostock photographers to submit images to their site to be automatically distributed to multiple microstock sites. The business has just announced that I has developed a similar virtual-distribution server for video syndication. With iSyndica, users upload their content once and then choose the channels over which they want to distribute it.
News
Fotopedia launches collaborative online photo encyclopedia
Palo Alto, Calif based Fotopedia has launched with hopes of transforming the online photo space with a photo encyclopedia that lets photographers, curators, and visitors contribute, collaborate and enrich images to be useful to the whole community. First launched to private beta in September 2008 as Fotonauts, Fotopedia can be used to organize photos from personal storage, Flickr, Picasa, and other services based on subject or any user-defined index, alongside a mashup of contextual information. Fotopedia is the brainchild of Jean-Marie Hullot, former CTO of NeXT Software and Apple’s Application Division.
News
CEPIC announces the election of 2009-11 Board of Directors
Members of the CEPIC Executive Committee for 2009 - 2011 were elected at CEPIC’s General Annual Meeting on June 3rd, which was held during the 2009 CEPIC Congress in Dresden. The CEPIC Committee consists of 7 Members, and the election brought five new faces on board. Newly elected officers include Christina Vaughan as President, Klaus Plaumann as Vice President and Dominique Delouis as Treasurer.
News
Image Source producing ‘Cross-Media Packs’ with video & stills from the same production
Image Source, a leading producer of royalty free stock imagery for London, has announced that it has begun marketing a new stock licensing product called a ‘Cross-Media Pack’ featuring matched high-end stills and motion using the same premium models, styling and location all under one simple, royalty free licence. The media is intended for use in multi-media campaigns where both video and still images can be used to support a consistent branding message.
News
AP Images launches updated stock photography site
AP Images, a commercial image licensing division of The Associated Press, announced the launch of an enhanced version of its APimges.com site for professional image buyers. The new site features include: new landing pages (go directly to Entertainment, Sports, News, etc.), facilitated search (enriched metadata of photos), internationalized marketing content (read about AP Images in 9 languages), as well the site now allows visitors access to recent content without having to log-in to an account.
News
FotoS.A. representing Corbis exclusively in Russia
Corbis, widely believed to be the world’s 2nd largest stock licensing company, has announced that it has signed an agreement whereby FotoS.A. will be Corbis’ exclusive representative for rights managed (RM) images, royalty free RF images and footage in Russia. “We are honoured to partner with Corbis as their new representative in Russia. This is a very important step for our agency and great opportunity for both of our companies,” said Anna Sakharova, Managing Director, FotoS.A. “We are excited to promote the world-recognized Corbis brand and its unique and outstanding collections in Russia. Despite difficult market conditions, we are prepared to invest all our experience, capital and human resources to gain Corbis a leading position in the images market in Russia.”
News
bilderlounge rebrands itself as ‘beyond fotomedia’
bilderlounge, a Munich based photo production company, has announced that it has changed its name to ‘beyond fotomedia’ as part of a company strategy to expand from a mainly royalty free stock photography offering towards high-end photography with other licensing models. “Since starting the company 5 years ago, we’ve been pushing our creativity higher and higher - and it sells. And that’s the type of work our photographers want to produce too”. say Andrew Duncomb and Michele Vitucci, the two business partners that run the company. “The change of name signals that we’re pushing our pictures, and our entire business, further forward, higher up the quality ladder. There are never enough truly great pictures in the world.”
News
Web-site make-over and new collections at Corbis
Corbis has launched a new version of its web-site with a myriad set of new features designed to simplify searching for images among the company’s wide variety of collections. Pablo Supkay, Director of Web Platforms, says Corbis the changes to the site resulted from an in-house overhaul of the design and functionality of the site aimed at reducing clutter, and an exhaustive testing process with customer focus groups from among clients world-wide. The over-riding goal of the redesign is to make searching through Corbis’s wide variety of collections more intuitive.
News
ITN Source launches “New Classics” vintage footage collection
ITN Source, a division of ITN and a leading provider of stock footage from the UK, has announced that it has launched a new footage collection entitled ”New Classics” featuring more than 10,000 hours of digitized footage covering historic events between 1896 and 1970. New Classics footage has been plucked directly from ITN Source’s partners including Reuters, ITN, Fox Movietone, Images of War and Paramount.
