Screencasts

SAA Launches getMETAsmart! Tour and PhotoMetadata.org

May 27, 2009

Are you meta-smart?
If you create, distribute or use digital photos, you’d better be!

To protect your copyrights … To make money licensing photography … To smooth your workflow … To track image use … To find images you need … To find them again … You need to understand and use photo metadata.

We can help.

The Stock Artists Alliance invites all to the launch of our
getMETAsmart tour and PhotoMetadata.org website.

Working under an award from the Library of Congress and supported by industry partners, the SAA Photo Metadata Project is on a mission to promote industrywide use of standard photo metadata in every digital image file.

Our goal: Help all photographers – and everyone working with digital images – become meta-smart. Photographers need to embed metadata in their images, while stock distributors, users, archivists and software developers need to ensure that this information is preserved – and read correctly – as files are processed, copied, licensed, published online, reproduced and archived.

No matter how meta-smart you think you are, you’ll learn better metadata practices to help your business – and protect your legacy. Our MetaSurvey showed too few images on the web have identifying metadata.

With free live events and online resources, we’ll show you the many benefits of embedding and reading standard metadata. We’ll help make it easy for you to populate and preserve metadata in your image files. This knowledge is essential for you to protect your copyrights, support your licensing efforts, improve your workflow and better manage your digital assets.

Register now to attend a FREE getMETAsmart event!

Our educational tour launches May 27 with stops in:

Dallas, May 27
San Antonio, May 28
Seattle, June 11
San Francisco, June 17
Los Angeles, June 18
New York, June 22
Washington, June 25
… Plus Atlanta, Chicago and Tucson, with dates to be announced soon.

These evening events - including receptions - are free, but registration is limited. To learn more and reserve a place, please go to www.photometadata.org.

Learn more online at www.PhotoMetadata.org

At our new website, you’ll find everything you wanted to know about metadata … but were afraid to ask. Learn about the challenges of protecting, licensing, and archiving digital photos. Learn how using standardized metadata can help. Find out what's new in the world of metadata. Our extensive guides to metadata standards and best practices, paired with links to other resources, are just what you need to become meta-smart. Coming soon: Step-by-step screencasts and PDF tutorials show how popular software tools make it easy to embed essential metadata in your digital files.
Visit www.photometadata.org

Contact:
Greg Smith, Media Coordinator, SAA Photo Metadata Project
mediasmith@hargray.com
(843) 757-6557

About Stock Artists Alliance:
SAA is the only trade association focused on the business of stock photography. SAA supports its membership with exclusive benefits to enable and enhance their stock businesses. SAA speaks up for the interests of stock artists with a clear and powerful voice in the licensing industry. The heart of SAA's mission is education and advocacy concerning core issues, such as the need to better protect and promote licensing through the use of standardized metadata. Learn more at www.photometadata.org/About-Stock-Artists-Alliance

About the Digital Preservation Program at the U.S. Library of Congress:
The mission of the Library's Digital Preservation Program is to develop a national strategy to collect, archive and preserve burgeoning digital content. The Library awarded SAA a partnership to join its preservation network of more than 130 partners from across the nation to tackle the challenge. Learn more at www.photometadata.org/About-Library-of-Congress-Partnership

About our Project Partners:
A diverse group of partners support SAA's Photo Metadata Project, warranting thanks not only from us but from the entire imaging industry. Our partners committed to the usability and preservation of digital images include: Adobe, Microsoft, CameraBits, Photoshelter, PicScout and the IPTC. Learn more at www.photometadata.org/About-Project-Partners

Screencast Tutorials

SAA Offers Screencasts on Key Topics
that all Photographers involved in Stock
need to understand.

Thanks to SAA's Imaging Technology Standards Chair (and metadata guru) David Riecks, SAA offers a series of visual tutorials about the latest metadata standards. We invite site visitors to view the folloiwing:

Screencast Tutorials #1-5:
An Introduction to the IPTC "Core" Panels

This series provides a "sneak peek" at the IPTC "custom panels" – the latest revision to the IPTC's widely used metadata standards, which many photographers know as the "File Info" feature in Adobe Photoshop. They will give you some insights into how they can be used to identify your image files, record rich metadata about the subject in an image and help to protect your intellectual property.

These Apple Quicktime videos may take up to a minute to load before they start playing. Please be patient; they are large files. You'll first need to first Download Quicktime Player if you don't already have it.

View the Screencasts now.

Overview of the IPTC Core panels (4:31 run time, 13 MB download)
IPTC Contact panel details (2:11 run time, 12 MB download)
IPTC Content panel details (2:23 run time, 9 MB download)
IPTC Image panel details (3:47 minutes run time, 11 MB download)
IPTC Status panel details (3:51 run time, 10 MB download)

More about IPTC Metadata Standards

From the IPTC site, you can download the custom panels, as well as a full package that includes a comprehensive user guide to these panels (authored by David Riecks), example photos with embedded XMP information, the specification document, an implementation guide for developers, and a "bug fix" for the Photoshop CS pre-installed panels. ...more

More Screencasts from SAA

Additional Tutorials on a variety of subjects are available to SAA members only. Topics include Creating Metadata Templates with Photoshop CS/CS2, which shows how to apply them to many images at one time; and Batch Processing, which demonstrates how to organize and generate keywords so they can be "batch added" using Photoshop CS/CS2 and iView Media Pro 2.6.4.

Open Resources

SAA offers the following "open resources"
about the stock business.

Register for free access.

All we ask is for you to complete our quick free registration to download these SAA publications, reports, screencasts and software. Once registered, you can revisit the site anytime and access any "open resources."
Register now

SAA [Key]Words: Stock Essentials
This complimentary ezine provides an introduction to essential stock photography business principles and practices, and offers you 50 pages of definitions, insights, resources and visual inspiration from SAA members who share their expertise about all aspects of the industry. ....more

Stock Releases
Q + A about Model and Property Releases,
and release forms in 11 languages. ...more

SAA PLUS™Packs Calculator
SAA and PLUS want to help make Rights Managed licensing quick and easy. PLUS Packs™ offer a streamlined and easily automated alternative to traditional RM licensing. SAA's PLUS Packs™Calculator is free, open source software developed by SAA that automates the selection and pricing of PLUS Packs. ...more

SAA Screencast Tutorials
View this series of screencasts for an introductory tour of the current IPTC standard for embedding essential photo metadata in your images. Other tutorials are available to SAA members only. ...more

Industry Reports & Analayis by The Stock Aslyum
SAA members have access to a five year archive of in-depth industry reporting and analysis from The Stock Asylum, a respected industry newsletter that ceased publication and donated its archives to SAA in 2008. Selected articles are available to registered users. ...more