Idea: Facebook Size

jmphotocraft

I think in the "Downloads" tab of our image storefronts, there should be a "facebook" size option, which is 600 x 400 pixels, that we could sell for like a dollar (price of an iTunes song). The 1mp image size is too big to sell for a dollar, because it can be printed quite nicely at 4x6".

Or to take it to the next level, put a little blue facebook "f" icon right in the gallery that would take them to an order page for a 600x400 download. I'm sure this could even be integrated with fb to send it straight to the customer's wall.

Why I want this:

Two weeks ago I shot a soccer tournament for 12-14 year old boys and girls. 9 games. I've seen very few action shot sales. Good thing I contracted in advance for $10 per head in exchange for team group photos.

Anyway, I bumped into a friend yesterday who has a daughter on one of the teams. She told me my images are all over facebook, complete with watermark. The pics are right-click protected, not sharable, and external links disabled. These 12-14 year olds are saving screenshots or getting the images out of browser cache.

I'm sure this is the only use they will have for the images.

At least I'm getting "free advertising", for whatever it's worth.

Here is my watermark:



I'm surprised they consider the images usable like that, but I don't think I should make the watermark any more obtrusive. It would be nice if we could sell a cheap download for use on myfacespacebook.

Andy

Add your voice, here:
http://smugmug.uservoice.com/pages/17723-smugmug/suggestions/309807-add-sale-of-smaller-digital-files?ref=title

thanks!

dmakogon

Funny you mentioned Facebook... I shot a wedding a few months ago, and the bride asked for digital copies of the prints. In order to build this into the price, I asked the simple question: What do you think you'll be using the digital prints for? The answer: Windows wallpaper, digital photo frame, and Facebook.

Seems to be the popular way to share these days... FYI - When resizing for Facebook, the maximum dimension is 604x604. Anything larger, and FB will auto-size your image down and degrade quality. I set up an Aperture output present, with 604 max per side. Couldn't be easier.

Of course, actually uploading 604x604 images to SmugMug inly causes pain and anguish, if you're using proof delay and the purchaser decides to do some cropping (since the crop frame does not scale when you upload a higher-res image, and you're left with the fun task of redoing all the crop frames). So, I concur with the FB digital download - I'm heading over to cast my vote for this shortly.

David

Andy

http://andydemo.smugmug.com/DemoSite/WebSize-Digital-Downloads/

jmphotocraft

Andy wrote:

http://andydemo.smugmug.com/DemoSite/WebSize-Digital-Downloads/

I love how the first kid's shirt says "Nookie". (I know it probably says "Wookies")

That's a fine idea, however I would want sub-sub-categories, or a folder tree structure in order to do this. As it is now I have sports galleries organized by sport, league, team. Within team I'd want two galleries - print and web. I wouldn't want my web resolution images in the same gallery as print.

jmphotocraft

dmakogon wrote:

FYI - When resizing for Facebook, the maximum dimension is 604x604. Anything larger, and FB will auto-size your image down and degrade quality.

Yeah, and not only that but they also limit the byte size to about 100kb, which is like Photoshop jpg quality 3, ugh.

Andy

jmphotocraft wrote:

I love how the first kid's shirt says "Nookie". (I know it probably says "Wookies")

That's a fine idea, however I would want sub-sub-categories, or a folder tree structure in order to do this. As it is now I have sports galleries organized by sport, league, team. Within team I'd want two galleries - print and web. I wouldn't want my web resolution images in the same gallery as print.

No you'd do a separate gallery (could even be unlisted) and link it from the main gallery...

It's not perfect - but with about 5-10 mins effort, the job is done.

Kagan

Andy wrote:

No you'd do a separate gallery (could even be unlisted) and link it from the main gallery...

It's not perfect - but with about 5-10 mins effort, the job is done.

Any Suggestions on How to link to it from the main gallery? I mean just a link in the caption or is there a way to embed the pic there without actually putting that pic in that gallery?? If its unlisted wouldnt I have to use each individual url to get them to THIER pic? Just having a dumb attack.

Andy

Kagan wrote:

Any Suggestions on How to link to it from the main gallery? I mean just a link in the caption or is there a way to embed the pic there without actually putting that pic in that gallery?? If its unlisted wouldnt I have to use each individual url to get them to THIER pic? Just having a dumb attack.

In the gallery description, I'd say. http://smugmug.com/help/html-help

Awais Yaqub

I read free advertising hahaha, i thought similar when one guy uploaded my image to his FB pics. Everything went to drain when i read 1st 2 coments on the picture, you can read them click here. I even tagged my name but no use:D

Just thought to share interesting experience lol.

Allen42

The separate gallery idea would work, except for the sheer volume of photos and events that I cover. Manually creating the links, the separate galleries, etc. would cost me more in time that I'm losing from "stolen" prints, I'm afraid.

cmkultradome

Andy wrote:

http://andydemo.smugmug.com/DemoSite/WebSize-Digital-Downloads/

Thanks Andy - this will really work for me. I don't have a lot of photos so it will involve very little time, but I shoot a local college hockey team as a favor for the coach (he lets my high school son travel with the team). I post the photos and most of the players just want the px for Facebook so this will work great and I can still make a little (very little, but it all adds up) $.

Stephanie

Kagan

Allen42 wrote:

The separate gallery idea would work, except for the sheer volume of photos and events that I cover. Manually creating the links, the separate galleries, etc. would cost me more in time that I'm losing from "stolen" prints, I'm afraid.

I wouldnt even attempt it with the baseball season long stuff, but for Teams and Individual stuff it wouldnt be that big of a problem. As Stephanie said, every lil bit helps.

wirehunt

Awais Yaqub wrote:

I read free advertising hahaha, i thought similar when one guy uploaded my image to his FB pics. Everything went to drain when i read 1st 2 coments on the picture, you can read them click here. I even tagged my name but no use:D

Just thought to share interesting experience lol.

Unavailable at the moment.

I think the free advertising would be better, never know when the kids parents will be looking and do the "I want that", so a sale. Otherwise how much are you going to sell them for?

dgafphoto

I have tried to avoid using watermarks in my images b/c i figured if people got around right click they could get around a simple watermark and more complicated watermarks are just annoying to look at. However, I can def understand that it deters most people and it also serves as advertising for someone that does they type of photography you do...I really like the idea of Facebook intergration.


FYI: I think they actually use a resolution of 604px for the max size of the pics.

I got bored so i took out your watermark...hope you don't mind


oops....just saw that someone else commented on the pic size 604px

RKnecht

Andy wrote:

http://andydemo.smugmug.com/DemoSite/WebSize-Digital-Downloads/

Fantastic idea!! I've been trying to figure out an easy way and I guess it was too obvious that I couldn't figure it out. Thanks Andy!

jmphotocraft

dgafphoto wrote:

I got bored so i took out your watermark...hope you don't mind

Impressive. And disconcerting. Well I guess it's like the locks on the doors of my house. A determined thief will get in. I think if If I ever happened to see someone using one of my photos that they had unwatermarked, I'd call the police on the spot.

jmphotocraft

dgafphoto
dgafphoto - how did you do that? Did you use a watermark removal tool, or did you do it manually yourself in Photoshop?

A friend of mine is telling me he's seen threads somewhere on how easy it is to remove the smugmug-applied watermark. I can't imagine an easy way of doing this (easy like one or two clicks vs. spending time in Photoshop cloning and adjusting) because even if you get the image out of browser cache, it's still a jpeg, and I thought jpegs by definition were single layer.

dgafphoto

def not a one click fix but it prob took me a total of 5 minutes to get out in photoshop. Just selected the main bar...increased the contrast and boosted colors to match the surrounding areas. then i cloned the text out which was relatively easy (esp over the grass areas). if you look closely at the front of the red players shorts you can see the sloppy job.

SamirD

jmphotocraft wrote:

I think if If I ever happened to see someone using one of my photos that they had unwatermarked, I'd call the police on the spot.

And, unfortunately, they would do nothing. It's a good idea to find out what your obligations and rights are as the copyright holder now, before something happens.

If I would have taken that advice, I could have sued the newspaper that used my images on the front page of their sports section on a Sunday...without credit or permission. And I would have won.

SamirD

dgafphoto wrote:

if you look closely at the front of the red players shorts you can see the sloppy job.

And you illustrate a great point--even with it not being perfect, for some people, they'd rather spend all day badly defeating a watermark than paying $1 for the perfect picture. You'll never get sales from these people. They enjoy the challenge of trying to do the impossible, and then bragging about it.

As photographers, the best thing to do is give these people a reasonably small watermarked image and hope they distribute it. It's just advertising then. If they defeat the watermark on a regular basis, you electronically ban them from your site and report their repeated illegal usage to facebook, et al, so their accounts there will be terminated. That puts a pretty permanent stop to them. You can even go so far as to contact their ISP. You can have their Internet cut off.

printergirl

SamirD wrote:

... If they defeat the watermark on a regular basis, you electronically ban them from your site and report their repeated illegal usage to facebook, et al, so their accounts there will be terminated. That puts a pretty permanent stop to them. You can even go so far as to contact their ISP. You can have their Internet cut off.

And my understanding is Facebook will do nothing about it at all. This is an email I just got from my cousin the other day:

"Nora, I wanted to send you this message concerning posting pics here on Facebook. I have a friend from high school, that is a professional photographer. She posted some of her work on Facebook, and someone gained the rights and claimed her work. She contacted Facebook, and their response to her was that in the agreements with Facebook, that Facebook can claim and use the pictures. Please look on my wall here on FB, and read her post. Her name is (removed for privacy). I just didn't want your hard work to get into someones else's hands, and they get credit for your work."

SamirD

printergirl wrote:

And my understanding is Facebook will do nothing about it at all. This is an email I just got from my cousin the other day:

"Nora, I wanted to send you this message concerning posting pics here on Facebook. I have a friend from high school, that is a professional photographer. She posted some of her work on Facebook, and someone gained the rights and claimed her work. She contacted Facebook, and their response to her was that in the agreements with Facebook, that Facebook can claim and use the pictures. Please look on my wall here on FB, and read her post. Her name is (removed for privacy). I just didn't want your hard work to get into someones else's hands, and they get credit for your work."

This doesn't match Facebook's policy on copyrights:
http://www.facebook.com/legal/copyright.php

I'm not sure under what circumstances "someone gained the rights and claimed her work", but that's not easy to do unless there were documents signed somewhere. There are stiff penalties for using someone else's copyrighted works.

printergirl

I have tried to "friend" the photographer in question (last week), to gain some more information on exactly what she is talking about, but so far no response to my friend request. I would like to know a bit more about the situation myself.

SamirD

The social networking sites have gotten very active in making sure copyrights are protected. Youtube now removes copywritten music in videos and even completely eliminates videos. Advertiser networks understand that new laws coming down the pipeline will even hold advertisers liable for a web site's usage of copywritten material. I've read Facebook's copyright policy and it's actually a hair better than most.

I've yet to utilize the social network sites, but it's best to read everything and plan ahead on exactly how these sites will help you. If you don't, you may end up just helping them.

jmphotocraft

:oogle I guess I would suggest only uploading 600x400 highly compressed images then! Who knows what they do behind the curtains when you upload bigger images!