StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

The End Of Adobe Stock Photos

"Adobe has decided to concentrate its efforts in other areas". Adobe Stock Photos, the RF image service introduced with Adobe Creative Suite 2 in May 2005, will be discontinued effective April 01, 2008, the company explained in a short email:

Adobe Stock Photos will remain operational for customers using Adobe Bridge enabled applications within Adobe Creative Suite 2 and Adobe Creative Suite 3 software until March 3, 2008 when the search and comp download features in the service will be disabled.   

All other functionalities including viewing order history and re-downloading and purchasing of images will remain available until March 31, 2008. Discontinuation of the service will not terminate valid license agreements for royalty-free images already purchased.

If you are interested in more details, please download this Adobe FAQ file (PDF).

Crossing the Chasm with Members of the Press

Members of the Press (M.O.P) are

• visionaries,
• early adopters,
• 5 years ahead of their time,
• visit each weekend those quirky Web 10.0 TechCrunch sessions

The last 8 days have seen the sudden rise of what M.O.P called with an unified voice "content aggregators".

Surprisingly:

Shady Behaviour Of Investors? The Short History Of FilmLoop

By the end of last year, when rumours spread that FilmLoop was getting into trouble, the main question seemed to be: Why? Shortly after FilmLoop went online, the company was able to announce cooperation partners like World Picture Network (WpN), iStockphoto and PhotoBucket.

Hit Refresh: New Version of Image Distribution And Workflow Tool ProStockMaster For Microshooters

 

Predictions are that within the next five years all of what used to be routine photographic work will go, and all that will be left is the relatively tiny fine art market and high-end niche assignments such as corporate awards and other events where only a professional can guarantee to capture the specific images that are needed"
(Guardian Unlimited Technology yesterday)

"At the recently held PACA conference someone said during the first day that most of the exhibiting photo agencies will not survive the next ten years. On day three of the meeting, another person emended the number of years down to five"
(Google Can Make The 20th Century Stock Portals Like Getty And Corbis Irrelevant)

FilmLoop: Despite A Cute Forrester Research Study, Grumpy VCs Ask "What´s your story?"

FilmLoop, the Direct-to-Desktop (D2D) photo broadcasting network ("photocasting"), was founded in 2004 by Prescott Lee and Kyle Mashima, a former Vice President of Strategic Development at Adobe, "hatched over a breakfast of hashbrowns and pancakes".

The company has announced in the past content partnerships and cooperations with iStockphoto, PhotoBucket, World Picture Network (WpN) and the Photo Marketing Association International (I have currently no information if these cooperations will be continued in the future).

One of FilmLoop´s early investors was Guy Kawasaki. Funded in May 2006 again with $7 million (Series B) from ComVentures, the investors were obviously pretty pissed, simply overwhelmed with emotion regarding the success of FilmLoop and have pulled the plug.

New Images From Getty For Microsoft´s Windows Vista, A Smart Move From Bill Gates, Founder of Corbis

Ruediger Thonius, Head of Marketing at ImageDirekt close to Frankfurt, and his IT expert Kai Rittmeyer were so kind to point me out to the new Installation Manual of Microsoft Vista in the german version.

This Complete Installation Manual itemizes in detail the copyright information for the exactly 12 images used.  One credit goes to the Microsoft Corporation, not to Corbis. The other eleven nearly go all to Getty Images:

Alamy´s New Upload Tool Previewed By EPUK, Editorial Photograpers UK And Ireland

Dr. P. Kumar, one of Alamy´s contributors, noted recently (Stockphoto.net) in May that "submission to Alamy was yet considered painfully slow and sluggish with several complaints of contributors being let down by alleged 'bad media' detection by personnel running Alamy's QCs. Online submission is definitely going to ease and simplify contributions ... and realizing Alamy's amazing contributor-base (individuals + agencies) ... the 'numbers' may simply get madenning."

Picturemaxx Joins The QuarkAlliance

During the recently held German Photo Agency Fair PICTA Munich based image administration software (APIS network, i-picturemaxx) and photo portal (Picturemaxx.net) providing company Picturemaxx announced (press release only in Kraut) a new partnership with Quark.

Picturemaxx will join the QuarkAlliance and plans to develop a Quark XTension for buying images directly from within the QuarkXPress application, without the need for image buyers to leave the application, taking advantage of the huge image pool Picturemaxx offers.

StockPhotoFinder Goes UK, Partners With Capture

Randy Taylor is the driving force behind Creators Cycle, Stockmedia.net, StockPhotoFinder, StockPipeline, StockMotionFinder, Stockagencies and the established Keyword Compiler software.

The StockPhotoFinder, which allows through spidering searches over multiple stock photo and footage (StockMotionFinder) databases, announced recently during the BAPLA Picture Buyers´ Fair that the company starts to offer its services also in the United Kingdom (StockPhotoFinder.co.uk).

OnRequest Images Releases OnRequest OnPro

OnRequest Images is the company behind the much disputed business model known as Custom Stock and offers services such as the Custom Assignment Services, Custom Stock Images and Custom Stock Libraries to help companies to build stronger brands with better pictures.

OnRequest Images recently introduced in March the Image Manager, an image asset management solution, and announced this date the release of the latest version of OnRequest OnPro™, its custom photography production platform enabling customers to create, process, manage, and store collections of OnBrand imagery quickly and efficiently.