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RANDOM THOUGHTS 103
May 23, 2005
Veer Launches New RF Brand
Veer has created a new line of deluxe royalty-free photography called Fancy, and released 28 titles. Ongoing releases of additional titles are scheduled. The collection is conceived, created, and produced by Veer and a distinguished team of art directors and photographic talent. The brand and images are fresh and stylish, blending visual artistry with strong commercial appeal. The initial Fancy titles are now available exclusively at www.veer.com/fancy and will soon be available outside North America through Veer's channel partners.
Since its inception, Veer has taken a focused and filtered approach, hand-picking products for aesthetic and technical quality from established agencies and emerging artists.
"Fancy is directed and shot by professionals who have the expertise to create great photographs," said Jens de Gruyter, Creative Director of Photography at Veer. "Our commitment to expert shooting, technical quality, rigorous editing - and the time and care put into lighting, location, and models - show through in the final product."
The collection is produced by a team of art directors and photographic talent from Europe and America led by Jens de Gruyter. Previously, de Gruyter held senior management and creative roles at Zefa Visual Media and Image Source
Imagestate Launches New Website
Based on customer feedback Imagestate has launched a new website, together with new services to help customers manage their workflow efficiently. Lyon and Associates designed www.imagestate.com, in response to customer requests for a quicker, more intuitive online service, complemented by strong offline customer service and free picture research.
The new website offers:
- Search speeds that are comparable to the fastest competitor sites. (Selling Stock's tests showed that searches are still significantly slower than Gettyimages.com.)
- Approximately 300,000 images and the company is adding new imagery at more than twice the previous monthly rate. The new images are highlighted in a new images section.
- Liquid Layout features that adapt to screen size and can be viewed with any browser type.
- an efficient on-line pricing module.
When a customer does a search the images returned are the newest images first with a slight preference for RM over RF. Currently they have more RF on the site than RM.
More features including 100% larger comps are expected in the near future.
Like a lot of other sites the "Search Within Results" feature simply means that you can put multiple keywords into the search box and it will search for only those images that have all the keywords listed. You can accomplish the same thing in the normal keyword search without clicking on "Search Within Results".
To help customers simplify their workflow imagestate offers professional rights-clearance through www.clearnyc.com.
If customers can't find the right image available in stock the company offers its 'On-brand/On-demand' service which allows the customer to have an image shot to their own specific brief by an imagestate photographer.
Finally, the company is offering a media management service that will help clients handle their visual media including images, logos, fonts and documents. This centralized platform is scaleable across multiple offices and territories and tracks costs, rights and usages.
Helen Gimson, art buyer at Joshua, commented, "The new Imagestate website is bright, inviting, uncomplicated. I particularly like the "no fuss", easy access search facilities. The search results are the quickest I've encountered yet, plus they were very relevant. Well done Imagestate!"
Wendy Birch, designer, Egmont Books Limited, added "The new Imagestate website looks great and uploads really quickly. It's easy to navigate and it's very clear where to find things. It works really well and is very user friendly".
Coleman Adds Discovery & Robert Harding As Content Partners
Bruce Coleman USA (www.bciusa.com) is undertaking a major re-organization and expansion of its business. It has significantly reduced operating costs by moving to an all-digital work flow and moving its offices from Manhattan to Scarsdale, NY. In the process they have eliminated job functions and staff positions, but added new content.
With over 1.3 million images in the collection, it has been costly and time consuming to maintain, edit and research a analog library of that size. "The move to new offices has forced us to edit our collection more tightly," said Norman Owen Tomalin, owner and President of the company, "but we continue to add relevant imagery to our digital archive and web site." Currently, the company has about 110,000 hi-res images available online.
Bruce Coleman USA has also decided to broaden its collection, already well know known for its extensive library of natural history, wildlife and travel, and add a broad range of travel and life style to its portfolio. It will develop image partnership arrangements and has now entered into content representation agreements with Discovery Communications and with the Robert Harding Picture Library. These agreements are adding 35,000 new images to Bruce Coleman's digital library.
Bruce Coleman USA will also enter the UK market and continental Europe through an image Licensing agreement with Robert Harding Picture Library. The international network of agents and global representation will continue to be expanded.
A new web site currently under development will add new functionalities including, eCommerce enabled licensing, super hi-res down loads, and a royalty free pricing matrix.
"We are very pleased that Bruce Coleman USA continues to develop its business" said Laurie Flanagan, PAL Operations at Pearson Education, "the boutique agencies are important providers of specialized imagery and research services for our editors"
Getty Represents Universal Studios Footage
Universal Studios and Getty Images have announced that footage from Universal Studios Film Library is now available for licensing exclusively at www.gettyimages.com/universalstudios. Creative and production professionals now have immediate online access to extraordinary footage from such acclaimed films as The Bourne Identity, Field of Dreams, Backdraft, Apollo 13 and The Mummy. The wealth of subject matter - all shot on 35mm or Super 35mm and transferred from the original camera negative to High Definition - includes fire, explosions, stunts and special effects, along with popular categories such as nature, military, and business. Universal Studios is the first major motion picture studio to have its footage searchable via its own "front door" on a leading imagery site.
"Universal has entered into this dynamic partnership with Getty Images because of the innovation they've brought to the industry via their powerful platform and proven business model," said Michael Daruty, Senior Vice President, Technical Operations, Universal Studios Operations Group. "Outsourcing the digitization and licensing of our footage with Getty Images assures the quickest search and ease of use possible. We look forward to being a valued partner for Getty Images as they continue to transform the way creatives work."
"Having brought some of the world's finest motion pictures to the big screen, Universal Studios offers one of the most impressive film libraries in the world and we are thrilled to welcome them as an image partner," said Karen McLaughlin, Director of Film Image Partners, Getty Images. "Our customers will benefit tremendously from the extraordinary production value of Universal's content and we are confident that the diversity of the collection will inspire exciting creative work. This alliance represents a significant step forward in the strategic development of Getty Images film, which has grown over twenty percent for the past three consecutive quarters."
Futurestock And Scene7
Scene7 ® has announced that stock photo agency FutureStock, subsidiary of NancyScans Companies, is using Scene7's rich media platform to add dynamic zoom, digital watermarking, and cropping across its online stock photography ecommerce site.
"We chose Scene7 because they offered the widest range of rich media solutions from a single integrated platform," said Yoon Chung, Director of Operations for FutureStock. "With over 200,000 high resolution images served from our digital image library system, we required a reliable, scalable solution that would enable us to show the quality and details of our imagery and streamline our website production process."
Headquartered in Chatham, NY, FutureStock provides stock photography and large-format digital print services. On the FutureStock website, Scene7's Dynamic Imaging enables customers to select an image, zoom in deep to inspect its quality, and crop it to fit their needs. Once a customer is ready to purchase the image, Scene7 dynamically generates and delivers the image in the specified size and file format.
Scene7's digital watermarking capabilities
enable FutureStock to embed an ID into each image to deter copyright infringements.
Scene7's rich media platform dynamically generates and delivers unlimited derivatives from single master images, enabling FutureStock to automatically prepare and deliver its vast library of high resolution images for the web, drastically reducing the time and costs associated with image production and delivery.
"Scene7 is our mechanism for delivering our high quality images. Because Scene7 can automatically re-size and optimize images from our masters we have reduced the overall storage requirements by 30% and the number of images we have to prepare and manage to just one-fifth of conventional methods, which has resulted in significant cost savings for us." said Chung.
"Scene7's dynamic imaging capabilities allow us to scale our business - we plan to grow to over half a million images over the next six months, and without Scene7 it would be difficult for us to achieve that goal."
"As a professional photo agency, FutureStock understands the importance of showing high quality imagery online," said Doug Mack, CEO of Scene7. "We're pleased that our rich media platform is helping FutureStock deliver an enhanced online experience for its customers while producing positive business results."
Utilizing interpolation software developed by NancyScans, FutureStock is the only stock photo agency that delivers files sizes up to 700 MBs. Once a sale is completed, FutureStock also offers large-format printing and an extensive variety of display hardware for tradeshows, in-store displays, banners and more. For more information please visit http://www.futurestock.com.
Scene7 provides the leading rich media platform to grow revenues and enhance visual communications via the web, email, displays and print, while automating media production and delivery. Scene7's integrated platform for production, management and delivery of rich media enables five key business solutions: Dynamic Imaging (dynamic zoom, sizing, art, color swatching, spin, templates), eCatalogs, Dynamic Customization, eVideos and Dynamic Asset
Management. Hundreds of leading companies, in industries ranging from retail to hi-tech, have selected Scene7 products, including Macy's, Scripps Networks, Lillian Vernon, Home and Garden Television, Microsoft, Office Depot, Levi Strauss & Co., La-Z-Boy and QVC. Scene7 has been selected as a partner of key technology leaders including IBM, Microsoft, Coremetrics and Akamai. For more information visit www.scene7.com.