Posts tagged with "BAPLA"
Thursday, 22. March 2007, 09:45:19
BAPLA, fotoLibra
Our trade association is the British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies. It’s a small but hardworking and influential team, and it proves the truth of the ancient Headley family motto “You Get What You Pay For”.
It’s not cheap to be a BAPLA member. We pay about £400 a year, which is more than I pay for the Groucho Club, for heaven’s sake.
Book publishing, being an older and longer-established profession than picture libraries, has two trade associations in Britain: the Publishers’ Association and the Independent Publishers Guild.
Membership of the PA is based on company turnover, starting at £250 a year and rising to £30,000 plus. It gets listened to by the government. Membership of the Independent Publishers Guild is also based on turnover, and prices ranges between £160 and £500. The IPG is more sociable than the PA, but doesn’t get to talk to Gordon or Tony.
Anyway, this is just to say that BAPLA is more expensive for small firms than the PA and the IPG, but it beats them hands down in terms of professionalism and approachability. It even organises the annual Picture Buyers’ Fair; somehow one cannot imagine the PA & IPG organising a book fair.
But yesterday Von noticed something very strange. Every time she tried to access the BAPLA website, she kept getting the fotoLibra website. No bad thing if that happens to everyone, I thought, but I had to look into it.
Turns out she’d been typing
http://www.bapla.org instead of
http://www.bapla.org.uk. An easy mistake to make. But why did that first address revert to fotoLibra? Does it happen for anyone else?
Please try it out and let us know!
Tuesday, 21. November 2006, 17:16:12
BAPLA, stock agencies, stock agency, picture libraries
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Looks like I jumped the gun the other day when I made the new British Association of Picture LIbraries and Agencies' Digital Guidelines and their XMP Metadata panel available for download from fotoLibra.
They've only just formally announced them, with a typically astute comment from BAPLA's dynamic CEO Linda Royles: “Today’s world is more about data than it is content."
This is how BAPLA presented the new initiatives to image libraries and image buying customers. As fotoLibra Members are so closely involved throughout the whole process we felt it was part of our Open Access duty to make this information available to all Members, and indeed all interested readers. It can only serve to improve image standards and make information easier to find. And that locks into our core philosophies.
BAPLA has launched two new initiatives to encourage consistency when working commercially with digital images; the BAPLA Digital Guidelines v1, and the BAPLA Metadata Panel v1.4.
New Digital Guidelines
The new Digital Guidelines provide a clear framework for both image libraries and image buying customers. The guide was drawn up in consultation with BAPLA’s technical steering committee and working parties and is under international review.
Raising customer awareness of the value and safeguards provided by a reputable picture library makes good commercial sense for both buyer and supplier. Customers need accurate information to make sound decisions at key stages of the workflow. The digital environment makes the need to work with files that are fit for purpose a priority.
“BAPLA is hopeful that these digital guidelines will give our members and their clients a benchmark from which to work, to encourage and facilitate dialogue in ensuring their relevance in a changing market,” said BAPLA CEO Linda Royles.
Download the Guidelines direct from BAPLA here.
Metadata Standards for image professionals
BAPLA has worked with the PPA to create a set of standard fields for use by image professionals in the photography and publishing industries.
Until now the use of available metadata fields has been patchy and inconsistent. This has meant that important data such as picture number, credit and copyright information has often been missing from the digital image.
XML now enables software to pick up image metadata information from images. It is now even more crucial that the fields are consistently populated by professional photographers and picture agencies in a way which is useful for their image buying clients.
The BAPLA / PPA initiative was created in response to the demand from all sides for standardisation. The metadata schema was created after consultation with BAPLA members and the PPA pic4press / pass4press committees.
BAPLA / PPA have agreed on a panel for use in Photoshop which uses a small number of fields already in existence. The image professional now has a useful and time saving way of accessing, viewing and inputting the information and data in one place. The panel can be downloaded free of charge and installed easily for use in Photoshop.
Download the XMP panel direct from BAPLA here.fotoLibra fully endorses the BAPLA initiative. We encourage our members to adhere as closely as possible to the BAPLA Digital Guidelines, and to add accurate and detailed metadata to all their images uploaded to the fotoLibra web site.
Saturday, 4. November 2006, 14:13:04
IPTC, metadata, CEPIC, Photoshop
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OK, sorry about yesterday. There was more work needed on the Submission Guidelines than we forecast, but they've now been revised and the new version is online and ready for you to download. You can get it from
http://www.fotolibra.com/about/metadata.php along with downloads of the BAPLA / Pic4Press panel and the BAPLA Digital Guidelines.
It's worth reading the Metadata page before you upload images to fotoLibra. It's full of good advice.
I know. I wrote it!
Thursday, 2. November 2006, 17:40:00
metadata, IPTC, BAPLA, CEPIC
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At last it's been released. Of course this means we now have to rewrite the Submission Guidelines which we only posted on the site last week. Still, we moaned about the pace of change in the document itself.
I'll put it up on the fotoLibra site and post a link to it from this blog tomorrow. It only works in Photoshop 8 and above, but we are working on a cunning plan to allow you to adapt and correct your metadata live on the fotoLibra site.
More information tomorrow!
Wednesday, 25. October 2006, 09:27:09
opera community, submission guidelines, BAPLA, stock agency
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In amongst all these mutterings about Metadata, it occurred to me that many peripheral questions were answered in the fotoLibra Submission Guidelines, which we sent out to members who had repeated questions about file sizes, megapixels, captions and the like.
So I looked at them, and as they'd been assembled in response to various questions at various times, I saw they were a little messy.
We've tidied them up and presented them in a neat PDF format which you can download from the site right here:
fotoLibra Submission GuidelinesIt's an active PDF file, so it has a handy index and the links to external sites work. If they don't, please post a message here and I'll get it fixed.
This also gave me an opportunity to address the huge irritation of all PDFs — they're supposed to be read on the computer screen (landscape). So why are 99% designed for print (portrait)? The fotoLibra Submission Guidelines are designed for you to read on your computer screen. It should automatically appear in readable double page spreads, without you having to scroll. Again, if it doesn't, please let me know.
The picture libraries' trade association, BAPLA (British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies) has produced a Best Practice document for digital libraries. I warmly recommend it to all fotoLibra members. Follow this implicitly and you will find it very hard to go wrong. Here's the PDF to download:
BAPLA Digital Guidelines Launch EditionThere hasn't been a blog post here since last Friday for a couple of reasons, by far the main one being that I haven't been able to get on to the Opera community site where the blog is hosted. If you can read this you're clearly not having the same problem, but if you've had it in the past could you let me know? And before I can access Opera, I always have to type the following line into the terminal: sudo /sbin/ifconfig en1 mtu 1458. Otherwise I can't see it at all. Can anyone explain this to me? Jeff figured this out but forgot to tell me why.
Tuesday, 17. October 2006, 12:08:46
CEPIC, stock agency, picture library, Photoshop
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I cannot emphasise enough how important metadata is. Without accurate and accessible metadata, picture sales become a mere lottery. No matter how good your picture, if the buyers can’t find it they won’t buy it. It is that simple.
And despite the (deliberately, I suspect) complex terminology, it’s basically quite easy to deal with.
Metadata really just means an extended description. It is a set of data that describes other data, in fotoLibra’s case an image. All our images are digitised, so the image becomes a digital object. In order to give it a value and to market it, this digital object needs to be identified and described. Without the proper metadata, it is valueless. The label has fallen off the print.
We need to know what the picture is of, how big it will print, who owns it, where it can be bought, what rights are available and so on. If the image is born digital (taken originally on a digital camera) then the camera software will input shooting data such as the exposure, whether the flash fired or not, the date and time of photograph and loads more. Rather scary really, but we don’t have much of an alternative. They already know everything else we do, and now they know I prefer wide apertures.
We are going to make it as easy as possible for fotoLibra members to supply metadata for their images. As soon as the BAPLA/Pic4Press XMP panel guidelines are established, we will make the panel available as a download from our site.
Until then, please caption and keyword your images using the Description panel in Photoshop which maps to the correct IPTC data. When you upload to fotoLibra using FTP or drag and drop, the metadata is retained and used to describe the image.
Thursday, 28. September 2006, 19:20:58
BAPLA, metadata, picture libraries, picture library
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The first field in the Adobe Photoshop XMP Description Panel is "Document Title".
At fotoLibra we interpret that as "Caption", and images which have metadata added to this field and are uploaded via FTP or fotoLibra DND will have the information preserved and placed in the field on the site labelled "Caption."
Not for much longer. Take for example the image captioned "The Kick". This is referenced by the fotoLibra database as Image ID #149815. The image IDs are fine for internal use, and for invoicing and such like, but it's not a title or a caption.
The new BAPLA / pic4press proposals want this field to be renamed "Image Ref ID", and for it to contain the picture library's internal reference number. So instead of a Document Title or Caption of 'The Kick', it will now be called 149815.
Somewhat to my surprise, I was the only dissenting voice. The overwhelming majority of picture libraries favoured using an internal reference number in this field rather than a named caption.
So if this proposal is finally accepted and goes ahead, we will have to change and reorder our database to comply and be compatible. More upheaval, more expense; irritating but necessary.
This means members will have to learn to leave this field blank, because it will be overwritten on upload by our automated numbering system. You will have plenty of warning.
Additionally it was suggested that all picture libraries have a two- or three-letter suffix to distinguish individual image ref IDs. So 'The Kick' will become FL149815 or FOT149815.
Hmmm. I'm not convinced.
But we'll go with the flow.
Tuesday, 26. September 2006, 15:11:55
metadata, XMP, BAPLA, picture libraries
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If you open a picture in Photoshop and then go to File> File info, you get an XMP panel, which by default will open in Description. You will see the following fields:
Document Title:
Author:
Description:
Description Writer:
Keywords:
Copyright Status:
Copyright Notice:
Copyright Info URL:
Fairly straightforward, you might think, and you’d be right. But as in every business the devil is in the detail. We could argue for hours (and in the BAPLA Metadata committee, we did) about every nuance of meaning in each descriptor.
At this moment — and it may well change — the BAPLA / pic4press proposed XMP Panel has the following fields:
Image Reference ID: (maps to Document Title in Photoshop’s ‘Description’ panel)
Description: (maps to Caption in the ‘Description’ panel)
Credit: (maps to Credit in Photoshop’s ‘Origin’ panel)
Licensing Contact: (maps to Copyright Info URL in the ‘Description’ panel)
Creator: (maps to Author in the ‘Description’ panel)
Date Created: (maps to Date Created in the ‘Origin’ panel)
Copyright Notice: (maps to Copyright Notice in the ‘Description’ panel)
Rights & Restrictions: (new field)
Headline: (maps to Headline in the ‘Origin’ panel)
Job Reference: (maps to Transmission Reference in the ‘Origin’ panel)
Clearly this will mean a change in the way we all work. But if we’re all working to the same standards, it should make life easier in the long term.
PACA, the American equivalent of BAPLA, has proposed a vastly more complex metadata array that includes such fields as ‘Ethnicity of Model’, which we felt belonged among the keywords.
Hang about, the sharper-eyed among you will say. What’s happened to the keywords?
Good question. I’ll find out and let you know by the end of the week.
Monday, 25. September 2006, 10:36:46
metadata, XMP, BAPLA, picture libraries
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I went to a meeting of the BAPLA Metadata Committee on a blazing hot day last week. We are trying to set common standards for metadata fields which can be used by both picture libraries and publishers. We are working jointly with pic4press.
As fotoLibra members do their captioning and keywording themselves, I'm going to share the information with you so the images you upload are as close to the industry standard as possible.
Not quite the same excitement as pressing that shutter at the critical moment or post-processing the digital image, but every bit as essential to the sale and protection of your images.
The meeting was patiently chaired by Sarah Saunders of Electric Lane. What was shown was a new custom file info panel to slot into Adobe Photoshop. What was discussed was the nomenclature to be used on that panel.
My blog postings this week are largely going to be about this XMP panel. Use Trumalia or Google to find out more about XMP.
Photoshop CS2 comes with the ability to load additional panels to the basic Description / Origin / Advanced. When this BAPLA / pic4press file info panel is approved and released we will post it on the fotoLibra site so everyone can download and use it.
So what do you, as a fotoLibra member, need to do about this? If you use Adobe Photoshop, add metadata to every image you upload to fotoLibra by going to File> File Info> Description. If you don't have Photoshop, search Trumalia for alternative ways of inputting metadata.
My next four blogs will discuss each proposed field of the BAPLA / pic4press custom file info panel and show where these fields map to in other XMP data files.
WIDGETIZE