Interesting copyright kerfuffle

nilhg

There is an interesting copyright kerfuffle going on at the moment over on Lightroomkillertips. During the week they published a link to a website where you could insert the address of a photo on flickr, the software would read the exif of that shot on flickr and attempt to create a Lightroom preset based on it. It's important to note that the site did not download the picture just read settings in the publicly available exif data uploaded by the owner.

It transpired that some folks took exception to this on the basis that the combination of settings they had used is their IP and copyright to them and threatened legal action with the result that the site has been taken down.

Since then LKT has come back with a strong defence of their position. While it's all a bit of a storm in a teacup there are some interesting arguments WRT copyright and photographers rights on there.

RoryW

preset extractor now taken down "due to some people in Europe"

smash

did anyone get to download the tool before it was removed? If so can you PM me....

Thoie

steve06 wrote: »

did anyone get to download the tool before it was removed? If so can you PM me....

:P

There's an update from the author saying

I want to bring the preset extractor back online. And will do so tonight.

smash

I noticed that... I just want to play with it now though

Thoie

Oh sorry, I thought you were kidding because of all the comments in the article asking if anyone had downloaded the tool...

All the other responses to those were that it wasn't a download kind of tool - you bookmarked a page, went to the picture on flickr, then hit the booklink and it did things (*makes magic handy wave motions*) then.

smash

ah right, I didn't read the whole thing... I just went back here to ask... haha

Thoie

The tool's up now anyway

Edit
I don't use LR, but for those who are interested, I took a look in Notepad at one of the images in the flickrpool. An extract from one pic looks like this:

LuminanceAdjustmentMagenta = 0,
SplitToningShadowHue = 57,
SplitToningShadowSaturation = 15,
SplitToningHighlightHue = 57,
SplitToningHighlightSaturation = 15,
SplitToningBalance = 0,
ParametricShadows = -14,
ParametricDarks = -3,

There's lots more info obviously, but that's the kind of thing it's extracting.

Dan Jaman

Storm in a teacup, right enough.
It's like following a recipe out of a book - millions of people might copy a great chef, but damn few will produce something exactly the same, no matter how exactly they did it. What's more likely to happen is that many people will apply pre-sets to images that aren't really all that much like the ones they try to emulate and the results will be different anyway.
There is no such thing as talent in a box and this is just another way of proving it. What I hope it does is show people how to progress and achieve some of the results they admire; many will be happy just clicking a mouse, but it will inspire others to look carefully at the values and effects and hopefully lead to a better understanding of the way Lightroom and similar programs work.

The poster, Patrick, on the first site was getting awfully areated about the 'stealing of his ideas', but really, what possible threat could this be to him and his work? It's unlikely that thousands of 'Patrick' impersonators will flood his home town and poach his customers.

Dragan

I don't think i have EVER applied a preset in LR without then going on to abuse the sliders pretty heavily to be honest.

Anouilh

The extractor does not work if a photo is uploaded under the "All Rights Reserved" licence. However, by adding it to the Lightroom Preset Extractor group on Flickr, one allows access to metadata on photos.

I can think of more entertaining activites than looking at exif data, but the question arising here for me is how to best save exif metadata when converting a file from RAW to Jpeg. I would like to start inserting copyright material and tags into my photos for uploading to Flickr but do not have Photoshop and Adobe Bridge. Is there a quick freeware or shareware program that can do this, please?

MagicMarker

Erm.... why don't they just hide the exif data?

Anouilh

MagicMarker wrote: »

Erm.... why don't they just hide the exif data?

This explains a bit more about metadata:

http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/cp/olympus/technology/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003646340

It's all a bit of a mystery to me. I usually just look at exif data as a reminder of what camera setting I used.

I don't think you can easily hide it. The idea is to make a photo instantly recognisable as belonging to the person who made it. Tags are used to keep track of photos on the Internet and protect them from theft. One blogger, suddenly aware that a photo was being used by another person, simply added the tag "I steal photos" into the Exif data. Much quicker than getting worked up and starting a row.

MagicMarker

In PS, if you ''save for web devices'', it won't include any exif info with the picture.

Anouilh

I'm converting from RAW to Jpeg and would like to retain more information and also add tags. Most conversions lose exif data, as you say.

This deals with some other exif editors:

http://forums.steves-digicams.com/pentax-samsung-dslr/124850-exif-editor-you-using.html

It's worth thinking about whether or not extracting exif data, once a photo is uploaded, is some sort of intrusion that could be a nuisance, as the op started explaining.

sheesh

Anouilh wrote: »

The extractor does not work if a photo is uploaded under the "All Rights Reserved" licence. However, by adding it to the Lightroom Preset Extractor group on Flickr, one allows access to metadata on photos.

I can think of more entertaining activites than looking at exif data, but the question arising here for me is how to best save exif metadata when converting a file from RAW to Jpeg. I would like to start inserting copyright material and tags into my photos for uploading to Flickr but do not have Photoshop and Adobe Bridge. Is there a quick freeware or shareware program that can do this, please?

I know in the software you get with canon it exports it into the jpeg

Also to get rid of the exif data. open the image up in you image editing software select all, copy, create new image of same size, paste no more exif data.

Anouilh

Delighted with all my new knowledge I uploaded a photo to Flickr yesterday with IPTC copyright and tags embedded. Today I dowloaded a medium size version of the photo, but the exif data had been stripped by the resizing system in Flickr. This is much discussed:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/flickrideas/discuss/72157600133760332/

I used to think little about this, but since many people are not aware of copyright laws and need to have reminders embedded in photos on the net , it might be useful to see which sharing sites keep Exif data intact.

Paddy@CIRL

The exif is usually stored in the original quality one