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Managing Image Licenses and Rights

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If you don't own the copyright to a file within your Library, you have most likely been given a specific license for use by the copyright holder. The copyright holder might be an individual photographer, stock photo agency, wire service, etc.

An image license almost always restricts the way you can use that image (e.g. in a 1/2 page magazine ad) and for how long (e.g. 3 months). For this reason, managing your image licenses is an imperative for any organization.

Some key ways to manage image licenses and rights within PhotoShelter for Brands are:

1. Upload a copy of the contract into the same Gallery as the image(s).

2. Include the filename of the contract in the image metadata

3. Inform stakeholders about an image's usage rights in the image metadata

4. Track license expiration for images using the License Alerts workflow

Uploading contracts

PhotoShelter for Brands supports the storage of PDFs, which gives you an easy way to place images in the same Gallery as a corresponding contract or licensing agreement. 

Uploading a PDF contract alongside images

  1. From the Media menu, select Library.
  2. Click on the name of the Gallery into which the contract belongs.
  3. Drag and drop the PDF contract over the center pane to launch the web uploader. The images will clear and the uploader will automatically activate. 
  4. Click Continue to Gallery to view the first page of the PDF as an image amongst the other files.
  5. To view the contract in full at a later stage, select it in the middle pane, activate the Actions dropdown and select Download. 

Tagging images in the metadata fields

Associating the contract with images 

Use the IPTC Job Identifier field to associate the contract with the image metadata.

Here's how to do that in Adobe Lightroom, using the PhotoShelter for Brands Lightroom Plugin and the Publish Services function:

  1. From Lightroom, select all the images from the shoot.
  2. Cut and paste the contract filename into the IPTC Job Identifier field.
  3. Export the photos using the Lightroom plugin, or re-export to update the existing Galleries in your PhotoShelter for Brands Library.

Informing stakeholders about image usage rights

Use the IPTC Usage Rights field to display rights info to Portal users in an image's metadata.

  • Displaying the usage rights alongside an image can help your Portal visitors understand when, where, and how they can use images
  • The Usage Rights field is also a helpful place to indicate whether and how your stakeholders can request license renewal, if they’re interested in using an image beyond its current license period
  • The IPTC Usage Rights field displays underneath the License Expiration Date metadata in the Portal single image view

To add info to the IPTC Usage Rights field, select one or more images in your Library and edit their IPTC metadata.

Tracking license expiration using License Alerts

The License Alerts workflow (Professional and Enterprise subscribers only) helps reduce risk for your organization by making image license tracking transparent and seamless.

The Admin on your account can enable the License Alerts workflow on the Metadata Settings page. After that:

  • You can add a License Expiration Date to images in your Library
  • The Admin and Editors will receive a daily email notification about any images with upcoming License Expiration Dates
  • Those images will be automatically watermarked with license expiration info in the Library and on the Portal. This watermark is for display only; it will not be visible on downloaded images

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