Microsoft Pro Photo
Summit 2007
News of iView's death are greatly exaggerated. Expression Media 1 will
be a better product with Service Pack 1. The roadmap for xMedia was laid
out to Peter Krogh,
John Beardsworth
and myself and many of your concerns were voiced by us. xMedia v2 and
beyond will address most issues we have with DAM - not just iView but
the whole DAM workflow. I came away pleasantly surprised at how important
Microsoft takes DAM. There is now a great team made up of iView folk and
drawing on people well versed in competing DAM applications.
Yes xMedia 1 was a momentus flop which fuelled the Microsoft sceptics flames. From what was revealed everything said in the Channel 9 video is true. In an ideal world we could all sign NDAs and see where xMedia is going.
For xMedia v1 Microsoft worked hard to plug all the wholes in iView that users were not even aware of. Microsoft make a little operating system called Windows so all of their products need to be 110% secure. This doesn't help iView's loyal Apple users but at least iView/xMedia still works better on their platform. SP1 will be good and hopefully Microsoft can reveal some of it to the faithful. As mentioned above xMedia 2 will soon address most of the concerns iView users have long had plus take it to another level beyond other DAM products.
It seemed like every second application at the Microsoft Pro Photo Summit
was adding a database. These events are opportunities to have a sneak
peek at where developers are taking the next version of their software.
The challenge is to have all these databases share information and the
key is metadata. Everyone was talking metadata.
Metadata is a mess. All vendors adopt different standards or parts thereof.
This adds up to confusion for other applications and most importantly
the end users. Thankfully Microsoft are pushing hard for a common standard.
Yes you read that correctly - Microsoft. Adobe and the IPTC have worked
hard in this area and now with Microsoft we have the two largest software
companies in the world pushing for compliance. This includes pursuading
the camera manufactures to agree on a standard. Which adds weight for
MetaRAW.
Orphan Works was another panel
discussion and part of the solution is also metadata. However metadata
in its current form is too vunerable to be the only solution. That vunerablity
is also being addressed. Nevertheless the Orphan Works Bill is coming
- expect it during the 110th Congress around October 2007. One lawyer
was shocked that photographers don't trust their clients to make a "good
faith, reasonably diligent search". Funny how Microsoft and Adobe don't
trust their clients either and use activation for their software.
If photographers were as powerful as Hollywood or the Video Game Industry
then we would have a Digital Rights Management solution. As one photographer
once asked maybe our images should implode after the usage date lapses.
I never recommend punitive action to enforce rights management preferring
education. Perhaps Microsoft and Apple could add some small features such
a © symbol in the Title Bar that when clicked on opened copyright
information, just like Photoshop. Groups like the PLUS
have been working hard to simplify licensing. The PLUS metadata panel
will be in Photoshop and read by photo buyers/users. Imagine if your image
is being printed at Costco and a warning pops up to alert the operator
of copyright and usage. It is happening.
One of my longstanding questions was answered by the DRM Panel. If a
person deliberately strips metadata to remove copyright information they
are infringing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Of course the trick
is to prove it.
Another interesting panel discussed the rise of video capture by tradional
still news photographers. TV has a much wider reach and newspapers printed
circulation is declining while online subscriptions are rising. Photojournalism
with a video is nothing new, just ask Dirck
Halstead. What is new is the perceived threat of screen capture from
HD Video which is already happening. Coming from a television background
I light and compose video very differently to stills. If you're struggling
with a DAM solution for digital images just wait until you try and catalog
video.
Today it's feasible and economical to have 24/7 access to your images.
There are many solutions including so-called Cloud
Storage as offered by Digital
Railroad and Got_it.
Many photographers use their own servers to the same affect but this opens
a whole lot of not-so-good best practises with DAM and backups. RAID is
not something the average photographer should attempt on their own.
Congratulations to Peter
Krogh who was inducted into the Icons
of Imaging. The DAM Guy as he was referred to at the Summit is a long
time advocate of digital standards and this award recognises Peter as
a dam(n) fine photographer.
Overall the Pro Photo Summit was a great success without any hard sell
from Microsoft. As demonstrated last year and reinforced this year Microsoft
are taking the pro photography market very seriously. Watch
this space.
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