Google Images taken to task

CEPIC, the Centre of the Picture Industry, submitted a formal antitrust complaint against Google’s use of third-party images before the European Commission on November 8th 2013.The complaint was supported by an unprecedented coalition of European and US trade associations representing thousands of photographers and picture agencies worldwide.

The complaint addresses Google’s various unauthorized uses of third-party images in its horizontal Web Search and its specialized services, in particular Google Images. Google increasingly uses on-line images without the rightholders’ consent, sometimes even against their explicit wishes. Since the redesign of Google Images in January 2013, the situation got worse: Google presents images in full size and high resolution on its site and enables users to download them without ever having to click through to the original website hosting the image.

According to CEPIC members, 85% of pictures found online by visual search systems are unlawful copies and 80% of those illegal images have been spread through search engines such as Google Images. By presenting images out of the context of their source page, without information on the author and a hardly visible copyright note, the new design of Google Images significantly increases this problem.

The picture industry would like an adequate balance between Google’s use of their content and the benefits they receive in return, in particular traffic on their websites. 

read a fuller version of this story here

For students Google images provides quick reference points for images. The ease of reuse of other people’s creations on the web is leading to some content creators and rights owners, such as the major image libraries, taking steps to protect copyright by using sophisticated image-matching robots to crawl the web and find where their images are being used without permission.

In the past 2 or 3 years many individuals, businesses and institutions, including Universities , have found themselves being issued with large bills for the use of such material on their websites without permission.

 For quality sites which append trustworthy  information Cardiff Met Library provides links within its Electronic Library. Excellent sites include Tate  Art and Artists, V&A Collections, MOMA NY,  Google Cultural Institute,  NYPL, Ubuweb (copyright clearance on this site is not certain) and databases for which we pay to have access to copyright cleared images such as Bridgeman Education and Worth Global Style Network

learn how to search the internet for legal Audio, Video and Image resources of quality

Learn how to use the Internet to find copyright cleared images for your work, Jisc who champion the use of digital technologies in UK education and research have created a free online tutorial covering al you need to know to become an expert image searcher.

Use this free, interactive tutorial to improve your image searching skills.

Two other tutorials cover audio and moving image resources, find them in The Virtual training Suite

 L

Adverts!!

Halloween BMW advert with lots of screaming! In the Top 5 at the moment, an advert by BSSP also viewable on their website here

With nearly half a million monthly users, AdForum.com is the leading information provider focused on the global advertising industry. The company works with material from the leading trade press worldwide and with the industry's top award shows. AdForum.com gathers information on 20,000 agencies and 150,000 campaigns to provide examples of adverts from TV, print, interactive, etc.

The Gallery is used by advertisers, large and small, to select a new agency or for other agency research needs.

The Creative Library is used daily by over thousands of industry professionals to keep on top of important creative work, prepare for client reviews and pitches, brainstorm new ideas and to research and monitor the industry and its products.

Even as a non-subscriber you may still access some of this material from here.

Subscription information here

Mural in Newport destroyed

the destroyed mural

Protesters leave flowers in memory of Newport's Chartist mural

Michael Sheen a Hollywood actor and director of some note latterly famous for playing various well known figures in biopics ( Brian Clough, David Frost and Tony Blair), was born in Port Talbot. He has written an open letter to the people of Newport about the Chartist mural in the town destroyed to make way for the building of a shopping centre. He took out a full page in the South Wales Argus to protest the destruction. Newport council has been lampooned on YouTube over the destruction already.
The mural by Kenneth Budd in John Frost Square, which was made of 200,000 pieces of tile and glass, was completed in 1978 and  marked the uprising led by John Frost in Newport in 1839, where Chartists demanding political reform rebelled against authority, leaving 24 people dead. It was much loved and its passing was marked by flowers and a memorial service.
In the letter Michael Sheen  appeals to the people of Newport to make a new memorial to the Chartists. He particularly calls upon the art and design students to use their creative skills and imaginative flair to find and re-use materials that would cost little or nothing. He knows about art and design students in South Wales because some of you were part of 'The Passion'.  In 2011, Sheen starred in and was creative director of  The Passion, a 72-hour secular passion play staged in  Port Talbot  As well as the professional cast, over one thousand local amateurs took part in the performance and another thousand  volunteers from local charity and community groups helped prepare for the performance in various ways.
Michael Sheen has described it as "the most meaningful experience" of his career.

Hundreds of residents volunteered to join the cast list of The Passion which consisted of 1,000 extras

Product Designs: It's Nice That

BSG's WOOD.b bike

I was looking for a good selection of Product design images and came across It's Nice That.

"Founded in 2007, It’s Nice That is a publishing platform that encompasses several different online, print and events offerings as part of its mission of championing creativity across the art and design world".

The website, updated daily with at least nine new articles has an international readership of around 350,000 unique users a month. They publish a quarterly magazine Printed Pages and The Annual which rounds up some 150 of the most interesting projects to feature on the site in a single year. Their events programme includes annual creative symposium Here and monthly Nicer Tuesdays talks.

First Broadcast is their audio visual site for hosting original content, Company of Parrots a shop for specially-commissioned products and This At There is a dedicated arts and design exhibition listings guide to London. The Jobsboard connects employers and jobseekers in the creative industries.

enjoy great contemporary designs under the following categories

Advertising

Animation

Architecture

Art

Events

Exhibition

Fashion

Film

Furniture Design

Graphic Design

Illustration

Interactive

Miscellaneous

Music

Photography

Product Design

Publication

Sculpture

Set Design

Web

free light table-mix it up!!

Oskar Boethius Lissheim,  Icon for first Light Table app for iPhone.

I am going to be talking to students this year about digital images-where to find good quality legal images of art and design and other subjects. This is very much business as usual, but, as part of a workshop on Visual Literacy,I shall also be showing them slides (!!) These objects that took so much work and time to create, that were shown at pre-arranged times to large groups in dark rooms to the accompaniment of a whirring fan cooling the carousel on the slide projector. I won’t have loupes and light table with me in the teaching room-it’s all digital there-but I shall have a bag of slides and….an ipad. I also imagine some of the students will have iphones. We can view the slides on these digital devices by using a light table created by the self styled ‘one man think tank' Andrew Hake. If you want to see slides on your ipad or iphone go here!!

http://www.andrewandoru.com/lighttable/

And if you have iOS 4.2.1 you have built in Brightness control with a simple double-tap of the Home Button and a swipe to the left.

info at:  http://www.andrewandoru.com/2010/11/23/ipad-light-table/

The deluxe model is an app that costs $3, with all sorts of options, including choices of colour temperatures:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/photo-soft-box-pro-hd/id407385101?mt=8

The Bible of Color Theory now an App

Josef Albers' Interaction of Color, was first conceived of as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students, presenting Albers' ideas of colour experimentation. Originally published by Yale University Press in 1963 as a limited silkscreen edition with 150 color plates, Interaction of Color first appeared in paperback in 1971, featuring ten representative color studies chosen by Albers. The paperback has remained in print ever since and remains one of the most influential resources on colour.

Last week, to commemorate the book’s 50th anniversary, Yale University Press released the Interaction of Color app for the iPad, a modernized, interactive presentation of Albers’ teachings. With fingers instead of paintbrushes and a touch screen instead of paper, users can move and manipulate over 125 color plates in 60 interactive studies. Concepts like colour relativity and vibrating boundaries come to life. The app’s developers used paper, scissors, and glue to complete the exercises, as Albers’s students would have done, in order to experience Albers’ process and methodology. The text was then meticulously translated into app form--they even preserved his original typeface and text columns.
Alongside the book’s full text are two hours of video footage including interviews with noteworthy practitioners such as textile designer Christopher Farr, graphic designer Peter Mendelsund, painters Anoka Faruqee and Brice Marden, product designer Brian Mullan (director of sourcing and production at Fab), quilt and fabric designer Denyse Schmidt, architect Anabelle Seldorf, and cultural historian Nicholas Fox Weber (exec­u­tive direc­tor of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation).
The free download allows you to view Chapter X, including text, commentary, and two interactive plates, and to experiment with all the features, including the color palette tool. The full version of the app includes the complete text, over 125 color plates, over 60 interactive studies, and a wide range of video commentaries, interviews, and additional features. The full version is available as an in-app purchase for $9.99.

Read more at

http://yupnet.org/interactionofcolor/