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The Topic
It’s just Katie, Peppermint and Steph this week as they address your questions and comments in a mail show.
Joining the Discussion:
Peppermint Granberg
Katie Nelson
Steph
From the Mail:
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Tangie Baxter’s Kickstarter Project (ends on May 4th)
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I had to come comment during the show about resell of digital goods. NPR Planet Money did an interesting show last month about this.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/04/11/176787372/whose-mp3s-are-they-anyway
You call me any day, any time, and I will be your summertime guest, Steph, Katie, & Peppermint. For reals. #totallyoneofmygoals #new52
LOL. You’re awesome.
Peppermint thinks I’m awesome! <3 #bestdayever #alsototallyseriousabouttheguestthing
I just had to comment about the ReDigi thing:
I’m amazed at this concept: Are mp3s and e-books so expensive that this is even a needed service? I also have to wonder how reselling could even be profitable, unless you didn’t pay for the stuff in the first place. To me it seems like more trouble than it’s worth. Don’t want to spend money on an e-book? Most libraries have e-lending now. Don’t want to pay for an mp3? Go to Youtube and create a playlist.
I thought the great technical breakthrough of digital goods was that it reduced costs for producers and consumers making these goods and the ability to produce them accessible to almost everyone, everywhere. There are lots of wonderful writers and musicians who depend on e-sales of their product to support themselves. ReDigi, while their intention may be good, undermines that part of the digital community.
I think if putting an image of a coke can on your page would be okay as long as you weren’t using that page to promote something other than coke. I would guess that if your a CT member, creating a page for a designer or using that page to promote your blog or advertise anything than it would be a bad idea. Personal Use, is personal use… and a good rule of thumb would probably be if you have to ask, don’t use it.
The sticky part is that when you upload that personal LO to a gallery with a list of credits, the Coca-cola company may not understand that you aren’t advertising their product as another.
Has anyone else had problems listening to this episode? I tried to listen in iTunes and it was so horribly scratchy sounding that I couldn’t even get past the intro.
i haven’t tried it itunes, but it’s fine in the web player.
Maybe it was just my phone. It was bad from the site, too. I did a reset and now it’s fine. Sorry for the false alarm, Steph!
Another comment:
On stores not allowing photography, that I get.
When I worked at a big retail chain, one of the things I got to do was design product displays– each store was given carte blanche on certain display areas, so it was fun for those of us who created them. One of the reasons we did not allow photos was because we did not want the competition to brand our individual (and usually awesome) displays on a national scale. Our store was one of the best performing on in the Mid Atlantic region with a stellar reputation for being clean, friendly and nice to just browse in because it was purdy. It also made us a target; One of our competitors actually hired people to try to sneak pictures and we’d have to chase them out… it was crazy!
I don’t know about smaller stores, but they may have their reasons. One may be that in order to be able sell certain product, they have to abide by the no store photography rule. It also may just be about branding control, too. Branding control may also be why some eateries don’t allow photography. Imagine your product having a mistake and it, for some reason, makes it to the customer. That customer has a million followers on Instagram… and posts a photo of that mistake.
…and this topic makes me think of this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/28/yelp-worst-meatball-sandwich_n_1633755.html
I remember reading Ken Rockwell’s review of the DSLR I bought earlier this year and he talked about the “Quiet Mode” and how it allowed him to covertly take photos in the middle of a Target store by keeping the mirror up and avoiding the tell-tale snap of a DSLR going off. Cracked me up. With the volume of smartphones out there, and even the number of tiny point-and-shoot cameras available, I imagine stores have a much harder time policing store photography. I see so many Instagram photos from inside stores. I just took one in TJMaxx on Tuesday for Day in the Life.
LOL my camera is always set to quiet mode! It’s the only way I get photos of my kid. I used my hubby’s phone camera the other day to sneak a candid photo of my mother in law playing with her new Android (cause my in laws pose) and I was not feeling so stealthy when it made the click sound.
Now that phones take better pictures and cameras are so small, I think you’re right- it’s gotta be a lot harder to enforce those policies. The nerd in me wonders how our camera happy culture will influence the retail and dining industries in the next decade.
A couple of years ago I was in target with my daughter. She was looking at the toys and deciding what to put on her birthday wish list for her out of town relatives. Instead of writing the items down I snapped a photo (she had a lot on her list). It never occurred to me that it wouldn’t be allowed until the target employee stopped me.
Photos are just easier. Writing things down is so ten years ago.
I know sometimes when I use my Amazon barcode scanner in stores (to price compare on Amazon) I get odd looks from employees and I’ve been wondering whether, at some point, they’ll just put cell signal blockers in their stores. LOL
I do this exact same thing. I’m way too lazy to write something down! And I do this with things for around the house so that I can text a photo to my husband before purchasing.
As I was listening to the conversation about using internet images in our personal scrapbook pages I thought of something. Technically, in order to print your layout you need to own the copyright to the images you print, or have permission (licensing) from the copyright holder. So, just remember that if you include images on your personal pages that you don’t hold the licensing and/or own the copyright for a printer has the right to deny printing the page for you. I’m not saying that it WILL happen, but it could. It’s always best to just use your own photos.
Hi ladies – just got an email that Tangie made her minimum. I think a lot of that was thanks to the profile you guys had on the podcast. When I pledged this morning it was about 26K. You ladies have the kindest hearts.
Thank you so much you guys! I am so thankful and so happy for the shout out you gave my kickstarter project! You guys are amazing and I appreciate it so much! We hit the minimum goal this morning and on our way to getting a little extra for those unexpected expenses that are sure to come up. I feel inadequate to express the gratitude and emotion in my heart today. THANK YOU so much everyone, many hands make light work has never been more true. Lots of hugs all around to my digi friends across the globe! ~Tangie
I checked San Diego Zoo’s photography policy on their website and found the FAQ page (http://www.sandiegozoo.org/zoo/faq/faq_general) which says that “We encourage guests to take photos at both the Zoo and the Safari Park. As a not-for-profit organization, commercial use of photos taken at our facilities is strictly prohibited. Entering photo contests does not infringe on our copyright policies as long as photos taken on our grounds are not published. …”
So it looks like photos can’t be on pages published in magazines – unless you fill out some other licensing agreement. Darn!
This topic is definitely a sticky one! As I was listening I started thinking about Pinterest and how we have all admitted that we used to do it manually – saving images to an inspiration folder on our computers etc. The same applies for when we ripped images out of magazines for inspiration. Isn’t that technically wrong, but we did it anyway and it was “personal use.” But now that it is on Pinterest, it’s illegal?! It’s all just a can of worms!
Just wanted to chime in on the Scrapping a Coke can debate. I was an admin at the sadly departed Scrappity Doo Dah. Our policy was basically this… if it’s your image taken with your camera, it was fine. So if you took a pic of your coke can on your desk and scrapped it, perfectly ok. If however, you used a photo you snagged from Coke’s website, that needed to be included in the credits. (I’ve done this a lot for my PL pages where I would grab pictures from shows we were watching that week) If the photo you grab has credits AND is fair use, then it’s ok to use and upload to galleries.
The controversy would come in when people would use others’ images for their CT pages. (Which I never understood in the first place, why would you take the time to make a beautiful page with some random baby in it who you don’t know?) If you do decide to go that route, there are stock photography sites out there, but you have to check out the restrictions that the photographer has put in place before you use it. And be sure to put the photographer’s name in your credit list.
Also, I am in no way a lawyer, so there’s that.
It was interesting listening to you discussion about the taxes on online purchases. Unfortunately, I think my own state is trying to get through taxes on any digi goods.
Not related to the show, I would like to ask about a few digital paper pet peeves. I have been paper shopping because I realized that these “papers” weren’t JUST good for scrapbooking, but they make great patterns for die cutting projects and as a mini substitute for wall paper for decorating. I print the paper and use it as decorative paper just like I would do with a “real” scrapbook paper. However, I get an “endless” supply with the digi and I don’t have to store it all (as I would with a real paper).
Here are the questions:
1. Why do designers show me a sliver of the pattern in the picture in the store? Yeah, I get it…they want to show a sample. but it’s unfair to me when you show me a sliver of blue/teal (FABULOUS) then I buy that paper and it’s blue, teal and ORANGE! That orange stuff wasn’t in the sample shown. For stripes where the entire pattern can be appreciated in the little sliver, ok..fine. But I feel cheated when my beautiful blue/teal paper has been ruined with ORANGE things that would take significant work to remove. Bye bye blue/teal paper…
2) Papers are “overprocessed”. I am buying for the “graphic”. I understand the need to provide “ready to use” paper and that some people consider wrinkles, texture and lighter centers to be necessary for the paper to be “ready to use”. But, going back to the sliver comment…the sliver doesn’t often show me the DEEP wrinkles in this paper. If I see the wrinkle/texture in the store sample, I will not buy it. I don’t want that! I buy textures and brushes…if I REALLY need that stuff, I can add it and that is quite easy! I cannot draw the patterns and recoloring CU papers is slow for me. So I’d rather buy it as a nice paper, then if I need, add the texturing. Again…I’m feeling a bit cheated that the sliver didn’t show the deep wrinkles, the light centers and such because I can’t remove these effects as easily as I could have added them if I needed them. Couldn’t I get the “no effect graphic papers” (since this must have been created prior to adding wrinkles/textures) and then the designer could also add the finishing touches for those who need them???? OR…if you must add those items, show me the entire paper instead of a sliver so that I know not to buy over “embellished” papers? Again, hard to use a paper with strange wrinkles down the centers and had I seen it…I wouldn’t have bought it.
3) A request vs “complaint”…I am trying to glue “tiles” of paper together to form a “wall paper”. It would be REALLY REALLY nice if the edges of the paper would form a continuous pattern from sheet to sheet. Not sure how difficult this is or whether this would “ruin” the pattern. But sometimes, it’s nice to have a large print that could be tessellated into tiles for larger projects…
Most of these things would really be required for such a small market of people and they would be creating extra work for the designer and would require extra server storage for the store, since papers are the bulk of the file size in a digital kit. What you’re asking for is really a transfer of the workload from you back to the designer, but you’re perhaps only a market of one person who needs papers to fall into these guidelines for a use that lands outside scrapbooking.
The previewing issue is one that comes up a lot. There’s no great way to preview digital scrapbooking kits given the volume of product we release and the constraints of the software. For the most part we’re given one main image and 10-12 detailed images on a page, and the bulk of our customers want to see example pages rather than product close-ups. In a kit containing 10-20 papers (or more) and 40-infinity elements, there’s simply no realistic way to give everyone a detailed glimpse of everything. Doing so would mean that we spend hours previewing kits, as well. And again, we don’t know how many customers would really want all those detailed previews, so is that time a good investment in the scheme of things?
All that being said, I don’t tend to use overly distressed papers either but there’s a market of people who do and a segment of designers who really excel at making them. Typically designers will stick to the same aesthetic from kit to kit, so if you find designers who include clean papers in one kit they’ll likely continue to do so in the others. On the flip side if you end up with a kit with a lot of creases, paint and other distressing then it’s likely going to be present in future kits, too. You could always try asking the designer for a screenshot of all the paper thumbnails in a kit if it’s a new-to-you designer.
Some designers do add a separate papers-only preview that shows full papers, but I don’t think that’s very common. Hopefully, taking a good look at the layouts shown will help in determining if a paper swatch is accurate compared to the whole paper. You might also look for a basic stash of plainish cardstock papers in a variety of colors to have on hand for using with more heavily-textured kits.
The only products I know of that are sold without texture are the product life digital kits. Because graphics for paper lines assume they are being printed on papers that will give the texture, you usually get plain, straight-up color for those. Most of us digi-scrappers tend to like texture because we want them to look good on the screen too. And, I’m one of those who love heavy textures, tears and grunges on my papers, even plain ones, versus the simpler plain card stocks. I think you can find lots of designers who sell some basics that will be versatile enough to use with any kit with minor recoloring, perhaps.
As for making papers to tile from one swatch to another, that’s very challenging to do. The easiest way, though, is to flip the paper left to right and top to bottom for the various tiles so they match up. So, print a number of copies in each flipped orientation and you should be able to match them up after printing. (In Photoshop, the command is IMAGE>IMAGE ROTATION>FLIP CANVAS VERTICALLY or HORIZONTALLY. Older versions may have this feature in a different spot.)
Ahhh…I never considered flipping before printing.
That could work for many papers. I also am going to try to cut some flowers out or whatever to try to make the transitions look more natural rather than having mirrored half flowers etc. 
Mitzy, Katie just came out with some AMAZING paper packs that you might want to try out. They aren’t distressed or “folded” at all-they have a very light texture so they actually look like paper & not just color filled background. I just got the free sample she gave away on her blog (THANK YOU, Katie!) and will definitely be buying the packs.
Just wanted to say a big Thanks for the avalanche of digi goodness in the email boxes of Daily Digi newsletter subscribers. I’m trying to stick to a spring-no-spending goal, so I wasn’t letting myself look at newsletters or promos—-but my ears perked up when I heard Peppermint mention submitting something! I’m excited to discover more designers I hadn’t’ know and having new digi supplies to get me creating stuff. Thanks again!
Thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed it!!
So Adobe announced that PSCS6 would be the last traditional release and that they are moving to cloud only. Can you guys offer some guidance or advice on this? I am currently using CS5, but I don’t really want to go back to PSE and I don’t know that I want an indefinite subscription to just scrap? Help!
We talked about it quite a bit toward the end of the show we recorded today. It will be out Thursday.
My take is that if you can get in on the educational discount, or just want Photoshop, $19.99/month isn’t a bad price. Yes, you’re locked in for a year, but the price of the upgrade is spread out over the year. And, you get all updates that come out during that time. I actually love my CC subscription. I’m paying a little more than upgrading every other year, but it’s worth it to me. I wish Elements was included as well, but it’s the only one that isn’t. Some of the features that will be coming in the new version are really quite interesting. Unfortunately, most of the news reports have focused on the CC changes and not on the amazing features that are coming down the pike, like syncing all your brushes and settings across devices, being able to do advanced operations on tablets by compartmentalizing the processing of them, team sharing of files and more. Looking forward to what the panel has to say in the next episode!
I enjoy the show even though I am a paper scrapper. I am trying to catch up on the old ones and listen to the new ones as they come out. I have to say I am kind of disappointed with the right off no to the question of buying a gift. Why not? If someone likes something and wants to buy it for their friend also, why would you say no to an additional sale?
Also, I think redigi is a great idea. One of the reasons I haven’t converted to ebooks is because most of my books come from my mom and I pass them along to friends or the library to resale. I am kind of disappointed none of you admitted you have a vested interest in something like redigi not working for scrapbooking because you wouldn’t make that sale. I know I hate to waste products as a paper scrapper and I would feel that way about digi products. If it doesn’t work for me I want it to work for someone that has been looking for that product. Especially since most of the stuff I get rid of is old and no longer available.
Thanks for all your work. I appreciate it and enjoy listening to the show.
If you want to gift an additional copy of a kit to someone, you can always purchase a gift certificate. Most digital shopping carts won’t allow you to purchase more than once copy of something. I have had situations where someone has wanted to buy more than one copy of something to distribute to team members or family members and I’ve worked with customers to arrange that.
It’s important to remember that when you purchase digital supplies, you are not purchasing the actual files. You’re purchasing a license that allows you to use the supplies under certain terms. The license usually says it cannot be transferred. Comparing digital files to paper supplies is really apples and oranges.
Katie said that you can’t “gift a digi supply”, but at the beginning of the show you mentioned that if you passed away your daughter should be able to use all your digital content. Does that mean you can “will” it away? What happens if I didn’t have a daughter to use it? Can I “will” it to my niece who’s a scrapper?
That also gets me thinking, if I bought a kit and used it, could my daughter “legally” use it too? Or would she have to buy her own?
It really depends on the Terms of Use. My guess is that very few designers have addressed the issue of passing it on in a will. In general, most licenses are granted to the purchaser only and are non-transferable. So, you would not be able to share the files. I have seen some terms of use limit the number of computers files can be used on, and I’ve seen some expressly permit the use of the items in an immediate family. But I’ve never seen one that addressed what happens after death. If it says non-transferable, then I would assume that means they cannot be passed on. But, check with the designers if you have questions on their terms. In the long term, our current files and formats may very well be obsolete, so it may be a mute point for many of us.
I just wanted to pop in really quick with a shout-out about Persnickety Prints!
Today I received the order of 60+ prints that I placed on Saturday. The pages look AMAZING! Such fabulous quality!
Despite Persnickety’s over-the-top packaging (2 cello bags, taped together, then taped to a piece of cardboard, bubble wrap on all corners and a box that wraps around a couple of times) there was damage to one set. The post office must have dropped (thrown down) the package on its corner!
I contacted Persnickety and they replaced the damaged pages no charge to me!
Persnickety Prints is SO AMAZINGLY AWESOME!
I am a new listener & mostly paper scrapper although I do some stuff hybrid and dabble in digi. I’m looking to kick it up a notch and thought this show would help.
Anyway, I found the comments regarding credits & TOUs interesting. I’ve just started posting stuff to galleries and as a paper scrapper stuff as a shorter life cycle and is used up in making pages, thus I don’t think crediting is as important to a paper scrapper. However. I could see in digi land, where product doesn’t goout of stock crediting is important, as it could result in a sale plus it helps since you might reuse a kit& since you want to make it clear you didn’t design. Everything from scratch, whereas in paper it’s obvious the creator didn’t design the sticker. I hope that makes sense.
There is a limitation to copyright called fair use, which allows the legal use of copyrighted material, even without permission, in certain circumstances. For example: in writing a review of a product it would be fair use to include an image of it; commentary and criticism; news reporting; scholarly uses; and others. It can even be legal to make money off of the fair use of a copyrighted work – if it is in fact a fair use. Unfortunately, the guidelines for what constitutes fair use and what doesn’t were intentionally written to be vague, so that every case could be considered within its own circumstances.
I found an interesting site online that discusses fair use and documentary film making. It seems to me that scrapbooking has similarities to documentaries in that we are documenting factual and emotional aspects our lives in an artistic format. This site has a document called the “Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use.” Here is the link:
http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/fair-use/best-practices/documentary/documentary-filmmakers-statement-best-practices-fair-use
I don’t know how authoritative this document is, but I think it outlines some sensible guidelines that we scrapbookers can use to help us decided if it’s OK to use images such as a movie poster or book cover in our creations.
Fair use is legal, and I’m uncomfortable with the view that if you have to ask to use something, then you probably shouldn’t be using it. I hope that we can continue to document our lives, exercise fair use, and not be afraid to do so.
My view of: “if you have to ask if something is okay to use, then it probably isn’t,” is not directed at scrapbookers documenting their lives, but rather designers using products to create digital scrapbook supplies. To stay out of legal trouble, if you don’t want to hire an attorney to find out if something really is okay or not, then it probably isn’t.
Loved listening! And I’m in love with mason jar salads — my husband too! It makes it so much easier to eat healthier. And they really are so pretty sitting in the fridge. Thank you!