Do I Need A Rights Released Disc of Images?

The short answer: NEED? No. WANT? Yes!

The long answer requires a more intricate look into what photographers actually produce for their clients, what you really get when they say it’s a rights released disc, and how that value can serve your personal purposes. The following applies to all photography clients.

Artistic Copyright

Before we delve, let’s first understand the mass media implication of releasing rights. Of course everyone wants rights to the images they purchase. Everyone wants the freedom to use an image without the photo studio’s name plastered onto it. However, let’s also understand that artists have integrity, and not only is their work a consumer product, it is also art work. Professionals are creating artwork, and it’s not an oil painting which only exists on the wall of a gallery. Photography these days is mostly a digital art form, which means anyone’s image anywhere at any time could be utilized, slandered, copied, pasted and posted to social media or any random place on the internet which may potentially harm the artist’s integrity and artistic merit. You can well understand why photographers are so sensitive about whether to release image rights to their clients. Despite these concerns, I understand my clients needs. I offer my clients quality rights released images with the mutual trust that they respect my artwork and will not alter or misuse my images in any way. I therefore include clauses in agreement documents stating that since I have chosen to release rights to them, as a trade off they must also agree not to alter or reuse my images for their own creative purposes. My rights release allows clients to view images digitally or to make their own prints of unaltered images only. They agree to this in writing when they make a booking and are subject to legal implications if they act otherwise.

The Product

Before you book any photographer, you need to know two things regarding your images. First, how will you receive your images? Second, how you will utilize those images later? Do you only want images for digital viewing? Will you also want to make your own prints? What size prints? Please be aware and ask proper questions when you consult with photographers. Lots of them are prone to duping! Some of them will say that sure! they give rights released discs. But what they don’t tell you is that the images are very low resolution and basically meant for digital viewing only. You’d be pretty disappointed when you try to make an 8x10 print of an image that is not optimum print resolution even for a 4x6. If you’ll want to make prints, ensure that the images on your disc are print worthy, meaning they have a dpi/ppi (dots/pixels per inch) value of at least 200. Image pixel dimensions should be larger than 800x600 (depending how large a print size you’re expecting to make). If a photographer won't disclose that information, be skeptic.

The Product Value

Are you someone who wants to print off a thousand 4x6’s to put into your own album? Then getting a rights released disc is a huge value for you, considering otherwise that you might be paying the photographer’s print price for all those prints, and that is going to be pricey compared to Walgreens’ cently price per print. Are you someone who’d like a nice 11x14 print or a lustrous 20x30 landscape for your wall? Then doing your own printing may not be such a good idea. Formatting high quality photos for such large prints, and especially for panoramic prints with odd and non standard sizing, is best left to the professionals. Even if you have rights released images, I highly recommend getting anything larger than an 8x10 printed professionally by your photographer for highest quality results.

DVD? CD? What’s the Diff!?

Here’s a keen little clue for you. Consider how many images a photographer shoots on a wedding day. Seven hundred? A thousand? Now consider that a CD has about eight times less space than a DVD. If your photographer is giving you hundreds of images on a CD, you can place your bets those images are not high quality because they’ve been downsized in order to simply fit on the disc! If this is a photographer’s scheme to “give” you rights released images on cheaper storage media only for you to realize later that you have to order high quality prints from them anyway, then forget them. Rip off! A DVD stores images the same way as a CD (files in file folders when viewed on a computer). Plus, you can watch a slide show of your images if you put the disc in a DVD player!

Please ask questions of your photographer and be an informed client! You’ll be happy you did.