Submitting for Copyright

[GPR1]

I have about 4300 images I'd like to submit for US copyright, the result of a year living overseas. I understand the drill about each CD and a form, but I'm wondering most convenient way to get small images to submit. Through Capture One converted jpegs are still over 1meg each. How do you convert and submit large batches of images? What's the most convenient, economic way?

Thanks,

Greg

[jev]

Burn them onto a CD. The Copyright Office will accept CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs as deposits for registration. It is not necessary to submit prints of the images along with the files on disk. Some photographers suggest that you send along a “contact sheet” — a page of thumbnails (or multiple pages, if you’re registering a large group of images) to display the contents of the CD, with coordinated information (numbers, names, whatever) that links the thumbnails to the more substantial images on the disk. (Low-resolution JPEG is the preferred graphic format, as opposed to GIF or TIFF.) There are a number of free or cheap utilities that can batch-print images into a contact sheet format. (quote from) http://www.asmp.org/commerce/legal/copyright/faq2.php

[coreypolis]

try anothe resizing program. Google's free ware program Picasa2 will export them to a jpeg at sizes down to 480 x ? and you can adjust the jpeg quality settings. It would be easy to get them down below 50kb each.

[GPR1]

Thanks for your replies!

Greg

[mjordan]

One CD I submitted had a little over 4100 images on it. I used a program that creates web galleries to create the thumb nail size images at about 500 pixles on the long side and about a quality 8 out of 10. The idea is to get an image that can be easily compared should you need to do so in court to prove it's your image. With my last few CD's I've just used the embedded jpeg image since it saves time. I sort my images out by month and event so if I need to find an image on my CD copy, I can narrow it down pretty quick.

Also, make sure you read the criteria for submitting a group of images like this. They have to be all published or non-plublished, they have to all have the same copyright holder or holders and I think a couple of other things I can't recall at the moment. In my case, I am the sole copyright holder of all my images and none of them had been published (as defined by the Copyright criteria for being published). So it was pretty easy to do a single group submission like that.

Also, send the CD in a protective case. Of the 6 or so CDs I've sent in over the last few years, I just had the Copyright Office send me a letter asking for another copy of my CD. It got broken somewhere along the way. The other one I sent at the same time in a different envelope made it fine and I've already received back the certificate of registration for it. It takes about 3 months to get that and then another 3 months or so for the registration to show up in their database.

Mike

[GPR1]

Mike,

Thanks for your detailed reply. I am the sole copyright holder, but I'll check the definition of published and unpublished. Thanks again.

Greg

[peterdoomen]

TNGen is very good at resizing pics. Also builds an HTML gallery, useful for browsing and reviewing.

P.