Question about Providing Full-Res Photos to Friends

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astrostu

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Background: I got back from a 9-day trip to Hawaii last Sunday and I just finished processing all my photos, including several dozen panoramas. The trip was a geology field trip with 11 other people. At the beginning of the trip, I offered to take everyones' photos, compile them along with my own, and make a DVD of the photos to give out to everyone. To make sure that at least some credit is given, all the photos taken by me are prefixed with my last name, and those by others are prefixed with their last name.

Situation: All of my photos are such that they're printable easily at 8"x12" for the smallest ones (that's at 288 ppi). Many of the panorama are easily printable at 30" on the longest side, and most much larger. I'm very pleased with many of my photos, and some of them I plan to use in competitions (like this month's TPF one).

I will be including a README file on the DVD, and in it I will at least have for my photos a statement saying something to the effect that they are for personal use only, they cannot be edited nor used for any commercial purpose, and any use must have a caption stating that I did the photo.

Question: These are grad students and two professors and I pretty much trust them. And I did say I would give out my photos. However, I feel a little uncomfortable providing them with the max. res. files, even though they're the 8-bit JPG versions and not the 16-bit PSDs. I don't want to include a watermark because I think that would make me look more arrogant than I am (since no one else requested that I put a watermark on their photos) and would take away from the photos.

Am I making much ado about nothing, or do you think I have a legitimate concern? Should I down-sample the images, maybe only providing them at suitable resolution to print 4x6?
 
I am on 13 MP most of the time (well, 10 times that when panoramic ;)).

When I give photos to friends I usually do half the resolution though, mostly for reasons of convenience for them and myself.

smaller prints come out very good with this. even though it is only 3.something MPs then ;)
 
Why provide them in a printable 8x12 resolution? I have told my friends numerous times they are more than happy to have any size print they want from me, they can even go find a printer and price it themselves but they won't get my original files.

I've had this situation recently and that is now my "policy". I would put photos on there in a decent resolution to be printed as 6x4 and displayed correctly on a dvd (which is a smaller resolution still).
 
if it's for a DVD...you only need to put a picture 640x480...or smaller...
So...why not shrink the size down a bit, and keep it around 1000 pixels a long side? Then nobody will even want to print them most likely..
 
Use low res pictures in a DVD slideshow. If they want prints, make them buy them from you. You don't have to charge an arm and a leg, but you can at least get some $ for your time and effort.
 
What exactly do you intend on doing with them?? As far as that goes why didn't you just tell your friends that you would sell them youe pictures if they wanted them. Why didn't they hire you as their official trip photographer if they wanted your pictures anyway?? oh yeah.... because they thought you were their friend and you said you would give them your images. I think sometimes peole go a little too far and this is one of those times. I mean really you told them you would give them images I wonder did some of them not bring cameras because you said you would bring yours so now that you are putting contigencies on giving up said imges are some of them going to just opt-out on having pictures of what might be a once-in-a-lifetime trip for some of them??. Honestly if you told them you woudl give them your pictures give the to them and stop this nonsense. I can see if you said they could buy them doing something like this but you didn't and why well probably because it would seem silly to buy pictures of your vacation from someone you thought was your friend. Now exscuse me if I am being a little presumptious here and have totaly the wrong idea but if it were me I say full-res (and mabye some edited too) all the way anything else seems kind of greedy to me.
 
It's probably just me but if I divide the amount of money I've made selling photographs, subtract what I've invested in equipment, and divide that by the number of photos I have taken, I suppose I should be paying people to take my photos.
 
Okay, I'm still semi-conflicted, but I think what I'll do is ask a few of the people, "Do you want the HUUUUUUUGE files or do you want smaller ones that you can still make prints of but are of a much more manageable size?" And then go with the majority. Kinda putting the decision in their mouths for 'em.

To answer some of the replies more directly:

Why provide them in a printable 8x12 resolution? I have told my friends numerous times they are more than happy to have any size print they want from me, they can even go find a printer and price it themselves but they won't get my original files.

I've had this situation recently and that is now my "policy". I would put photos on there in a decent resolution to be printed as 6x4 and displayed correctly on a dvd (which is a smaller resolution still).

That's sort of what I'm thinking. Assuming the "majority" "chooses" the smaller resolution, then when I hand them out I can tell them that if they would like any printed up, I'll go ahead and do it for "near-cost." They're NOT getting the original RAW nor even the edited PSD files, just 8-bit JPGs, regardless.


if it's for a DVD...you only need to put a picture 640x480...or smaller...
So...why not shrink the size down a bit, and keep it around 1000 pixels a long side? Then nobody will even want to print them most likely..

DVD as in just the files on a DVD ... not actually making a movie. DVD because I think there will be more than 700 MB when all is said and done.


Use low res pictures in a DVD slideshow. If they want prints, make them buy them from you. You don't have to charge an arm and a leg, but you can at least get some $ for your time and effort.

See my reply to JIP below.


What exactly do you intend on doing with them?? As far as that goes why didn't you just tell your friends that you would sell them youe pictures if they wanted them. Why didn't they hire you as their official trip photographer if they wanted your pictures anyway?? oh yeah.... because they thought you were their friend and you said you would give them your images. I think sometimes peole go a little too far and this is one of those times. I mean really you told them you would give them images I wonder did some of them not bring cameras because you said you would bring yours so now that you are putting contigencies on giving up said imges are some of them going to just opt-out on having pictures of what might be a once-in-a-lifetime trip for some of them??. Honestly if you told them you woudl give them your pictures give the to them and stop this nonsense. I can see if you said they could buy them doing something like this but you didn't and why well probably because it would seem silly to buy pictures of your vacation from someone you thought was your friend. Now exscuse me if I am being a little presumptious here and have totaly the wrong idea but if it were me I say full-res (and mabye some edited too) all the way anything else seems kind of greedy to me.

Several of them I intend on printing myself (a couple I already have), mating them, and putting up in my apartment or office. I also plan on using some in competitions, like this month's challenge.

I told them that I would get everyone's photos together - who was willing - and compile them on a single disk and make copies for everyone. However, there were 4 other cameras that were still snapping away the entire trip, especially one other that took some photos in places that I didn't (like they got the group shot on top of Mauna Kea, or in the lava tube). I never actually said I would give them full-res images, nor did I ever tell them what resolution my camera was. However, I did get most of the group shots on my camera since mine was the "best" one there (everyone else used P&S vs. my Digital Rebel).

So I will be giving them digital copies of the photos regardless. It's just a matter of if I give them the full-resolution versions or a smaller version. And then if I can think of a non-tacky/arrogant way of asking if folks want prints they can get them for me.

But I do agree with you in that I think I did go too far at the beginning. I guess I just never actually took photos that I felt were good enough that other people might want to actually pay for them. I'm pretty critical of my work and so getting shots that I think are "production-quality" is a step that I haven't gotten to yet, and now that I think I've finally reached it, I'm conflicted on how to handle it.
 
No, I never said you went too far in the beginning and yes I do agree the entire thing is coming across as extremely tacky and arrogant but i guess it depends on what kind of friends they are. If it were me and I was in the same situation I would never even consider making my pictures any different from anyone elses on the same DVD wether or not I was going to enter them in any competition.
 
astrostu - your not really treating these people as friends. Just give them the photos. If the one of your "Friends" wants to do a print that is the size of a poster and put it up in his house whats the big deal. ITs a compliment. You want to make money off your friends. I hope you dont ever need a ride to the airport. What if you did and you asked your friend. and once curb side he goes that'll be 40 bucks. You say what. Well a cab or car service would have been 60 so I am only charging you 40.

GREAT FRIEND
 
astrostu - your not really treating these people as friends. Just give them the photos. If the one of your "Friends" wants to do a print that is the size of a poster and put it up in his house whats the big deal. ITs a compliment. You want to make money off your friends. I hope you dont ever need a ride to the airport. What if you did and you asked your friend. and once curb side he goes that'll be 40 bucks. You say what. Well a cab or car service would have been 60 so I am only charging you 40.

GREAT FRIEND
Exactly!! what a jerky thing to do, tell everyone you will get all of everone's images together and then feel like yours are so much better than everyone elses you should reduce the quaity. I would imagine al the images together shoud fit just fine on a DVD so to reduce the quality of yours would just be arrogant. On the flip side though what do you think your "friends" are going to think about your images if they try to print enlarements an come up with a crapy print, not much I would think.
 
Okay, fine. Los Angeles and JIP have now succeeded in making me feel like a jerk.
 
Okay, fine. Los Angeles and JIP have now succeeded in making me feel like a jerk.

Well if you have not burned the disk yet for your friends isnt it better that I think your a jerk than your friends? I think the expression your looking for is THANK YOU
 
If you had SAID these people were FRIENDS anywhere I would be calling you a jerk. As colleagues I would still say that there is no reason to try to charge them or lower the quality unless they specifically hired you. As such I would say that it probably wouldn't be wrong to hold back one or two you think are good enough to put into the competitions if you took enough pictures.
 

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