How do you manage Meta Data when using stock images?

[rottroll123]

The Adobe Stock licensing terms demand, you don't remove e.g. copyright information embedded in the images meta data. Generally that's not a problem when you're using the images just as they are, but that's rarely the case. 

For example when you're designing something in XD and exporting elements for the web developer, all meta data is stripped and you'll get a plain file.

This is becomming a problem especially since we are recieving more and more copyright claims from various companies that seem to make a good buck from crawiling the web for copyrighted images and trying to sue those who use them. 

If anyone has a good workflow down for retaining meta data in images throughout the design process, I'd really appriciate, if they shared it. Thanks! 

[Abambo]

I know about those sharks, and it is unfortunate that Adobe's licensing terms are open to interpretation.

(A) Standard License for Works. Under a Standard License, we grant you a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide, non-transferable (except pursuant to section 6 (Additional Rights)), non-sublicensable license to use, reproduce, archive, modify, and display the Work, in all media, for (1) advertising, marketing, promotional and decoration purposes; and (2) personal and non-commercial uses, up to 500,000 times as further described in section 3.1(B) (“Standard License Specific Restrictions”).

vs

(H) remove, obscure or alter any proprietary notices associated with the Stock Assets, or give any express or implied misrepresentation that you or another third party are the creator or holder of Intellectual Property Rights in any Stock Assets;

The Adobe Stock licensing terms demand, you don't remove e.g. copyright information embedded in the images meta data. Generally that's not a problem when you're using the images just as they are, but that's rarely the case. 

By @rottroll123

If you read it as intended, you should not remove the metadata from the original file. It is virtually impossible to keep all the metadata as soon as you create an edited version of the original asset. The best example of this is you combine two or more assets into a new work. What metadata do you keep? As a side note, H is intended to disallow you to remove the watermark from the preview images and not to protect the (mostly) useless metadata.

Technically, when you modify a work, you create a new work based on an existing one. But the original work is not modified or altered in any manner, and no metadata is stripped. It's just not added to the new creation, which may well be a cropped and resized derived work of the original asset. 

You would need to use complex scripting to track down the assets and to copy metadata from the original asset to the modified one.

[rottroll123]

Thanks – i know, there won't be an easy answer to this. The real issue are these copyright people – it's not that we really had to pay any of them. We are using the licenced material in the intended way and our legal partner deal with most of this stuff easily, but it creates a lot of additional work and our customers are getting the impression, that there's something fishy with our image sources. 

To me it seems the important part would be the copyright information. We usually mention the credit somewhere on the web page. The current idea is to re-embed the copyrigt information manually after exporting the finished image for web usage. But that is a bit of an issue since at least three people are inwolved in a single web project who have to deal with images (designer, developer and content editor). 

I'm currently trying to get a workflow down, that ensures the CR-information is reliably preserved with as little overhead as possible. Our print workflow tasks the designer with ensuring the copyright-stuff is dealt with, but in the web design workflow there es a rather early and pretty definite hand-off as soon as a project goes into development. I know, automating it is an illusion, so I was hoping for some input from other who have to deal with that. 

Thanks a lot for clarifying the intention of paragraph H. I really whish this was worded more clearly – we had a recent copiright claim, that was referring to exactly this paragraph – this is the whole reason for my posting. 

[Abambo]

Thanks – i know, there won't be an easy answer to this. The real issue are these copyright people – it's not that we really had to pay any of them. We are using the licenced material in the intended way and our legal partner deal with most of this stuff easily, but it creates a lot of additional work and our customers are getting the impression, that there's something fishy with our image sources. 

By @rottroll123

There are some (former) contributors trying to extort additional cash out of paying customers. If you are based in Germany, there is a whole thread about an ex-contributor. https://community.adobe.com/t5/stock/abmahnung-eines-urhebers-trotz-korrekt-lizensiertes-bildmateria.... I would advise you to proceed as indicated: https://community.adobe.com/t5/stock/abmahnung-eines-urhebers-trotz-korrekt-lizensiertes-bildmateria...

I would like to point out that all advice I give in this matter is my personal view, but I'm not a lawyer nor an Adobe employee. There is no legal value in it, except if accepted by a court.