PhotoSphere Collection, Preview Pac v.2
Company: PhotoSphere Images Ltd.
Estimated Price: CD-ROM collections, $195,
Individual photos, $30 (5in x 7 in, 72 ppi),
$60 (5 in x 7 in, 150lpi/300 ppi)
http://www.photosphere.com

PhotoSphere has developed a way for graphic, print, and multimedia designers to have access to a large library of stock photography without having to worry about royalties. The PhotoSphere Collection Preview Pac gives designers 80-100 low resolution watermarked images to use in composition, with high resolution versions of the images available in CD collections, or online for individual purchase for users who need just a few images.

Requirements and Installation:
The Preview CD requires Mac OS 7.0 or greater and a CD-ROM drive. There is no installation. The photos are viewed using the included photo browser, which was a genuine pleasure to use. (Are any of you other multimedia CD publishers listening? I would love for my multimedia encyclopedia to use this browser!)

What you get.
Each collection includes 80-100 images, each in low, medium, and high resolution. The sampler CD has only watermarked low resolution photos of the collection for composition purposes, with 10 free high resolution photos included as a bonus. Medium and high resolution versions are purchased and downloaded from the PhotoSphere website. PhotoSphere currently has 30 collections, ranging from Active Couples to Backgrounds and Textures. Most collections feature people. PhotoSphere makes a point of emphasizing that the collections include variations in pose, expression, framing, and format for most images. This gives the designer flexibility and variety in compositions that incorporate the images.

Photosphere has a provision for getting rebates on purchase of individual photos. The full price of individual photos can be applied toward the purchase of CD-ROM Collections. This can be a big help to small businesses or free-lance graphics professionals.The PhotoSphere website has free high resolution photos for downloading, and also has some other goodies. If you are a multimedia professional I recommend a visit to their website.

Stock images? I need people photos!
For those of you unfamiliar with the stock photography market, we are not talking about farm animals here (although there are a few on the CD). Stock photo collections provide designers with a ready source of in-stock or on-hand professional photographs, sorted by subjects such as couples, occupations, families and scenics, for use in projects. Royalty free photos are purchased for unlimited use without having to pay separately for each use.

As a professional photographer, I was very interested in examining the photos. The use of fill flash and/or reflectors is obvious in almost all of the outdoor photos of people. (Bright sunlight requires the use of fill lighting to avoid harsh shadows or abrupt tonal changes.) Almost all of the photos have very good or adequate levels of fill lighting.

I saw very few photos that had technical flaws (from a photography viewpoint), which is very good for this large number of photos. Most of the photos are well composed, well framed, and have pleasing balance and tonal arrangements. It is apparent that these photos were not taken by hobbyists.

Many of the photos were too perfectly centered for my taste, but perusal of magazines and other print media shows that centered or nearly centered subjects are preferred by illustrators in many cases for purposes of balance. Also, many of the photos that are centered could easily be cropped to give more artistic framing if the end use allowed it.

The variety of subjects on the CD gives a lot of flexibility in choosing photos that relate to the desired composition and theme. The inclusion of various framing options, orientations, and facial expressions in photo sets gives even more flexibility in use.

Summary
The photos on the sampler CD are very well done, and include enough variety in poses and arrangements that an appropriate photo or set of photos would be available for nearly any project. The browser was intuitive and was very easy to use. The provision for crediting the full purchase price of individual photos toward purchase of collections makes this a very attractive product for small businesses and free-lance graphics professionals.

David Price
GCSPhotoBug@WWBChat.com