While we include the Digital Negatives in all of our Wedding Collections at no additional cost with a limited Copyright Release there can still be some misconceptions about what a Digital Negative is and what a client can do with them. This page should hopefully clear up any confusion and help you to understand a little bit more about this product.
What are Digital Negatives?
Remember back in the days of film you received your prints and your negatives from your local Lab? Your negatives were small unedited pieced of film. Digital Negatives are very similar. These files have had very limited processing and are a blank canvas so to speak. You will be able to make reprints at full resolution of 6×4, 5×7 and 8×12 sizes. All the images you see on my website and on my blog are fully retouched and therefore have had extensive editing.
When I get the Digital Negatives do I own the Copyright?
No! As per Australian Copyright Law we own the Copyright to every image that we take, and Copyright ownership can not be sold to any person for any price. When you purchase the Digital Negatives in your selected Collection you will receive the images on a disk and you will be entitled to use these images for your own personal use. You can print them for yourself and make other photo products from them.
What CAN’T I do with the Digital Negatives?
Firstly you can not transfer or sell your Copyright Release to anyone else. This means that you can’t email the photos to your Grandmother and tell her she can print the images for herself and you can not make copies of the CD to give to family members. Only the Bride and Groom have permission to use the images. You also can not make significant changes to the images we give you (cropping and resizing is okay but please leave the editing to us – it’s what you pay us for!) You can not sell DVD’s, CD’s or prints of the images to your friends and relatives, wedding magazines or websites (although we are very happy to submit them on your behalf!). The images are for the purchaser’s use only, they are not to be used for anyone else’s use. For example you can not give your Florist a Digital File and tell her that she can use it on her website, that is a breach of the Copyright. Only we can sell our images and decide which of your vendors may have permission to use them in their marketing. You can not post them on Facebook due to Facebook’s terms of use stating that anything uploaded can be used by Facebook, if you wish for your images to be on Facebook we are more than happy to supply you with watermarked images for that purpose.
Why are the prints so expensive?
The process that each image goes through before being printed can take hours, and is very skilled work, so we charge accordingly for this service. This is why there is such a big difference between taking a Digital Negative to your local one-hour photo lab and getting a 6×4 for $1 and purchasing one from us for $35. At the one-hour photo lab you are paying for the low-quality paper it is printed ion, the antiquated equipment that prints it and the two seconds it takes them to run the image through the computer. When you purchase from us directly you are getting an image printed by a professional photo lab on super high-quality archival photo paper and whatever time it takes for us to carefully tweak and retouch the image and then calibrate it to the specific printer that our lab will be using, as well as our unconditional guarantee that if something is wrong with the print you receive, we will replace it for free of charge until you are satisfied. This requires extensive computer software and hardware, as well as lots and lots of time (roughly 15-20 minutes per image). For large prints we also have a special process that allows us to enlarge the image to virtually any size without the loss of quality. This is something that you just can’t get at your one-hour photo lab.
Can we purchase fully retouched files?
No. The images you receive on disk are lightly enhanced and are perfectly fine for printing at your local one-hour lab. If you wish to have large pieces of art in your home it is in your best interest to purchase these directly from us so we can guarantee the quality and longevitey of the final product. If we were to offer fully retouched files on disc it would roughly take an average of 5 weeks working full time to hand edit approximately 600 photos, this would cost thousands of dollars and would not be fair to our other customers. You will receive a slideshow of all of the fully edited files which go into your album so you can view them on your TV or Computer, however you will not be able to print from that disk.
What does editing do to an image?
A straight out of camera Digital File (or SOC) is usually very flat and boring. Your Digital Files will be batch processed to increase contrast, adjust the white balance and correct exposure. A fully edited file has been individually handcrafted in Photoshop. Depending on the photo and the required adjustments it may have had all of the above plus some pimple removal, sharpening, colour enhancements, eye enhancements, slimming down of unattractive body parts, opening of closed eyes, erasing of distracting backgrounds or dirty marks, conversion to black and white, sepia etc.
So you can understand for yourself I have included some examples showing you a fully unedited image, a Digital Negative image and the final Print Image. All photos that go into an album or are printed by us have had the extensive editing shown in the final example.
