iStockphoto is a microstock company that charges a billion dollars per image. Or you would think so judging by this motley crew of light-fingered miscreants. The Oktoberfest banner you can kind of excuse. The laser lady is just dumb. But Dell? Really?
Thanks to Eros, Roman and Ainstushar!
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Thursday, December 11, 2008
Dude You're Getting A Pink Slip
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36 comments:
no wonder istock keeps raising their prices. All the cheap companies that keep stealing their stuff.
I just can't help but wonder if maybe the people getting the images off iStockPhoto just don't realise you can actually download the images clean, and instead right click and save as them. We all know how thick designers are, that would be my guess... :D
WOW. I look at iStock on occasion so at first I didn't understand the problem. Then it hit me like a sack of bricks.
Pink slip indeed.
dude. how hard would it have been to take a picture of a BEER? jeez. lazy lazy.
Says something about a printing company that would produce such a banner also. Maybe it was in-house...
I had to stare at these forever before I even saw the "istockphoto" on each picture. It's like my brain just skipped over them and said, "Not important! Don't bother processing!"
Ahahaha, only Dell would stoop so low.
I wonder how many were comps using the watermarked image... with instructions to purchase the image and swap out with the licensed image... and then someone in management jumps the gun and sends it to the printers and bam, copyright violation.
I don't care what kind of thing it is, there's no way having a glaring watermark on your finished product is excusable.
Excuse me while I froth at the mouth for a minute.
I'm a graphic designer. There is no way in hell I would get away with this. Ever.
Here's a bit of stolen imagery:
http://adaged.blogspot.com/2008/12/more-corporate-dumbness.html
And the name of the blog post is "More Corporate Dumbness."
Funny, or just plain stupid?
worse yet...many of those images were clearly stolen from photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com!
Just as long as one of MY iStock photos doesn't end up here... actually I wouldn't mind if Dell stole one on mine, then I could sue their sorry ass!
Have people ever considered, perhaps, Google image search? I mean, if you are going to just jack a random photo, why go to a stock photo site with a watermark?
@Paul Ganssle: I have customers that are too cheap to even spend the $10 on a picture on iStock, so for them I visit sxc.hu and try to find a suitable picture with the correct license there.
@unMuse: yeah no kidding, although deadlines can make impossible...
I don't have a photo of it but... Last year the Dollar Tree store chain had some promotion where these signs had huge 3D smiley faces, lots of them.
And looking not-that-closely, half of a "©" watermark was very much visible across the lower right corner of each smiley...
verification word: sessess
This is what happens when bosses send mock ups to print.
Its gotta be more of a "Boss-In-A-Hurry" thing than an evil "Stealing pictures" thing.
There are plenty of places you could just lift images from without dealing with watermarks. If you were just gonna jack 'em wouldn't you just skip over iStock's search results and go for the easier stuff?
istock probably doesn't mind it, since it is free advertising for them.
i used to print large format banners, that beer glass must have been EXTREMELY pixelated with a comp image.
I think it's either people being rushed (forced to submit the comps) or people being cheap bastards. I've had a client where I used iStock comps to show him what the site would look like with the images in mind. The total price came out to like a whole 70$ for all the images. It looked lovely. He decided that he'd prefer to do it himself (as in take the photos himself)... I cried. And then he decided to tell me to just use the comps and cover up the extra lines somehow (ie. the copyright) It was a bit of a battle to get him to understand that this was not a good thing. The final argument that won him over was that he could get sued and lose a lot more then 70$ dollars. I honestly think that if he had access to the site code he would have simply left the comps in.
heh. word verification: Craburl
As someone who works for Getty (owner of iStock), I can say that I'd much rather get paid the $10 license fee than see the "advertising". Because honestly, all that's advertising is "Hey! Steal our images without consequence!"
...Plus, I really like it when we actually sell stuff.
@Jeow-seff: NOT *only* Dell.
Ha, the Dell one is still there, too! think they would have fixed it by now
Even ignoring the watermark, that Oktoberfest banner is a disaster. If you're going to steal the image, you might as well go all out and steal an image of an actual GERMAN beer (or at least use your clone tool to put some more head on that pour). No self-respecting Oktoberfest patron would be seen drinking beer out of a pint glass with a measly inch of head. (Plus what is that anyway? an amber ale? you gotta adjust the color so it falls with in the 7-14 SRM range for a Märzen). Prince Ludwig would not be amused...
Ditto Isha. Mock-ups are often used with stock watermarks in place. I think they just rushed to press without making the final change. A good printer or editor should have noticed these and brought them to the ad agency's attention.
i don't see the one on dell??
Its not that hard to remove a watermark in PS, if you're that intent on using their images illegally... (they only cost a few bucks for such uses anyway, cheapskates), why would you let that go to press unless it was FPO and you forgot to fix it.
In Dull, er, Dell's case, they are the Walmarting of computers, i.e. cheap crappy parts, horrid incoherent tech support all offshored to India, cheap plastics, and some of the most stupid buyers (i.e. the "Wallyworld") crowd. Because they tried to become #1 by undercutting everyone financially they're in a world of hurt (to which myself and most geeks would wouldn't touch a Dull Chumputor) say, good riddance, don't let the door hit you in the arse in bankruptcy, they're not doing well financially so I can see them not affording an iStock photo... not to mention, as companies go, they're soulless scumbags anyways so they may have done it out of thinking they're god's gift (Michael Dell thinks he is).
One more here:
http://www.mogidonto.com.br/sobre_historico.php?active=sobre&id_sessao=1
I'll be the first to admit I have done this myself, having worked for an uber cheapass company that wouldn't buy the stock I needed for some crappy lo-res web image and having to "swipe" iStock watermarked previews. But c'mon....three friggin minutes with a clone brush, that's all these "designers" needed.
Cheap ass company...semi-excuseable. Cheap ass company+lazy designer = FAIL.
You know, maybe the monitor in the Dell ad is just looking at an istock photo?
I almost made this mistake. Many thanks to a great printer who caught the oversight and kept me off PhotoshopDisasters!
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