Major Publishers Adopt PLUS Standards

A press release from the PLUS Coalition today announced:

"Representatives of McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Pearson each announced that they will adopt the Picture Licensing Universal System (PLUS) Picture Licensing Glossary definitions in their contracts, and that they encourage image suppliers to begin embedding PLUS license metadata in all images within one year."

The publishers voiced their support at the "PLUS Takes Root in the Publishing Industry" event hosted by the Picture Archive Council of America, during their recent International Conference in New York City.


Some of you may be aware of the work of PLUS, but for those of you that aren't aware; here is the elevator speech: The PLUS coalition is an international non-profit organization dedicated to simplifying and facilitating the communication and management of image rights. It includes all of the groups involved in the picture licensing industry (publishers, picture archives, photographers, illustrators, designers, advertising agencies, museums, libraries, artist representatives, educational institutions, manufacturers and their associations ) which have jointly developed a standard for describing (PLUS glossary and Media Matrix), recording (PLUS License Definition Format), embedding (PLUS License Embedder), and reading (PLUS License Reader) licensing information for images.

Today's announcement shows that the movement is finally coming to fruition, as the biggest publishing companies are adopting the PLUS standards, and recommending image makers to start using these standards as part of their workflow.

Details including the full press release can be found on the PLUS website.

When you visit the site, take some time to learn about the PLUS Embedder, an application that can be used in tandem with the PLUS website to generate licenses and define licensing terms that can be added to each image provided to clients and third parties as embedded metadata.

The PLUS Coalition includes participants in thirty countries, and receives significant support from Leadership Circle members Adobe, Adbase, Adobe, Pentagram, Jupiterimages, Digimarc, Belay Development, Getty Images, IDEAlliance, ImageSpan, Photo District News, IPTC, NAPP, PACA, StockPhotoFinder, Swan Turton, WongDoody and Capture.