Some thoughts on making original images available

[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

I come from an academic background, where plagiarism will plunge you into the darkest circles of hell, but where increasingly, making original data sets available is seen as a good thing.

When one publishes a non-fiction work with the goal being to sway public opinion, or increase the amount of knowledge or beauty in the world (as opposed to becoming rich from sales), one publishes the whole thing, not an abstract, or a 2:1 reduced precis.

I can understand completely that folk who are professional photographers, hoping to make an income by selling original images, don't want cheaters taking them for free.

But I suspect that the vast bulk of us on IIS are not going to make a lot of cash selling our images, and this is not really a concern.

Once, just once, someone reblogged one of our images, but gave us full credit. We were delighted.

If someone did steal an image and wrongfully published it under their own name, we'd just laugh, because anyone we care about knows our Kermit Green, not too over-sharpened, mid-contrast, not-too-HDR, 0.55 sec arc/pixel style. You have seen the image already, know it's ours already, and if someone submitted it as an APOD and won, all we need to do is to ask them to produce the raw subs, and off to disgrace they go, so we become famous, they rot, and who cares?

NASA make their raw data available to the public. ESO make their final images available as 1:1 TIFFs, assuming you have the gigabyte bandwidth to download them. People would just laugh themselves silly if you tried to steal one and pass it off as your own.

I find it intensely useful and valuable to download other folk's excellent images, register them with one of ours, and blink between them. Why?

The reason I love science is that it is reproducible. It is true and honest. What I say is up there, you can see is up there too. What you say is up there, I can see is up there also. That's different to politics, economics, what Deaconess Fuller taught us, and philosophy.

In Primary School in 1960 we were taught that marching up and down and pledging our allegiance to the flag would make us good citizen cannon fodder, and that sport builds character and makes you a man, but we've come to see that some heroes take steroids, fix matches for cash, ankle tap their colleagues, and get arrested for drunken sexual assault. But what we were taught in science, and what we read in our How and Why Wonder Books, has later turned out to have been at least honest, and still workable within reason and the specified framework.

Being able to see that the structures in your image are also in ours, and vice versa, is very important to my soul. Being able to get a feeling for what is unintentional artifact, versus what is real, is important. Being able to see where I can do better, go deeper, go sharper, is important. Seeing how well we've done with limited time, skies, weather, and equipment is important. Seeing another interpretation is valuable.

None of this interferes with artistic expression. Astrophotography is as much about art as science, but the two usually do not interfere with each other, and where they do, it's good to know.

We are makers, others are takers. Freeloaders, cheats, and liars. I am aware that one or two of us have had unfortunate experiences. However, it's my feeling that, commercial applications aside, holding our best cards secret against our chests is not the best solution.

If we have an image from a night of really bad seeing, it is fair to down-sample the image until the FWHM is sensible.

Notice that if someone really wanted to steal an image, it is a matter of a few minutes' work to use their 4K monitor to pan around the image, saving screen shots, and then reassemble. It works no better than using a hardened steel padlock in these days of battery operated angle grinders. Preventing download of the original merely annoys those who have an ethical and legitimate hope to properly admire your image.

Trying to zoom and pan around an image on the web using those awful scroll bars is nowhere near as satisfactory as using a proper image display program on a downloaded copy, where one can adjust brightness to see the faintest features that you've captured but not been able to show, or to try different processing (adjust the zero point, colour balance, contrast, etc) to help compare with other images of the same object.

As already mentioned, some of us have good commercial reasons for hanging on to our originals. Others have been bitten by the snakes and takers, and don't want to be bitten again. I salute and support both those positions, and don't want them to change even the tiniest bit. That leaves the vast majority of us.

I would therefore make a plea that when we put our images on Flickr or the like, that we don't tick those little boxes that prohibit downloading of the 1:1 original (disable right-click, etc) unless we have a really good reason for doing so. In my mind, it sends the wrong message.

I don't expect many folk to change as a result of this email, it's just my personal view, but I'd be very interested to hear what others think.

Very best,
Mike

[RickS (Rick)]

I very much agree, Mike, and if you need any hints on how to defeat those halfhearted attempts to prevent image download just let me know

Cheers,
Rick.

[rmuhlack (Richard)]

Well put Mike, I work in academia too and share those same sentiments. I have even taken the step of sharing my astro images (via Astrobin at full 1:1 res) with an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons license

[dimithri86 (Dimithri)]

Strongly agree. I've downloaded other peoples raws and practised processing to try to achieve their final product, while I was waiting for my imaging setup to be finished. Now that I got a setup, I can process my own images much quicker (and I never published my results from using other peoples data, so no harm was done)

[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

Thanks Rick, Richard, Dimithri. Good to know I'm not entirely alone.

Once again, I'm not wanting to change how people do things for good reason, whether commercial or having been bitten, or just deep preference. It is their data.

I would hope though that those of us who haven't even thought about it, but are thinking of putting their images online, will avoid sites where right-clicking produces a message like:

"CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE FOUND AN IMAGE TO DOWNLOAD! JUST SIGN HERE TO JOIN UP!"

when there are sites like SmugMug, AstroBin, or DropBox, etc, etc, where you can make a reasoned conscious decision about whether you really want to limit access.

It's my suspicion that even Flickr is configurable, because I don't always see that cheery message. Limiting downloads to other Flickr members for example seems no guarantee that your images will be used wisely.

I think it will be a very long time before the Internet is big enough and fast enough to routinely share raw data. Here at the farm we get 0.2 Mbps at this time of day. I'm currently only thinking about final images.

Very best,
Mike

[multiweb (Marc)]

Great post Mike. +1. I'd also love to have people post a basic flow on how the image was processed. That would be very cool. Jase used to do this a lot. That's how everybody learns.

[RickS (Rick)]

In reality, you can't prevent unfettered read access to images once they are on a site which makes them visible through a browser, Mike. You can only hope that the average viewer will be discouraged by superficial attempts to prevent downloads.

Cheers,
Rick.

[alocky (Andrew lockwood)]

Although I agree completely with the premise of reproducible research and am not trying to recover any of my costs by selling images, I do get annoyed when I see my images being used on websites, or more particularly in print without any attempt made to acknowledge me. Maybe I'm being precious and I'm aware that once you put something online there is no legal obligation to attribute it, but it is discourteous and still plagiarism however you look at it.
It's not much to ask, surely!
Cheers, Andrew.

[Atmos (Colin)]

I totally agree with the sentiment and have no issues personally with putting up full resolution images, warts and all

Watermarks largely don't work unless they are huge as they can easily be cropped out. Sites that prevent high res downloading do not present, as Mike mentioned, screen shooting and mosaic re-stitching.

For Astrobin I save as JPEG in 95% quality for easy of use, quarters the file size against 100% with no discernible quality drop. Would sometimes prefer the convent of uploading 16-bit TIFF files to stop JPEG compression image slaughter

[RickS (Rick)]

Originally Posted by Atmos

Would sometimes prefer the convent of uploading 16-bit TIFF files to stop JPEG compression image slaughter

There's always PNG format which has lossless compression. The only issue I've found is that PI doesn't seem to embed ICC profiles in PNG files.

Cheers,
Rick.

[rmuhlack (Richard)]

Originally Posted by RickS

There's always PNG format which has lossless compression.

+1

[Atmos (Colin)]

Originally Posted by RickS

There's always PNG format which has lossless compression. The only issue I've found is that PI doesn't seem to embed ICC profiles in PNG files.

Cheers,
Rick.

That's something to think about. I export a TIFF file from PI and then use other software for saving as JPEG.

[Peter Ward]

I literally signed off today on an image of mine that will be used in "Pathways to Astronomy" soon to be published by McGraw-Hill....I'd had a number of images before that which have been used in print elsewhere.

Sadly human nature is such that many can and do rip-off images (and intellectual property in general)...and lots of luck pursuing the Wong Foo King or Li Ying Cow publishing company (Taipei Inc,) for using your work.

Hence, my thoughts are if you think you may get lucky and obtain commercial interest in your work, don't make it easy for someone to steal it.

Once uploaded, there is no taking it back.

But, if you have absolutely have no concerns about your data being plagiarized or appearing without due credit, etc....welll...go right ahead.

[Atmos (Colin)]

After comparing our Keyhole images Peter, they can take mine if they so wish

[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

I literally signed off today on an image of mine that will be used in "Pathways to Astronomy" soon to be published by McGraw-Hill....I'd had a number of images before that which have been used in print elsewhere.

Sadly human nature is such that many can and do rip-off images (and intellectual property in general)...and lots of luck pursuing the Wong Foo King or Li Ying Cow publishing company (Taipei Inc,) for using your work.

Hence, my thoughts are if you think you may get lucky and obtain commercial interest in your work, don't make it easy for someone to steal it.

Once uploaded, there is no taking it back.

Peter, I could not agree more. You have genuine, well-thought-out, and important reasons for controlling where your images go.

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

But, if you have absolutely have no concerns about your data being plagiarized or appearing without due credit, etc....welll...go right ahead.

I've got something like 50 patents to my name, and have spent a lot of time engaged in the hard-nosed and lucrative defence of my intellectual property.

My hobby is slightly different. I would be seriously pissed off if someone I knew and trusted posted one of my images claiming it to be their own, in a forum that I'm likely to ever see.

In summary, no argument with you at all about IP being ripped off in situations that I care about. I feel differently in situations where it is in my interest to publish the data but can do me no harm.

[Peter Ward]

Originally Posted by Placidus

I've got something like 50 patents to my name....

Why am I not surprised

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

sharing around with people on a forum I think is fine if you trust them. as you say you still have the original subs.
if someone has spent mega hours on a project or captured a rare event I can understand why one may upload a reduced dimensioned jpg (but not something that is tiny!).
flickr compresses images a lot these days as far as I am aware.

funnily enough I have had one image go viral on the web with millions of views, my brother in law posted it to imgur and then it was gone.

it actually ended up having memes made from it. but it was kind of nice seeing that millions of people had seen it. I didn't think much of it at the time mostly because it wasn't a deep sky shot but a photo of Saturn being occulted by the moon taken at the eyepiece with my iPhone. I had way better dslr/scope shots from the same event. I sometimes get people emailing me saying its popped up on another website. i think i would be peeved if it were a deep sky image. but then again i wouldn't put it up on imgur unless it had my details!

[RobF (Rob)]

Definitely agree with the principle of making primary data available. I've rarely asked people for their raw data or master images, but in every case have learned a lot, particularly someone with a similar system imaging from same site (Marc )

It is a bit more work to make big images available, but hopefully most people on IIS would be prepared to share originals on request, and even if the answer is "no" you would be disappointed to get any attitude from most in the IIS community.


On a related note, multi-user integrated images can also be fascinating. Would be nice to see a few more joint efforts here. The quality of images is just so good in recent years but many of us are still limited to 1-3 nights of data collection.

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

Originally Posted by Placidus

...
I've got something like 50 patents to my name, ...

No you don't!! They're mine!!!

Originally Posted by Placidus

... I would be seriously pissed off if someone I knew and trusted posted one of my images claiming it to be their own, in a forum that I'm likely to ever see. ...

I doubt anyone we knew and trusted would steal data Mike. It's the low-life scum of the earth I don't know stealing my IP that galls me. I recently discovered a guy in Germany had stolen an image of mine and claimed it as his own after artificially recolouring it. He even hung it in a gallery!! The only reason I found out is that I use Digimarc to digitally watermark all my images and Digimarc trawls the web looking for watermarks. The guy had posted much reduced versions of "his" image on his web site but the watermark was still readable and it was reported to me. Needless to say Google translate got a workout! And before anyone pounces, no, there is no guarantee the Watermark will be discovered - it depends on the accessibility of the website.

I also restrict right click on both PBase and Flickr. This won't keep out the crooks because it can be circumvented, but I do it for the same reason that I put a padlock on my obs - to keep to dumb thieves out.

I any case, I agree with you that scaling down images for display is pointless unless there is no benefit for the viewer from full scale display. One of the reasons we post after all is to share the detailed story (warts and all) of our often spectacular images.

Finally, I've had many requests to use my images from around the world. As long as the mage is properly credited I have no qualms abou sharing.

Cheers, Marcus

[Paul Haese]

After my recent experience of being accused of doing the very same thing I think I have a unique perspective on this particular topic. The shock of being accused of plagiarism is horrid to a graduate of law. All the years of absorbing academic principles and professional conduct rules prevents me from even contemplating such a thing. Easily said but others from a similar back ground will understand my point. My childhood values being reinforced by such training and ethos. Not to mention my dislike for thieves in general. Being ex-army and anyone who is former military will know how theft is viewed in the military and what happens to thieves. All in all, it is not in my make up.

However, one must consider that if you put up an image for exposure on the internet that you run risk of that image being stolen by some little ferret. For years I have put up near full resolution images. I have never been worried about someone using my images for information or spreading the word of science. Its part of why I put up the images. I have assumed that several images have been stolen already and that those images in some way are educating someone without me knowing about it. Let's face it commercial use of astronomy images is pretty rare simply because of the HST data.

Finally if someone is using my images and calling them their own, it is they who are deluding themselves and no one else. I know I took the data and I know who owns the data.