News
DeepMeta 4 & creativ.zone
This blog post provides some background on the exciting release of DeepMeta 4 and how it relates to our brand new creativ.zone project
For a more to-the-point summary of what DeepMeta 4 is all about, please refer to the announcement post. If you have some time and would like a more personal take on the latest developments, this is the right post for you...
I'm Franky De Meyer, author of DeepMeta.
Version 1
I built DeepMeta v1 in 2007 for iStock contributors as a Windows program to make uploading stock images, illustrations, and video a more pleasant experience.
Uploading directly to the stock website means you first need to wait for the upload to finish before you can start entering metadata and keywords. This results in a somewhat jarring experience; with always the chance you might suddenly get logged out and lose your work.
DeepMeta took a different approach, being an app installed on your computer, allowing you to prepare all your work locally in advance, safely, and at your own pace. Once finished, you would press the upload button and "go on vacation". I loved using the following image to illustrate the concept:
Three years later I joined iStock and later Getty Images as a contractor, allowing the software to be further developed and supported for free to all contributors, exclusively for Getty Images.
In the many years that followed, DeepMeta has grown in popularity and functionality.
2023 - The Bad
The year we all woke up to a new uninvited visitor, called AI.
Sure, it existed long before that. The book "How to create a mind" by Ray Kurzweil (2012) gives a fascinating deep dive into the magical world of AI, a good read if you're technically inclined.
Let's just say that the quantum leap in AI capabilities has left not only us, but even its creators perplexed.
Being an enthusiastic photographer myself, I kept staring in awe at the magical imagery spit out by MidJourney & co. It was clear things would never be the same. Sure, "too many fingers" and "uncanny vibes", we all smirked, but as is the case with exponential tech, it's just a matter of months or years before all these teething issues will be a thing of the past.
It all seemingly came out of nowhere.
I'll be honest and admit I was beginning to question not only my photography, but also stock photography as a whole, and DeepMeta's part in all that.
_I let AI show me what it has in mind for our future ..._
With machines spitting out images at an ever-increasing rate, surely our "real" photographs would drown in this sea of "generative photographs". It can't be stopped now, so we're screwed, I thought. The era of post-truth had arrived, and we wouldn't be able to tell "real" work from AI. Possibly only AI could tell the difference, but why would we trust them?
As time moved on, I became more optimistic. Think about it, as the internet will fill up with generated stuff, it will all be fed back to AI crawlers for "learning purposes", inevitably leading to a kind of inbreeding, with possibly less and less realistic results. Garbage in - garbage out
2023 - The Good
While doom scrolling Instagram, seeing work pass by from unknown sources, I now often wonder: AI or not? When I find out it's AI, the value of the image instantly goes away for me and I continue my scroll.
However, with the work from the artists I follow, things are different. I know them and know their capabilities. Even a less accomplished shot from a photographer I know and follow, has infinitely more value to me and deserves my like. No pain, no gain. If a machine did it, it just isn't the same, even if it's an amazing accomplishment of human technological capabilities.
In short ... I believe the value is in the "creative network". For us humans, it will be our way out of this AI mess we created. Build and manage your network of creatives, learn their skills and weaknesses, support and foster them. Share your work with your network, it will expand, and your reach will grow.
Over the summer of 2023, I stumbled upon the book, "Show Your Work" by Austin Kleon. It offers a refreshing look at how we as artists can promote our work and grow our network.
In short: don't bury yourself in your studio, only to come out once you've completely finished your masterwork. Instead, share the process of creating, a little bit every day or week. Keep your network in the loop, so they know what you're up to. Some of the members of your network are potential clients. They may be stock customers from your area, interested in what you're up to.
Planning a photo trip to an Abbey in Marseille or Lyon? Write a quick blog post about it. A fellow photographer might have some tips on this location, and a potential buyer might bookmark you. Creating a new illustration, share your progress, your tools, and your plans. An audience may start to form, a real one, of humans.
Social media are great for sharing. We all hate them and use them. The problem is that their content is so ephemeral, one incessant stream of seemingly random thoughts and images, being "fed" in a "feed" to others. And most of all: we have no control over any of this. A kink in the algorithm might result in your account being suspended (I know this first hand, sigh..), and away are all those carefully built contacts and associated messages.
The smart thing is to take control. This is possible right now. Use Squarespace to build your website, LinkTree to share all your social links with others, use Medium or Substack for blogging, maintain your mailing list on Mailchimp, and sell image prints with Shopify,...
But then again, before you know it, you'll drown in disparate subscriptions, monthly grabbing a big chunk out of your budget.
This is why I created creativ.zone
Enter creativ.zone
It's a platform for creatives. Like you and me.
Just like DeepMeta at the time, I created it mostly for myself. Call me selfish, but I needed it and wanted to make my life better.
But just as with DeepMeta, I think it's too good not to share, so here we are. I know it's a long story, and if you made it up to here ... thanks!
creativ.zone is a free platform where you can create your Bio, Website, Image gallery, and F.A.Q. section. These are just the features already implemented, but I'm really only just getting started ... ;)
Note that "free" is for regular usage. Heavy usage will require a subscription fee. This is how I'll keep the platform ad-free. And of course, all DeepMeta functionality on the platform remains 100% free.
Functionality is currently a bit barebones, for sure. But it's all integrated. The idea is that you can do most things you need for your creative networking on this single platform.
The unique aspect of the project is that you get your own website, but it can also be social if you want it to. If you like, you can allow visitors to subscribe, like, and comment on anything you create: blog posts, image uploads, status updates, you name it. If you don't, that's fine too: let it just be a website then.
The choice is yours
... and so is your data.
creativ.zone does not sell or abuse your data, there are no ads. If you maintain a mailing list to keep in touch with your network, the list is yours. All your data on the platform is yours to take along with you, if you ever decide to do so, or want to use it for other purposes.
The platform is in its infancy for now, but I'm planning on following Justin Kleon's advice and "showing my work". The platform will grow in the open, and I'll share my plans and milestones with anyone interested. This long blog post is a first step in this process.
Now enter DeepMeta 4
To be honest, 2023 hasn't been the best year for DeepMeta. I had to strip out some functionality due to the move to a new login procedure for the Getty Images API. All for good reasons, for sure, but painful nonetheless.
Also, maintaining 2 separate codebases for the Windows and Mac versions makes every change in UI a challenge. Recently, Microsoft came with the news it would stop supporting the tools I'm using to create the MacOS version of DeepMeta 3 by the end of 2024, so a choice for new tooling was needed. Note that the Windows version of DeepMeta 3 is not affected and will remain available for the foreseeable future.
That's when it all came together...
Building creativ.zone has been such an amazing experience for me, with modern web tools, writing code just once, and having it run on Windows and Mac, exactly the same way. It's a developer's dream, I can tell you.
The rest of the story is just the pieces of the puzzle falling into place.
The DeepMeta 4 Windows and Mac apps will use web technology, auto-update, and are easy to maintain and enhance. Even a Linux version is very likely now.
Making DeepMeta a first-class partner on the creativ.zone platform is something I firmly believe to open new possibilities for us all, stockers united.
It will allow us to easily promote our stock work on "our" website (called a "zone" on the platform). If we want, we can have our latest accepted uploads automatically shown on our site, without any intervention from our own. We can allow others to like and comment on our stock work (again, optionally of course).
Getty Images is to gain from this as well. Many highly personal websites, sharing all kinds of background info, with galleries showcasing our latest work, and blog posts showing how we did it, leading the visitor to the right page on istock.com or gettyimages.com to be licensed.
Let's beat the AI bots and create a network of creatives ... a network of humans!