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I was taking some time to rate a few pictures and I ran into some amazing stuff. A while later I started thinking of having the top rated images compiled (by DakkaDakka w/ community support) formed into a soft-cover coffee-table book. With consent from the image owners, summaries, and possibly quotes from related forums could be included for each image. I know there have to be thousands of fantastic images on DakkaDakka and I wouldn't mind getting a compilation to keep my inspiration glands pumping.

What do people think of this. More importantly has it been suggested or done before?

I think the main issue is getting a lot of copyright issues hammered out with GW, since most of the pictures make use of copyrighted GW IP.

The copyright issues are less than you might think.

GW owns copyright in the sculptures, not in images shot of them, as long as the images were shot by someone else.

I have a picture of the Space Pope, lifted from the GW website and used to illustrate an argument about Space Pope. The picture is GW's copyright, used by me under the provisions of fair use.

If I take a picture of my own Space Pope model, the picture is mine.

Questions:

1. What happens to the money made from these prints?

2. Do the original owners of the pictures see any of that?

Sounds like it could be a really nice book. But…

The problem is that most of the pictures (if not all) will have to be 4 times smaller in the book since they're uploaded in 72dpi (you almost always print pictures in 300dpi. Unless it's not a photo-book / coffee-table book).

And it seems that the script compresses them – or converts to JPG – a little more. Which in turn will give you quite crappy images to print.

Let's say you get the images sorted… like original files from the uploaders, you then have to layout the entire thing. It's not just slapping them in and hoping it looks good (it never does). Pictures will still be in different sizes which mean you have to set up a proper grid for the book.

Will there be any text? If so, make sure you get the typography right. It really sucks when you buy a really nice photo-book to get it ruined by some amateur setting the text. (It's happened way too many times)

Printing is the easy part though. Lulu.com produces excellent results considering that you don't pay as much as regular printing.

If you still consider to go through with this project, just PM me and I can provide some help and advice. (I've been working with this kind of stuff since ~96)

One solution to the dpi problem is getting the owners to take another picture and sending that image in to be used for the book. Obviously not everyone is shooting with high reso cameras but it could still be passable for a coffee table book.

Kilkrazy wrote:The copyright issues are less than you might think.

GW owns copyright in the sculptures, not in images shot of them, as long as the images were shot by someone else.

I have a picture of the Space Pope, lifted from the GW website and used to illustrate an argument about Space Pope. The picture is GW's copyright, used by me under the provisions of fair use.

If I take a picture of my own Space Pope model, the picture is mine.

True, but if you're trying to market something using images of GW IP, I would imagine they would raise a fuss (I'm under the assumption that this book project would be marketed in some way that would not necessarily fall under provisions of fair use laws). I mean. considering past precedence with online stores and that Damnatus fan-movie, I wouldn't put it past GW (granted, I know there were other issues involved in those two cases, but it all centered around the use - to a certain extent - of their IP).

But, this is all contingent on this coffee-table book being sold. Also, lots of speculation on my part. Personally, I'd love to see something like this made.

Hey this sparked fast cool. ........

Lots of stuff to say. First off (and this may solve a few problems at once) the profits would mainly go to DakkaDakka as a donation, each contributor could get a copy for free (or a 5-10$ donation). I am quite sure a donation can be totally legal, I also can't imagine mass profits from a project like this. If that did happen, well plans would have to be made in advance with GW (this would be the hard part). The photo quality issues are quite solvable and I don't think that would end up being much of a problem. I'll be updating this post after I take a second read, I am not a big fan of the mini thread screen.

Pixelpusher you seem to really know what you are talking about. I don't personally have experience in this specific type of design (I do Landscape/ Graphic design) but I do believe it is well within the means of the DakkaDakka community and staff collectively to accomplish something along these lines. I have access to Gimp and can do some rough layouts in a matter of minutes. In terms of the text I totally agree that it can make a huge difference in presentation. The concept I had was a simple and sturdy overall format with the essence of the gothic 40k universe used in the font as well as borders. Making a copy for around 20$ is feasible if I am not mistaken, I have seen wedding albums that were very nice at an even nicer price

Wrexasaur. I sure think that the community would be able to pull something like this off. I just wanted to be sure that everyone* knew that something as simple as a photo-book still is a huge undertaking, with a lot of small components that has to be planned for and then produced.

And as said earlier, if there's anything I can help with, let me know.

Would this be something that, if it was a success would be redone every couple years or so?

I would be fine with most of the money just going to the website to pay for making them and to help keep the site up and running, you know should I ever get pics up and they go in I would be fine with that set up for the money.

If there was text who would write it and would there be editing done to make sure the text was actually good?

The best way to publish this kind of book would be on Lulu. That way, you only pay the printing costs for the copies printed. I don't know whether Lulu supports the high resolution CMYK printing which would be required for a decent photobook.

I am sure there are people on Dakka with the skills are software to put together a book. I'm not saying it's simple (I used to be a magazine publisher.)

Kilkrazy wrote:The best way to publish this kind of book would be on Lulu. That way, you only pay the printing costs for the copies printed. I don't know whether Lulu supports the high resolution CMYK printing which would be required for a decent photobook.

Lulu has this book called "Dear Lulu, please print this for me". Made at a workshop a couple of years ago, with a designer I can't remember the name of.
Anyhow, its pretty good to get a feel of how your pictures are going to turn out. Nowhere near what would be called "fine art printing quality" here in Sweden, but still pretty acceptable considering what you pay for it.
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/dear-lulu/2709735

Some noticeable lack in color in some of the extreme blues and reds, apart from that nothing really to copmplain about (they bind it and all for ouy (something you usually pay extra for). Since printing somewhere else is going to cost a tleast the double and you might end up sittiing with 800 copies that nevver would've gotten sold.

Took a look at the sample pictures and they look pretty damn good for under 30$. Not a bad deal at all. It is around 5x8 or so, not exactly a coffee-table book, but it looks good nonetheless.

The main part of figuring this out would be coming up with a committee of some kind. Those of you with more experience would know have a better idea how to start this. I would assume we would need a few designers, editors, and access to professional design software. We could also figure a simple way to choose images; i.e. top 1000 picked through and re-voted on through the main screen.

Say the top 10 get full page pictures, a paragraph or so to explain their intent or display funny comments from related forums, etc.... This would be have to be appropriate for such a publishing of course.

The other 90+ pictures could be arranged either through factions, chronology, theme, etc... These pictures could include related text from the forums or responses to the pictures in voting. I will talk to pixelpusher a bit about how we can get this going.

The pages don't need to be too big as individual figures are only about 35-40mm high.

I came across some terrain pictures that could take as many 2 full pages at 5x8 size. This actually brings up a question for me; would it make sense to do just models as voting on different types of painting might get confusing.

In terms of the voting system now, the way I think of it is something like this for both painting and coolness (Mainly painting for this book).

0- N/A
1- Well there seems to be paint on this model... -or- Wow why is this posted?
2- This one has 2 types of paint
3- Pretty close to table top standard (lacking detail on eyes/ teeth, lack of brush control... hey that is me... )
4- Tabletop standard (Ts)
5- High grade Ts (nice use of drybrush, washes, etc...)
6- For individual models this tend to mean nice detail, on the other hand for full armies it usually means A.) Nice color scheme B.) Uniformity and synergy from all the models C.) A few personalized touches.
7- This is any lower grade professional work. Nothing fancy but still expresses the experience of a painter.
8- Now were talking, I can't paint like this even if I tried. A combination of either experience and detail, or pure genius.
9- Experienced detail and pure genius
10- Words cannot describe how cool this is. Funny noises are usually the best way to show your gratitude; and humble prostration in the might and glory of this modern day Da Vinci piece.

More or less.
In essence we will be picking from 7's 8's and 9's. There are A LOT of hidden gems, unfortunately with what must be Terabytes of pictures these diamonds in the ruff seem to be unknown.

In terms of how many copies should be printed as well as any ideas about making this an annual edition of some kind; I think these questions need to be addressed later in the project. Prices are important but we will only "really" need one test print that we know of right now. And that could be 6 months off for all we know.

"Note"
Professional in my book means dedicated and focused. It does not HAVE to mean years of experience, but it definitely helps to have that under your belt.

Is anyone besides pixelpusher still interested in this project?