I posted that in another topic, let's put it here too.

First one fact : the lucky people who will be accepted could buy the panobook at printing cost. In French law, standard uses is that the author gets free version of the book. This kind of uses is usually done when there is only some authors from 1 to 5 for example. Each author of the book then gets some free version and the number depends on the editor.
There is one exception to this rule : when there is a lot of authors like for a dictionary. The law tells that the author should have an advantage, but not necessarily a full free version. Our way to do sell it at printing cost.

This also raised the question of "Why the panobook ?"

Our goal is double :

to promote your photographer talent

Last year, the first panobook didn't really reflect this part. It will change this year :
* We use a jury. So the quality should raise automatically.
* 150 images over 200 pages. Last year, it was 365 over the same number of page. So every image will have enough space to express itself.
* Layout will change : commentary are located with the image to allow 2 lectures of the photo : first the photo, then the details with the support of the text
of the commentary
* We'll ask for the number of image for the panorama : it will be put near the photo too. This will also change the look people will have on panoramas : "What ? 12 images in this panorama ?!?!? "
* Last but not least. At the end of the book, 1 or 2 pages with all photographers names and website ( if the author agrees to print it, of course ). Because last year, we were asked many time, how to get these images. "He, your album book is great, where can I get this poster ?". With these information, you could be contacted directly to sell your panorama.
Reminder : photos rights are only given for the panobook and promotion of the panobook.

to promote panorama and panorama technics to the mass

For the moment, it's only a few photo geek that used panorama technics that but not casual photographer.
By showing what can be done with such technics is the best promotion we could do for the panorama market.
So it should promote us too ( and hopefully our sales ) but not only us : every actor in this market will get
some benefit of it. Yes, perhaps a PtGui or Stitcher future user could be a guy that somewhere read the
panobook. And yes, this panorama contest will probably open to user of other panorama software also. Not this
year, but perhaps next year. 
Let's make this crystal clear : if this project was only to make the second point, we would have stop it.
It's too expensive and takes a lot of time to manage just for promotion. With half the price and half the time,
any ad will do better. It's first for the community, for you.

Future direction :

Our final dream would to be able to build something like the "wildlife photographer of the year" : http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/ … ions/wpy/.
Most of you surely knows this contest. It's famous. We definitively don't fight in the same league, I totally agree, but if we only achieve to create a book that everyone will enjoy to get each year, and if it really shows what we can do with panorama, then it's a success for everyone.

Yes Gordon, we had this idea too. Beginning of June, it is what we wanted to do, but we found 2 issues :

- the vote is not simple to make accurate : imagine we have a 5 stars system with a number of vote.
what is the best panorama : one panorama with 1 vote rated 5 stars, or one with 50 votes with an average rating of 4.5 ? Not simple to find a good public voting rule.

- we won't sure to be able to get the time to build such system ( not so easy to code in fact )

We already have spend a lot of time thinking of every possibility, really. Really do not imagine we did remove the "one contributor one photo" rule without having though of other options.

AlexandreJ wrote:

Edge@51 wrote:

That's the problem, it become a contest, and it is no more an "amateur" book.

True. If there were any real alternative solution As I said, we might get really a lot of images and contributor.
We really cannot put everybody in the book. But if you have an idea about that, I'm really interested. I told you one idea we had, but it's just not good.

It's impossible to make everyone happy and you're right, it's difficult to find a good solution. That's the problem when you have a really good idea: the success can kill you
I wish you the best for this new book

L'upload nécessite juste du javascript. Nous n'avons rencontré de problème nous-même pour l'instant.
Peux-tu tester avec différents navigateurs ? Autre idée : as-tu des ports bloqués ou un firewall un peu trop strict ?

oui.. javascript etc... c'est tout bon....
ok pour l'uploader qui reste figé mais qui upload quand même....

en revanche je crois savoir d'ou vient le probleme, je crois que la session ne dure pas assez longtemps...
y'aurai moyen de l'augmenter ? (le temps de session ?)

J'upload de tahiti via un vieux satellite.... et c'est pas la fete de l'internet par ici.....



EDIT : Bon, j'ai tout testé, chrome, FF3, FF3.5, IE7... impossible.... rien ne passe....
pour la session qui expirait, j'ai ouvert un nouvel onglet avec une autre page que je rafraichissait toute les 10 mn sur panobook.org...idem....

Last edited by zenalien (2009-07-08 00:50:38)

Merci Alex !

This country sorting is not used by judges to make the choice.
In fact the layout of the next panobook is a bit different : we'll regroup not by country but by continent. It will let a fairly larger freedom to the layout designer to build the book because an image of Belgium can be near one from Hungary ( both are in Europe ). So the layout should be better and the judges just have to cope with the quality / aesthetic's / meaning of the panorama, nothing else.

I have beaucoup of them !

Tonio wrote:

je suis d'accord sur le fait de limiter le nombre de photos. Déjà 365 c'est ENORME pour un bouquin photo ... on se lasse vite.

J'ai quelques autres livres de photos caractérisés par le grand nombre et la variété des images : quand je les regarde à nouveau je ne m'ennuie pas. J'apprécie les livres avec beaucoup de photos...

Par contre - même si j'en comprend la raison - je n'ai pas aimé les vignettes forcément plus petites qui montraient des détails de certains panoramas. Tous les panoramas ne sont pas adaptés à la publication dans un livre. Il faut donc choisir ceux auxquels ce type de diffusion convient bien, quite à diffuser autrement (sur Internet ? dans une expo ?) ceux qui y seront mieux mis en valeur...

Tonio wrote:

le but d'un bouquin grand public : c'est vendre le maximum de bouquin. Sinon ça sert à rien d'en sortir un ...  et pour vendre, il faut un bouquin avec de super belles photos.

- Livres d'éditeur: le but est de faire tourner l'entreprise d'où le choix de valeurs sures et parfois le pari sur un auteur qui semble succeptible de devenir célèbre.
- Livres d'auteurs: soit l'auteur vise un marché qu'il connait ou suppute et compte en vivre (voir l'exemple de Denis Tremblay au Quebec) soit il ambitionne de se faire connaître sans perdre trop de plumes dans l'opération...
- Catalogues d'expos: valoriser l'exposition et souvent les sponsors, exceptionnellement gagner de l'argent.

Le but du panobook en librairie peut être de convaincre un maximum de gens de s'intéresser à la photo panoramique (...donc à Autopano.) En vendre un maximum pourrait être secondaire si on arrivait à ce qu'on en parle dans la presse, à donner au libraires l'envie de le mettre en évidence et à fournir à ceux qui fréquentent les librairies l'occasion de le feuilleter:
- en choisissant une couverture et un titre ad hoc ?
- en attribuant au libraire une marge importante ?
- en le faisant prendre en charge par un réseau de diffusion ? (La diffusion consiste à susciter la commande des librairies et d'autres points de vente par l'intermédiaire d'un réseau de représentants.)
- en plaçant des mini-pubs dans les revues photos ?
... et bien sur en choisissant des photos qui conviennent pour cet objectif.

AlexandreJ wrote:

Yes, definitively. A panorama means here a stitched photo. The proportion can be from 1:1 to 6:1 at most. Over that ratio, we don't accept that.

Alexandre,
Sometime before, you said that you like vertical panorama. Now, if I want to show a vertical pano 1:2, you no more accept to see my pano ?

Last edited by marco-pano (2009-08-03 00:01:14)

rami wrote:

... We know it can be a difficult task because many of you have lots of nice panos, but just imagine the work the jury would have without this auto-pre-selection...

Hi Rami,
I understand that it would be a tough job to sort 5 000 panos. It may has help me to know what criterions and what weight are behind 'the judges just have to cope with the quality / aesthetic's / meaning of the panorama' said by Alexandre.
So 'Qui vivra verra'

Hi Guys,

I don't know how many users you have and how many different people would submit, and their geo-location.

However, if you did limit it to one person, one image, would you not get a finial result with greater diversity. One could still submit, 2-3 images, but only one could be chosen.

a note on layout, only because I have as of late been making books with other photographers. If you had a really stunning 1:6 ratio image, or at least an image that would not even fit across two pages, without looking like a small line :-), how about flip-out pages, so you are looking across 4 pages. This would obviously, require heavier stock and maybe custom binding.

It is something to explorer, such image or images, could be the result of your giga-pano-wall or Users choice award image.

I am obviously need to get my act together cos last year i didn't get it done in time, so I better check the final delivery date and see if I can get out there before hand :-)

Thanks for providing such a great playground here  ;-)

Henrik

" how about flip-out pages, so you are looking across 4 pages"
Thats how last year's panobook was, some were on flip-out pages.

"resolution?  say 300dpi"
Thats not an image resolution, I suppose a guideline value in megapixels would be best since it would bypass any confusion when people will submit all sorts of different ratios.