Yes, all the features you see on shotfarm's Product Image Exchange today — upload, search, request, download, share, etc. — are, and will remain, 100% free. We’re committed to providing a single place for the entire industry to connect and believe that the only way to do this is to make it available to everyone for free.

For a retailer using manufacturer-supplied product images, their problem can be divided in two fairly equal parts:
Number One) gathering the images from their suppliers and then
Number Two) processing the images for use in ecommerce and print.

Shotfarm offers free and unlimited tools to solve problem Number One. Retailers can download any number of high resolution source files provided by their suppliers (who have no limit to the number of images they can upload).

But the solution to problem Number Two is a little different for everyone. In addition to our recently released Rich Media Hosting service, shotfarm will be releasing a suite of extremely inexpensive and easy-to-use tools through our Plugin Store that will allow batch functions such as custom download sizes, file types, color spaces, naming conventions, file destinations, background removal, and more.

Right now, however, our focus is on solving problem Number One by building the shotfarm community and continuing to make our free workflow tools even better.

Shotfarm's free exchange has a fairly uncomplicated objective: to provide a system for the temporary storage and transfer of finished art. The few limitations we have are in place to support that objective by helping to limit our costs to the intended use of the system. With that in mind, please read the following rules:

1) Temporary storage. If a file has no download activity within any 18-month period, shotfarm assumes that it is not needed by anyone and expunges it from the system. But that's okay because you're not going to use shotfarm to archive your valuable masters, remember? You can always upload these files again if you need to.

2) Finished art. We accept high resolution (CMYK or RGB) .JPG images. This keeps transfers and storage cheap and fast which benefits everyone. If you need to transfer a 600MB Photoshop master, standard FTP or DVD might still be the best option.

Absolutely not. Use it as much or as little as you like for as short or long as you like. Any time you want to cancel your account, just let us know by sending an email to help@shotfarm.com.

Our general guidelines are as follows:

You are a manufacturer if your company makes products and typically distributes product images to others (resellers).

You are a retailer if your company sells products that others manufacture and you typically require images from them.

Agencies can currently pre-register for accounts, but can't sign in to the Exchange just yet. We'll be adding this usergroup in the near future and as soon as it's available, we'll provide login details for those users. As a workaround, retailers and manufacturers can "add" a marketing company to their account by issuing them a company email address. Feel free to call us for details if interested in doing this at (312) 755-0555.

Currently, all users of shotfarm must have a working email address issued by a verifiable company that is properly associated with the retail or manufacturing industry. Here's how it works behind the scenes: When the first employee of any company requests an account with shotfarm, we manually verify the validity of the company and the email address entered at signup. As additional employees of that company sign up for an account, shotfarm automatically verifies those employees by matching their email addresses back to the original member's. If, for some reason, this system won't work for you, feel free to call or send us an email so that we can manually set you up.

That's good news for us because shotfarm picks up where DAMs leave off! Think of shotfarm as nothing more than an industry-centralized transfer system that simplifies the exchange of assets (and communication). Our goal is not to replace DAMs but to replace FTPs, CDs, DVDs, email attachments and multiple image library logins.

In shotfarm's case, "asset" generally refers to an image, video or product specifications sheet.

Retail users can see any assets that have been published by Manufacturers, but will only be able to download them if they've been given permission. Manufacturer users will only be able to see and download their own company's published and unpublished assets.

Product assets are uniquely identified by the Manufacturer upon upload using the following required fields: Manufacturer, Brand, Model Number and Product Name. They can also tag assets with other information such as Color, Part Number or UPC.

Shotfarm provides a one-to-one field search to make it the fastest process possible. You can search using any combination of the following information for a single product: Brand, Model Number, Product Name, UPC or Part Number. You'll receive results containing all of your supplied information, so you won't have to wade through a bunch of extra results.

Absolutely! When you share an asset with someone who isn't a member of shotfarm, they'll receive an email with a link to that asset (or group of assets) that allows them to access only what you want.

When they click the link, they're presented with a gallery of images in their browser. They can either download all of the images you've prepared for them in a single zip file or they can select and download individual images.

For non-members, lightboxes are valid for three days (72 hours). If the recipient signs up for an account within that period, the lightbox won't expire and will always be available to them in their account.

To help control costs and transfer speeds, shotfarm supports .jpg files only. Keep in mind that the compression of a high resolution .jpg image using low compression and the original image file is indiscernable to the naked eye but can be a fraction of its original file size.

For product specifications, shotfarm accepts .doc (Word Document), .xls (Excel), .pdf (Portable Document Format), .rtf (Rich Text Format) and .txt (ASCII) files.

Within the shotfarm system, important metadata standards such as EXIF, XMP and IPTC offer little benefit. Here's why:

Retail members of shotfarm only need the basic ability to find and verify product images. By making six common fields of product information available to all manufacturers: Manufacturer Name, Brand Name, Manufacturer's Part Number, Model Number, Product Name and UPC, we believe that retailers will be able to find what they're looking for (if it's on the system, of course). If we learn from our users that shotfarm needs more robust metadata support, we'll build it to order.

This might be a good time to share a company philosophy: Underbuild over overbuild, always. This simply means that we don't want to spend money developing stuff that nobody wants just because we think it's cool.

There are currently three access levels within the system that apply to assets uploaded by manufacturers:
1) Upon upload, a manufacturer company's assets can be accessed by any employees of that company who are also shotfarm members.
2) Upon publishing (optional), a manufacturer company's assets will become 'public' which simply means that they become visible to any verified retailer who is also a member of shotfarm.
3) Upon granting library access (optional), a manufacturer company's public assets will become downloadable by selected Retailers who are verified and also members of shotfarm.
Lastly, to protect your privacy, manufacturers are prevented from seeing each others' assets. In cases where it's necessary to give visibility to another manufacturer, you can share assets by creating and sending a LightBox.

Absolutely! Shotfarm permissions exist on a Company-to-Company basis. When a retailer finds a published image they'd like to download, they request permission from their contact at the manufacturer through the system. Once permission to use the image is granted to the retailer, you establish ongoing permissions between your two companies. Verified employees of that retailer will then have access to your company's public assets. This permission can be rescinded at any time, reverting a retailer back to its original status.

The same level of access to your company's assets is shared by any co-worker who is a shotfarm members. Everyone in your company is able to upload, edit, share and delete assets that are owned by your company. We believe in the intelligence of our members and their ability to share the management of their company accounts (remember, you're not storing your Photoshop masters here!).

The shotfarm system does offer the ability to forward permission and asset requests but you'll need to determine your own workflow when using those tools (i.e. determine a single person to whom all requests should be forwarded).

If not having an administrator makes you queasy, please remember these three things:
1) Shotfarm is NOT the place to store your company's master files! It's a place to put finished, high-resolution jpgs to distribute to your retail partners. If these were accidentally deleted from the system, you'd simply upload them again.
2) Shotfarm keeps a running log of who uploaded, downloaded, edited, shared, or deleted assets to help you manage use of the system.
3) If an admin level turns out to be something a lot of companies need, we'll build it.

Not at all. Think of shotfarm as a CD of images that you sent by mail to a retail partner. It's just a transfer device. Inherent in the transfer of images, however, is the transfer of any and all associated usage restrictions. It is entirely incumbent upon the suppliers and their recipients of those images to be aware of, enforce or abide by, any such restrictions that might exist. Please read the Terms of Use if you have further questions.

In theory, yes. However, in order to protect manufacturers' assets from unauthorized use, shotfarm has built a simple permissions structure that works on a Company-to-Company basis. As a retailer, you only need to establish permission once with a particular manufacturer. This is easily accomplished by clicking on an asset you'd like to download and then using shotfarm's 'request access to library' feature to contact the manufacturer. Once granted, you and all of your co-workers will have ongoing access to that manufacturer's library.

Thanks for your question.. Full video support is done and is scheduled for testing. We'll be supporting all major codecs and formats (including .wmv, of course!). We're hoping to roll this out by the end of the year but will make an official release date when we see how testing goes.

On a side note, we currently have full support for spinning images (one of the best implementations I've ever seen if I may say so). Please feel free to email me at mikel at shotfarm dot com if you want to know more about this.

Any manufacturer member is able to upload assets and those assets are stored in a shared company library. In short, this means that everyone in your company will be able to see and use the assets you've uploaded. Manufacturer members can choose to publish their assets, which makes them visible to the retail community, but manufacturer members can never see the assets of another manufacturer.