Scientists at the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) in Los Angeles have developed a new scientifically based method for authenticating historic photographs. Previously, the accepted method had been based on visual and microscopic inspection of images.

GCI's Dusan Stulik and Art Kaplan, along with photographic conservator Tram Vo, were able to identify hidden chemical signatures associated with the more than 150 different chemical processes that have been used to develop prints since photography began. Using spectrometric analyses, they found that photographic paper contains a unique combination of elements, most notably,  barium and strontium, that can determine who made the paper and when...

A settlement has been reached in the lawsuit brought by photographer Bert Stern against two men he accused of stealing images from his 1962 photo shoot with Marilyn Monroe.

The men, Donald Penny and Michael Weiss, who are also photographers, said they found images in the trash in the 1970s. Stern sued the men last September for $1 million and damages and demanded the return of the seven transparencies...

Stock photographers Roger Ressmeyer and Richard Minden are leading a $100 million class-action lawsuit against Getty Images over its Premium Access subscription plan. The Premium Access service is an unadvertised product that Getty offers its high-volume costumers.

Joining Ressmeyer and Minden are 84 other photographers, who claim that Getty has violated copyrights and contracts by including rights-managed images in the Premium Access product...

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has received gifts of nearly 500 pieces to its Department of Photographs since last year. The contributions came from more than 25 individual donors, including collectors, artists' estates and members of the Getty's Photographs Council.

The gifts included two photographs by Liu Zheng from his recent Peking Opera series, the first contemporary Chinese works to enter the Getty Museum's collection. The Getty has also augmented its already strong holdings of prints from Mexican photographers by adding works by Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Graciela Iturbide...

After filing for bankruptcy, Jacksonville, Fla.-based SuperStock has agreed to be bought out by a group of three other stock agencies. Blend, RubberBall and Glow Images outbid Masterfile at $2.8 million for the assets of SuperStock. Masterfile originally planned to spend $1.5 million for SuperStock.

The new joint venture, called RGB, aims to keep SuperStock in business. The companies, however, will remain separate. Blend's Lanny Ziering has been named CEO of SuperStock, which owns a collection of 110,000 images...

Time Inc. CEO Ann S.Moore announced another restructuring of the company's editorial divisions late last year. The reorganization, which was still ongoing at press time, is expected to result in about 600 layoffs, or roughly 6 percent of the media firm's workforce.

Moore aims to centralize the management by dividing its 24 magazines and their web properties into three units: news, entertainment and lifestyle. She says she hopes that this will lead to cross-collaboration between reporters and editors at various magazines. This is the third reorg under Moore since her appointment as CEO in 2002...

Google and Time Inc. have teamed up to bring more than 10 million images from Life magazine to users around the world. The free image portal contains collections from Life's Photo Archive, including some of the most iconic works of the 20th century by photojournalists such as Margaret Bourke-White, Gordon Parks and W. Eugene Smith.

Already, millions of Life images are available for viewing via Google Image Search. Once the online project is complete in the next few months, the archive will be among the largest professional photography collections on the web and one of the largest photo-scanning projects ever undertaken...

Getty Images and Jupiterimages are set to merge their services as part of a $96 million deal. At press time, the merger was scheduled to occur in early 2009.

As early as March 2007, Getty showed interest in acquiring Jupiterimages. A tentative deal valued at $388 million never materialized. Jupitermedia, the parent company of Jupiterimages, also received interest from four other buyers in 2008...