That is just wrong. If that happened to me, I would be super pissed off. This makes my blood boil. I wonder if a third party app could pull off a screen capture. I mean hell, you paid for it! What gives?!

I guess NOTHING in this modern world is ever as it seems. Companies will screw with you left and right.

On a brighter note, with my daughter, service was handled correctly at Kiddie Kandids 9 times out of 10.

Thanks for the tip, but I remember trying that and I don’t think it worked. If I remember correctly, the application disables the print screen button.

One way to get around your problem that I have used lots of times for other applications:

- Open and view your picture in the “protected” application.

- Hit “PrtSc” (Print Screen). This should do a screen capture of your screen and put it in the clipboard.

- Open up Microsoft PhotoEditor or whatever photo editing software you have.

- Select “Paste” from the menu

- Crop out anything from your screen shot you don’t want

You should then be able to save a JPEG. Not perfect, but “good enough” to get your picture in a non-proprietary mode.

My wife and her mother found a photographer they liked for our wedding and engagement photos. They gave me a run down of everything that was included in the package – one of those items was a CD with the pictures on it.

I was happy with that! I thought I would be able to put them on my web site and since their digital I’ll never have to worry about them aging. I’ll have a perfect digital copy forever!

WRONG!

I received a CD with a really crappy photo-viewing application on it. I have to use this application to view the photos. I tried just opening the .jpg’s that were on the CD, but they are encrypted or something.

So in 20 years when modern computers won’t run this crappy Windows application – I won’t have “digital” versions of my wedding photos.

There is definitely a whole in the market!

I had a very similar experience not long ago. My thinking here is that it is only a matter of time.

A little while back, Money magazine published an article “The 10 most over-paid jobs” and weddding photographers were at the top of the list. Yes, the is some artistic aspects of there craft which allow for a premium to be paid, by in a studio, where the factors are fairly controlled, it is not hard to stand behind a camera and snap photos.

In addition, the margins (how much it truly costs to produce the photos versus what they charge) has changed. You can reproduce high-quality photos, store them and send them at a much lower cost than a decade ago, so charging the same rates just does not make sense.

As with many things, we will see a change in the photography business as more and more consumers become acquinated with the digital aspects of the industry.