(Raw) picture library for software testing

Software
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When testing bug fixes or mocking up things for feature requests, I often struggle with finding suitable pictures. I don’t want to mess with my own photo library because of several reasons (not to break it, I only shoot some genres but other images are required for testing, there are personal images not to be shown on the internet, etc.). Therefore, I wonder how you devs, testing users, etc. are dealing with this issue:

  • Is there somewhere a big, freely licensed, zip file with 100 test raws for download somewhere on the internet?
  • Are you maintaining your own collection including care for licenses to not get into trouble?
  • Are you using just your own images? Duplicated to a second testing library or directly?

Or is there another possibility I did not think of?

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I think @s7habo uses something like this in some of his videos… not sure about the finer details atm

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That would be Signature Edits:

1 Like
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There’s also the MIT 5K dataset, not sure about the license terms though:

https://data.csail.mit.edu/graphics/fivek/

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And perhaps https://raw.pixls.us/ ?

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True, but RPU is more about format/model coverage than content coverage…

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Thanks for the suggestions so far, great input! Some thoughts …

I have to research this one, he has a lot of videos, and I saw many of them and do not remember this as a topic, so I probably need to watch the rest :smiley:.

Yes, this is very close, the license seems to suit my use case (sharing screenshots showing one or several of the pictures to demonstrate software bugs and/or feature mockups). The only drawback so far: Each image has to be downloaded separately, and the license forbids to distribute packages. A big benefit: There are a lot of people and wedding pictures included, which I would entirely not cover with my personal library, as it’s either people on them that do not consent in sharing them on the web or pictures of my family which I don’t want to share. Further benefit is that it seems that no license terms have to be distributed for derivative works (e.g. software screenshots), but IANAL and this is only my guess.

This looks good as it can be downloaded in one step. The license would probably be OK, I think software work would probably classify as research, but I am not sure if the license has to be distributed with derivative works.

Yes, good idea as it’s CC0, but as @kmilos said, which means many of the images do not cover some real subject (e.g. the ones that I contributed only show a colorchecker).

I also thought if a collection from the PlayRaw category would help in that regard, but different licenses per contribution and the need to distribute a license with derivative works makes using them difficult. Also, those tagged non-commercial may not be used at all, as nobody knows when github starts to run ads and suddenly even derivative work of these images becomes illegal.

So, additional ideas are still welcome. And, it would be great to get some ideas how other people are dealing with this topic.

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I just checked, but @Donatzsky beat me to it :grinning: Boris does use Signature edits…