CDN launches Studio Photos

Car Design News is today launching 'Studio Photos', an extensive new library of high quality car photos taken in a photography studio. Developed in conjunction with automotive design research consultancy Car Men, it is a unique CDN member service created specifically as a visual benchmarking tool for design studios and consultancies who require directly comparable photos of production cars.

Most designers or researchers will be familiar with the task of quickly finding good images of specific cars, details of some new model's tail lamp, or the side view of a particular class-leading competitor. Being able to compare vehicles or details by viewing the same image type for several different cars is a really useful feature of this new library, as is being able to demonstrate what is feasible to engineers, check in-house proposals are not derivative, or show how advanced a design theme is relative to the same type of cars on the market.

Essentially, Studio Photos is a large library of car photographs taken in the same studio on the same camera, from the same angles of exclusively silver cars, to be  always directly comparable. Presented with a seamless white background (so that the images are literally only of the cars), the photos are considered from a designer's perspective too, rather than the exaggerated views often seen in press packs or magazines. All of the major new European market production cars are photographed at a rate of two per month - the 2007 Mini is the latest addition. Photos can be purchased online and are then downloaded immediately at an introductory price of 50 Euros per photo. After purchase, the files are delivered to your Inbox in Studio Photos and each set can be downloaded as a Zip file.

There are currently 61 cars with 8 photos comprising 5 exterior and 3 interior shots at a size of 2048x1536 pixels (0.5-1MB file size). These images can be printed in high quality up to around 500mm wide, used as part of a full-size projection presentation, or zoomed in to present detail design elements.

You'll find Studio Photos on the CDN home page under a new tab in the navigation bar entitled 'Photos'. This links to three photo databases:

To see the new service, go to Studio Photos

View an example car photo set and download a sample high-resolution photo

You will need to be logged in as either an individual paid member or under a Group ID to view car sets and purchase photos ready to download.

Learn more about Car Design News membership

CDN Studio Photos - the new reference point for designers, exclusively for CDN members.

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