Can confirm at least that it can be done better than this. I used to work at Apple and you better believe they cared about details like this all the way up the chain. Every photo we used had to come from a marketing-blessed source, all modifications were auditable in source control, and the end result was blessed again by marketing.

Despite that Apple shipped a watch face in iOS 6 that was ripped from Mondaine:

https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-accused-of-ripping-off-famou...

This crap can happen to anyone, it's how they handle it what matters most. Apple apologized (and paid for it).

Using a trademarked design doesn't misrepresent the capabilities of the device. Using a DSLR photo in promotional material about a phone camera obviously does. The two incidents are not comparable.

Both cases are due to lack diligence and supervision in the media assets accusation.

No, Samsung legitimately acquired the IPR for their promotional material, but used it to lie to consumers; Apple failed to secure rights to a watch face, but did nothing to mislead anyone. The two cases aren’t comparable, other than “both cases represent mistakes”.

What source control software did you use for the pictures?

It varied by department. I am sure there were better options, but we just used SVN because it (mostly) worked and the folder model / shallow checkouts made it easy to explain to nontechnical people.

Adobe has/had a version control software for their products.

i.e you could check out a version of a Photoshop file, make some changes, commit it back. My understanding was the it was aware of layers/etc, so you could diff changes somehow.

you could probably version-control a lightroom catalog file... it's binary but you can still check in a binary file.

Sidebar: Lightroom catalogs are simply sqlite3 databases with a different file suffix. If you ever have corruption issues with them, you can open them up in sqlite3 and export or repair as you see fit.

iGit

Exactly. Companies have as much oversight on their agencies as they want. The problem is that companies don't care and shady agencies will do whatever is cheap. Every person in person in the chain is culpable here.