We're still sorting through our notes from PMA 2009 in Las Vegas last week and one thing that caught our eye but we haven't mentioned yet is the new LicenseStream Creator 2.0 software platform from ImageSpan.

If you haven't heard of LicenseStream, it really should be on your radar if you sell a lot of your images on the web and want to simplify the rather confusing licensing process for your shots. (Yes, that likely includes many photographers right now.)

LicenseStream is designed as an automated all-in-one platform which helps you protect, license, sell, and track your images online. This subscription-based software can be used either as a web-storefront solution where your images are displayed online (via a URL) in a basic lightbox format with pricing and whatever licensing rights you'd like to attach; or as the backend to your current online photo portfolio.

The big-ticket item for the new LicenseStream Creator 2.0 – which was launched during PMA – is the ability to "publish" your images from the platform directly to major search engines, such as Google Images. So, for example, if a photo buyer wants to find an image of a red wheelbarrow, he or she might search for the phrase "red wheelbarrow" in Google Images and find a slew of images that fall into that category. LicenseStream Creator 2.0 is designed to ensure that your shots appear in those searches and that buyers will be able to easily figure out how much you're selling them for and what rights and licensing fees are attached.

"It's an easy way for photographers to spread their content and get their images in Google and other search engines," said Pamela Fischer, Strategic Relations Director at ImageSpan.

Fischer cited a statistic in a recent PhotoShelter survey of photo buyers which suggested that 61% of buyers use search engines to find new images.

How LicenseStream is able to do this is— perhaps deliberately – unclear. According to a fact sheet from the company, ImageSpan uses "a combination of publicly-available and home-grown technologies to make this possible (in LicenseStream Creator 2.0)." Obviously, if this feature works – we haven't been able to test it yet – it would offer a unique selling proposition for ImageSpan, one it wouldn't want its competitors to copy.

Another new feature in LicenseStream Creator 2.0 – which is a free upgrade to current LicenseStream users – includes plug-in support for Adobe Lightroom and Bridge. An Apple Aperture plug-in for the platform is coming next, we were told.

There's also a new Flash uploader for posting large batches of images at once; and improved content management including the ability to select multiple images and move them to lightboxes for sale to photo buyers.

A standard LicenseStream Creator 2.0 subscription costs $49 for the year, while the "PRO" version costs $149 for the year. One notable addition to the PRO version is that it includes the Content Tracker feature, which alerts websites that are using your images without permission to help "convert non-paying content consumers into paying customers," in the words of ImageSpan.

If you're interested in subscribing to LicenseStream Creator PRO 2.0, register at www.licensestream.com. ImageSpan is offering a special PMA discount as part of the launch of the new platform which saves you 15% when you use promo code: PMALSP