The short version of everything in the spec.

No. VIDP is a voluntary standard. The language throughout the specification is recommendation-based — "should," "is recommended," "is best" — rather than mandatory. Nothing in VIDP obligates any photographer, editor, agent, brokerage, or MLS to adopt it.

That said, regulatory bodies or associations can reference VIDP in their own rules and make compliance mandatory within their jurisdiction. If an MLS cites VIDP in its photo policy, VIDP compliance becomes effectively mandatory for that MLS's members — but the obligation is coming from the MLS, not from VIDP itself.

VIDP is currently authored and maintained by Kennith Wheeler, under Kennith Wheeler Photography. The specification is published under CC BY 4.0, which preserves the option for the standard to evolve through community contribution or transfer to a standards body in the future.

A formal governance structure will be established if and when adoption reaches a scale where one is warranted. For now, the governance posture is: transparent authorship, open license, changelog-tracked amendments, and direct accountability through the author.

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 is the lightest open license that still requires attribution. It's the license choice that maximizes adoption: any organization can reference VIDP — MLSs, state associations, regulators, other countries — without requiring permission. The only requirement is attribution and a link back to the canonical specification.

Stricter licenses (ShareAlike, NonCommercial) would create friction that defeats the purpose of a voluntary industry standard. The point is for VIDP to be referenced, not protected.

Not currently. VIDP is a specification, not a certification body. Implementations that follow Sections 5, 6, and 7 of the specification may describe themselves as "Fully VIDP Verified" — but that's a self-declaration, not a third-party audit.

A formal certification program may be considered in future versions if adoption reaches a scale where it would add meaningful value. The risk with certification is that it becomes a gatekeeping mechanism that excludes the small independent producers the protocol is designed to serve.

AB 723 is California law, effective January 1, 2026, amending Business & Professions Code §10140.8. It requires conspicuous disclosure of digital alteration on listing photos and access to the unaltered original. It tells you what to do.

VIDP is a voluntary industry standard that describes a concrete, defensible way to meet AB 723's requirements. The pill system provides conspicuous disclosure. The Verification Gallery provides access to the unaltered original. VIDP tells you how to do what AB 723 requires.

Adopting VIDP doesn't guarantee AB 723 compliance — that determination is ultimately made by California regulators and courts. But VIDP's compliance-mapping design intent is to satisfy AB 723 and analogous disclosure requirements in other jurisdictions.

That depends on the specific MLS. Many MLSs — Houston, Greater Lansing, CRMLS, and others — already require labeling of digitally altered imagery. The VIDP pill format is designed to satisfy these watermark requirements while providing more specific disclosure than generic "Virtually Staged" text.

If your MLS's rules don't mention VIDP by name, you can reasonably treat the pill as a compliant watermark. If your MLS has specific formatting requirements, VIDP's recommendations may need to be adjusted to match. We're actively seeking MLS adoption so VIDP can become the reference standard MLSs cite directly.

No. The specification explicitly disclaims this in Section 11. VIDP is an industry standard authored by a working photographer, not a law firm or a regulatory body. Adopters remain responsible for their own compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and professional obligations in their jurisdiction.

Consult an attorney if you have specific questions about how VIDP interacts with legal requirements that apply to you.

Under Section 3.8 of the specification, pill application is the responsibility of the producing party — the photographer, editor, or firm that applied the edit. Their professional judgment determines which pills apply.

If a listing party disagrees with a producing party's pill designation, that's a conversation between those two parties. VIDP doesn't provide an adjudication mechanism. In practice, the producing party's judgment generally holds because (a) they have direct knowledge of what edits were applied, and (b) the Verification Gallery allows any third party to compare the edited image against the base image and draw their own conclusions.

Yes, with a caveat.

VIDP pills identify edits applied to transactional imagery — photographs of real subjects. If an image is entirely AI-generated with no underlying photograph of the actual subject, that's beyond VIDP's scope because there is no base image to verify against. An entirely synthetic image is a different kind of problem than a disclosed edit, and a different kind of regulation (California AB 723, New York's Synthetic Performer Law) addresses it.

For AI-assisted edits to a real photograph, the pill system works as intended. Virtual staging produced by AI tools uses the same VIRTUALLY STAGED pill as human-produced staging — the disclosure is about what was done to the image, not which tool did it.

The Verification Gallery is a public web page, one per subject (property, vehicle, product, etc.), that displays the edited listing images alongside their corresponding base images. It's where the QR codes on the pills link to.

VIDP is infrastructure-agnostic about hosting. A Verification Gallery can be as simple as a public Google Drive folder with properly-named files, or as sophisticated as a per-listing subdomain on the photographer's or brokerage's website. What matters is that (a) the base images are publicly accessible without login, (b) each enhanced image has a corresponding base image available, and (c) the gallery remains accessible for at least 24 months after the listing closes.

No. The base image is the fully-processed image immediately before any element-level edit (sky swap, virtual staging, element removal, etc.) was applied.

A base image can include standard non-representational processing: HDR merging, global color correction, exposure and white balance, lens correction, cropping, sharpening, and dust spot removal on the capture layer. These are considered normal photographic corrections, not alterations.

What distinguishes a base image from a raw file is polish. What distinguishes it from an enhanced image is that no specific edit has been applied to the representation of the subject yet.

Section 5.1 of the specification sets a minimum of 24 pixels tall at 1:1 display size and recommends 75% background opacity as the default. That 75% default is specifically chosen to be minimally visually intrusive on premium photography while preserving legibility. Going lower than 75% or smaller than the minimum defeats the purpose of conspicuous disclosure and weakens the compliance argument.

If 75% looks too prominent on a specific image, the more productive move is to reposition the pill (bottom-left instead of bottom-right, for example, if the bottom-right is the cleanest part of the frame), not to make it smaller or more transparent.

Only images with element-level edits need pills. A photograph delivered with only non-representational processing (HDR, color correction, exposure balance, sharpening) doesn't require disclosure under VIDP because nothing has been altered about the representation of the subject.

In practice, this means a typical 30-image listing might have pills on 3–6 images (the ones where the sky was enhanced, or a room was virtually staged) and no pills on the rest. That's a feature, not a bug — it means the pills carry real information when they appear.

The recommended attribution is:

Based on the Verified Image Disclosure Protocol (VIDP) by Kennith Wheeler, Kennith Wheeler Photography. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Available at vidp.org.

For concise references — a single sentence in a listing description, for example — "VIDP-compliant photography. See vidp.org." is sufficient. The requirement is giving credit and linking back; the exact wording is flexible.

VIDP was authored by Kennith Wheeler under Kennith Wheeler Photography. Kennith Wheeler Photography is the first production-level adopter of VIDP — the spec is tested on real paying client work.

The two are intentionally separate at the domain and brand level: vidp.org is the standard, kennithwheelerphotography.com is the working photography business. VIDP is published under CC BY 4.0 with no commercial tie to Kennith Wheeler Photography's services. Any photographer — competitor or otherwise — can adopt VIDP without any licensing arrangement.

Yes, and you're encouraged to. CC BY 4.0 permits reference, adaptation, and incorporation into other rule frameworks, provided attribution is preserved.

The lightest integration is a reference clause in your photography rules pointing members to vidp.org as the recommended disclosure standard. A deeper integration is reproducing the specific pill definitions in your rules and requiring their use. Both are permitted.

If you're drafting a rule that references VIDP and want to confirm compatibility or get input on language, email standard@vidp.org.

For general inquiries, feedback, and adoption questions: standard@vidp.org.

For technical or verification-gallery questions: verify@vidp.org.

For press, regulatory, or institutional inquiries: kennith@vidp.org.