I noticed recently that I have accrued a significant amount of referral earnings at Bigstock. It looks like they had never previously included them in with earnings from image downloads, so I presume I just never noticed and therefore never claimed them. Recent changes in their website layout have made things a little clearer and so I was able to see that they owe me for referrals.

I contacted them to confirm this and after a few days they got back and said:

" The Bigstock affiliate/referral program is currently under maintenance and some of the features, including requests for payment of earnings, are not available.

We have marked your account and will process your earnings as soon as that area is re-launched.

Thank you for your patience. If you have any additional questions please reply directly back to this email and we will be happy to assist you."

So I replied and asked if they could tell me when that might be. That was 3 weeks ago. I've heard nothing since.

Has anybody else had experience with Bigstock and referral earnings?

I recently requested a payout from Bigstock and received a Paypal notification within the hour!

Maybe it was just fortunate timing but that's the fastest payout I've ever had from a microstock agency and I thought it worthy of a mention.

...somebody pointed me to a program called Deep Paint the other day.

It seems to be a pretty good Photoshop clone.

The downside is that the company who produced it seemed to have stopped any development in it some years back.

The upside is that it's free!

I haven't tested it out but I installed it and had a look through and it looks pretty good, so if you haven't got PS or the budget to buy it, then this might be worth a try.