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Messages - ShadySue

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 6 ... 622
1
apparently I had no sales in Feb from the US, nor have I had any US 'interactions' in the rolling month 24 Feb - 24 March.
Weird, it's usually my #2 country, if not, it's #1.
LIke everyone else, Feb sales spoiled by a slew of refunds.

2
iStockPhoto.com / Re: DACS at iStock
« on: February 07, 2024, 19:24 »
I took this up directly with DACS as I file my own, but didn't hear back.

Although I file my own, I'm aware that Alamy is likely to be able to find more than I can, and I wonder, but don't know, if because Alamy does a bulk return, they probably get into a much higher band than I reach on my own, so maybe 40% of what they could get is better than 100% of what I've found. (?)

But whereas I'm RM on Alamy, so it would be relatively easy to find the book sales, and maybe they even require the buyers to provide them with that info I'm curious as to how iS finds the books etc. that our RF files might end up in. That would be a full time job for several staff.


3
iStockPhoto.com / Re: DACS at iStock
« on: February 04, 2024, 19:53 »
They've been doiing it for a few years: there's a clause in our contract which can be interpreted to let them do it without an opt-out, though like so much in the contract - which is very wide in their favour - very narrow in ours, I for one didn't foresee this.

4
Adobe Stock / Re: Unfairly Blocked - My Story
« on: January 28, 2024, 13:18 »

Is the legal system in the Netherlands that messed up, that they couldn't file a legal appeal through the courts? Or that they couldn't find an attorney to act on their behalf. Do you know these people, personally? Ask them why they only hammered on breaking a brick wall, instead of going around it.

Could be like the UK case of the hundreds of unjustly imprisoned/fined/blamed postmasters/mistresses who were accused of stealing money from the Post Office, when it was in fact a faulty Fujitsu computer system (Horizon). Despite several media, starting with an article in Computer Weekly in 2009, a BBC Panorama documentary in 2015 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67884743 and particularly the current affairs paper Private Eye who consistently reported on it for over a decade, it took a TV play last month to force the issue and only now is it high on the agenda. The inquiry is showing how little people can do when the Man, the Government and the legal system gang up to shut down all your avenues of appeal, especially when your money has been taken (to repay shortfalls which were the fault of the faulty system) and your means of earning have been cut off (because who is going to employ someone who has been convicted of stealing?), totally unjustly.
Here's the shortest of summaries:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56718036
and this is significant:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68079300
As you can imagine, it's all a much more tangled web than this, you'd just need to do your own searches, or follow the links.

5
iStockPhoto.com / Re: November Statements ready.
« on: January 20, 2024, 20:10 »
Is it me or DM doesn't display right, Todayis20 shows no thumbs, the Dec. file reports as October? Did Getty adjust the access again?
Yeah, they changed it, again.
Apparently they have advised TodayIs20, and we're just waiting for them to have the time to make the necessary adjustments on their site.
Of course, if Getty would just give us decent stats, we wouldn't need external apps.  ::)

6
iStockPhoto.com / Re: November Statements ready.
« on: December 18, 2023, 21:18 »
Best month since Dec 2019. It's strange, I seem to have one standout* month a year, and that month changes apparently randomly.
*compared to my other months in the same year.
Still, it's all the lottery of getting one or more high value sales.

7
iStockPhoto.com / Re: November 2023 downloads
« on: December 16, 2023, 19:32 »
How do i know how many files are in my portfolioo in Istock?

I presume there's a better way, but the only way I know is to click on my name on one of my photos which takes me to my port. Make sure you have all aplicable types of files ticked and then your number will be at the top of the page. Then you can bookmark your portfolio in your browser, but on previous experiences, it suddenly stops working, not sure if that's a browser issue or an iS issue.

Hopefully, someone will be able to tell you a less clunky way...

8
Off Topic / Re: I will never use AI
« on: November 25, 2023, 18:29 »
Many talk about selling AI images. For private use ist o.k. but not for the purpose of making money on other peoples intellectual property.

I will never use AI. Anybody else on this forum? If I would do so, I am no longer myself but a thief.

I see you're an illustrator, so this may not be relevant to you, but for example the relatively new Denoise is an AI function of Adobe Camera Raw. I'm using that function when needed to rescue high ISO files, so I can't say I'll never use AI, but AFAIK, this use isn't (ab)using other people's IP.

9
Off Topic / Re: I will never use AI
« on: November 24, 2023, 08:36 »
Many talk about selling AI images. For private use ist o.k. but not for the purpose of making money on other peoples intellectual property.

I will never use AI. Anybody else on this forum? If I would do so, I am no longer myself but a thief.

What if there was at some point some AI that you could train on only your own photos?

10
I've had 'adult' and 'only adults' added to some files I had accepted today, where 'only adults' is not accurate. Also 'only women' added to another file, ditto.
Very annoying. They keep putting out little nippy notes about how important it is to keyword accurately, then they add irrelevant keywords (I checked my files in my submission folder in case I'd made a mistake).
And don't even think about the categories at the bottom of the page. There are two sets of categories which they add. Some might be accurate but very vague, most at the bottom of the page are inaccurate, sometimes 5/5 totally wrong.

Added: having enquired about the additions, it seems it's a keyword mapping feature.  ::)

12
'Allegedly' what we see when looking at our own ports doesn't affect what a buyer will see, and they have other weightings anyway like location (and previous purchases, IIRC).

13
Sometimes I sell phone covers through FineArt America.
Me2

14
iStockPhoto.com / Re: August 2023 statements are in early
« on: October 24, 2023, 18:11 »
anyone get the Payment ?
See the forum. There's a 'hitch'.

15

If they're not in the CV, they don't show up on the file page.
However, they are 'usually' searchable.


Just to be clear, Sue ... does this mean that keywords not in the Controlled Vocabulary but that you have included in your submission, are in fact still attached to the image, even though they are not visible?

That's what I've found, though I can't claim it's universal.
Try with some of your own photos to see.

(BTW, It seems that at sometime over the past couple of years, a lot of words have been removed from the CV.)

16
Ive looked at keywords from more of my images in my iStock port and I'm starting to notice a pretty serious issue. There are some important keywords (added by me in Deepmeta) that are not present. For example - names of buildings, street names etc. These really need to be included so that buyers can find the images. There is a tutorial video on Deepmeta that states that some keywords will not be recognised by iStock but will still be included if you manually select them. But that is not true at all. I did manually select these words in Deepmeta and they are not visible among the keywords under the photos when viewing them in my port.
If they're not in the CV, they don't show up on the file page.
However, they are 'usually' searchable.

Tell you what's even worse. Their 'enhanced' search function, which more or less shows you what you wanted to see first, then a whole load of semi-random stuff underneath. At least you can turn it off, but it took me a wee while to notice that: it seems to have been made 'on' by default.  ::)

17
Seems to be a problem with the server at the moment.

However, they seem to sometimes delete the odd one or two, for real or imagined copyright reasons, and emails aren't always sent.

18
iStockPhoto.com / Re: July 2023 financial statements are in
« on: August 18, 2023, 12:23 »
After two 'better' months, low rpd and no 'lottery wins' made it my worst July since 2007 despite an average number of sales. Interesting that most people on this thread are doing well (well done), that's not what I'm seeing on other sites I'm on (exclusives).

19
Is it any deal to do it for next years or maybe forever. I mean sales are not the best. Those 10 cent sales on shutterstock are funny too. AI can overtake humanly made photos.
I wouldn't rely on it to feed my (hypothetical) family, if that's what you mean.

20
midjourney doesn't have a collection of ready made images to download. you have to create your own by prompting. which takes time to learn.

and midjourney cannot give you legal protection, because as their own ceo explained himself how they scraped the entire internet without licensing anything.

Are the agencies offering legal protection?

Adobe Stock is, but  to its enterprise customers creating Firefly output only. Adobe Stock's current getAI content comes from all the current generative AI tools, none of which is on a secure legal footing. Theoretically Firefly will be - if and when it exits beta - because Adobe trained on its contributors' content + public domain stuff. Adobe's CYA for the content it is accepting is telling contributors they need to ensure they have the rights for commercial use of the content they upload. But Adobe knows as well as anyone that no contributor can know that with Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, etc.

Shutterstock is but only for enterprise customers and things created with their (DALL-E 2 based) tools, not for all the genAI stuff uploaded to their site in spite of the rules saying its not allowed. Their earning call this week said that very few customers are using any of the output from their own AI tool as the quality isn't there: "... lack of true photo realistic outputs are holding back widespread adoption for actual marketing campaigns"

No idea what DepositPhotos, CanStock or 123rf are offering.

Thanks, interesting!

21
midjourney doesn't have a collection of ready made images to download. you have to create your own by prompting. which takes time to learn.

and midjourney cannot give you legal protection, because as their own ceo explained himself how they scraped the entire internet without licensing anything.

Are the agencies offering legal protection?

22
No doubt I'm missing something, but why wouldn't someone buy e.g. Midjourney or whatever and generate their own AI images, rather than purchasing from an agency?

23
Image Sleuth / Re: Stolen images on iStock by "Abdul Bayzid"
« on: July 29, 2023, 14:57 »
I don't think I get a thank-you yet - I see 1,103 images now in his portfolio. More have been added this afternoon, and they're all stolen too (based on a spot check of a few).

Here's what I see on page 1

Sorry, I checked back and Editorial remained ticked from a previous search there.  :-[
IS absolutely should take the port down, but sometimes they seem to wait until an actual infringed producer complains in person.

24
Image Sleuth / Re: Stolen images on iStock by "Abdul Bayzid"
« on: July 28, 2023, 15:52 »
Well done, JoAnne!

Sorry, your search returned zero results for
Thanks for finding this, Stvagna

25
Adobe has a filter, it allows the buyer to sort real photos and artificial ones. And such a filter is available on all stock agencies.
I don't see such a filter on iStock, and indeed neither iS nor Getty accept images "made with AI tools".

I guess you meant 'all stock agencies which accept AI', but I'm not going to try out every possible stock agency to check!

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