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Messages - klod

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1
Is a stock photo a work of art or commodity? Many are very artistic but the majority are utilitarian.  It will be interesting to follow development and I suspect photos will need to have a digital signature to be under such legislation with a grandfather clause for printed work produced in past years. Count on stock agencies to lobby government to exclude work they sell.

2
General Stock Discussion / Re: 500px shares exciting news
« on: August 06, 2022, 14:15 »
Who else got sales for 1 cent on 500px. You read that right, one cent.  I got over a dozen sales at that rate. I do not upload there anymore for that reason.

3
Adobe Stock / Re: AS rejections
« on: August 06, 2022, 14:04 »
I also experience a much higher rejection rate and for 'technical issues' . It started about a month and a half ago.  Before that, rejections received were tipicaly more explicit and in most cases I agreed with the review. I hope its not a layer of AI that was added and that systematically rejects images with the focus off the center, like they seem to use at SS.

4

Keep in mind, if you have 20 photos approved for Free, we would pay you $100 (assuming you are paid in USD). The cost of the Creative Cloud Photography plan is $9.99 so you could use that $100 to pay for the first 10 months of the subscription. If you had 24 files approved for the Free collection, you could pay for the entire year. This way, the many thousands of contributors who have already received a complimentary Creative Cloud for their successful contribution to Adobe Stock can choose to spend the money they receive on something else.

Thanks again,

Mat Hayward




I do not like the concept of my assets being available for free and would rather give 20 new ones and keep it a secret.  Assets selected by Adobe have in common that they already sell, on this and or other sites.  With the current selecton process for the free collection, clients who paid for an image and subsequently see it for free, that does not result into happy customers.  By building the free collection from fresh exclusive images, this would be avoided.  If I get paid $500 for 100 images, that is because Adobe will make money also, without taking much risks, they are safe bets. Adobe could take risks with the free collection.
I got free subscriptions and used Adobe during that period.  Last year,
I did not qualify and reverted to using other software. Getting a free subscription served as a great incentive to grow and promote my Adobe portfolio and to use the suite. That made me a defacto brand ambassador.     If I was to buy an Adobe subscription, I would look at the special offers I receive from various sources. Adobe does not have a discount rate for its contributors. Maybe something to consider.

5
Matt 
A suggestion for consideration. Adobe could introduce free photos for free subscriptions.   In exchange for an X amount of new exclusive accepted submissions, a contributor gets a free subscription.  Adobe becomes the copyrights owner and such photos are not linked to the photographer unless the photographer opts in to have them visible in their portfolio.  20 photos per year seem a fair number to me. 

6
Matt,  You confirmed that downloads of free images do not count towards getting a free subscription.   But if I have 100 images accepted and Adobe pays $5 for each of those images, would it count as 100 sales toward a free subscription?

7
Matt,
Will selected assets count as sales towards getting a free subscription?

Good question, but no. Downloads in the Free collection do not count toward your statistics.

-Mat Hayward

Not even the initial $5 sale to Adobe? It would certainly serve as a great incentive to submit more to the free collection. I submitted only a small portion of those selected. I would submit more knowing they count for at least one sale.   

8
Matt,
Will selected assets count as sales towards getting a free subscription? 

9
Shutterstock shares were worth $120 six months ago. So its a 50% loss in half a year.  It is likely that many contributors when they were degraded to level one at the start of the year stopped adding to their portfolios. I suspect the quality of fresh images is not what it used to be as a result. How long can a CEO remain under such circumstances?  Lets hope this move will result in a better scheme for contributors. I am glad SS will be under new management.

10
Adobe Stock / Re: Adobe Creative Cloud bonus codes for 2021?
« on: November 23, 2021, 14:09 »
Adding this for Adobe people to consider.  I qualified for a few years but not last year so I reverted  to using GIMP and Nikon raw tools.  Most of my sales on Adobe I can track back to posts I made on Twitter. What is the incentive for me to send such links to Adobe insted of doing direct sales? I used different tools to assess the value of my tweets and learned they are worth about $20us. 

I invite Adobe to consider adding rewards for contributors active on social media and who generate sales. 

11
Some of my photos were tagged.  The common point of all these images is that all already sold, via Adobe and other sites, more that 4 copies, except for a single one.  But I sold full resolution copies of that one via other site..   If someone who purchased a copy was to find the image available for free, do you think its a returning customer?  If another agency also has the image in their catalogue, that is a good way to kill competition.  Its good for Adobe but for photogs?  Those who maintain portfolios with many agencies may find it difficult if they opt in to have their image accepted on other sites. 

Not knowing the number of downloads of free images is a major show stopper and for that reason alone I would not opt in.  Is it positive exposure to have your work available for free-I wonder....?  How much would it cost to purchase from Adobe a photo licensed for unlimited use for a year?

My sales dropped dramatically at Adobe last year. Is it the creation of that database of free images on Adobe that resulted in decreased sales?   

12
Alamy.com / Commission lowered to 20%
« on: May 17, 2021, 07:34 »
I just read the new contributor contract.  The highlight: if you make less that $250 in commission during the fiscal year will, your commission will be lowered to 20%.   

13
Which probably nobody did. You can create that exact image with a lot of different tools within a minute. So why would anyone steal and recolor it?
Have you ever checked the IDs of the images you think are copies of yours? Chances are good that quite a few of them have been uploaded before you even created your fractal, so you may have reported accounts of people that did nothing wrong ...
Btw I'm not sure those fractals have a lot of sale potential. They are just too easy to create.
[/quo

Hard to evaluate sale potential but if it was as low as you seem to think it is, it woyuld not be as widely available, from many sources (hundreds).   I loaded it on Alamy several years before Adobe (found no other copies there) and created it years before making it available as stock and shared a first version on Flickr. -I would very much prefer to be wrong and that they created their own.  If I was to copy a file, I would take a few seconds to edit the exif info, that is not solid data.

Yeah the current ID number for new stuff on Adobe is about 400m. I know it hit 100m in the middle of 2015, and the guy you linked to, his image is 12m something. So he uploaded it quite some time ago... was it before you? 

Adobe did not provide any details, hard to tell.  The reply I received after sending a second email - my first message was never received they claim, only refered to creation date of only one of the four files and 3 distinct accounts I listed.  The response received from Adobe was problematic in many ways. Will not upload there anymore as a result.  -And I will monitor closely the 3 distinct portfolios.  The reply received from Alamy - within 24 hours - drastically more professional.




14
Which probably nobody did. You can create that exact image with a lot of different tools within a minute. So why would anyone steal and recolor it?
Have you ever checked the IDs of the images you think are copies of yours? Chances are good that quite a few of them have been uploaded before you even created your fractal, so you may have reported accounts of people that did nothing wrong ...
Btw I'm not sure those fractals have a lot of sale potential. They are just too easy to create.
[/quo

Hard to evaluate sale potential but if it was as low as you seem to think it is, it woyuld not be as widely available, from many sources (hundreds).   I loaded it on Alamy several years before Adobe (found no other copies there) and created it years before making it available as stock and shared a first version on Flickr. -I would very much prefer to be wrong and that they created their own.  If I was to copy a file, I would take a few seconds to edit the exif info, that is not solid data. 

15
General Stock Discussion / Re: Quality of stock photo
« on: March 08, 2021, 13:15 »
I really appreciate the feedback received so far, keep it coming.   It confirms my bias -  I think that to make money from stock photography one would be well-advised to buy shares.  Dividends for shareholders are more generous than commissions for photographers.   When I started ten years ago, the figure old timers would cite was one dollar of return for each photo per year.  A portfolio of 1000 high quality photos would yield about 1 thousand dollars per year.  I think that in today's market, it is about ten cents per year and the same quality portfolio of 1000 returns $100 per annum.     


Hello:

I am preparing an article about stock photography.  Those of you who have been in this business for a number of years, do you agree that

-over the years, the quality of stock photo increased tremendously

-Prices and commissions decreased dramatically and out of the millions of stock photographers, very few make a living from stock photography and those who do have highly specialised portfolios

-Would you advise a young photographer to join the industry?

Thank you for your feedback

16
General Stock Discussion / Quality of stock photo
« on: March 07, 2021, 17:24 »
Hello:

I am preparing an article about stock photography.  Those of you who have been in this business for a number of years, do you agree that

-over the years, the quality of stock photo increased tremendously

-Prices and commissions decreased dramatically and out of the millions of stock photographers, very few make a living from stock photography and those who do have highly specialised portfolios

-Would you advise a young photographer to join the industry?

Thank you for your feedback


17
Hi!
This fractal that you claim is The Mandelbrot set fractal. It's called "The thumb print of God" and it was not invented but discovered (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set)
In other words... fractal geometry.

Don't get me wrong but your work is based on a zoom magnification picture of a well known fractal shape called Mandelbrot. Not only is it easy to copycat the idea as i think the picture itself is from Mandelbrot loop with a circle in a middle to cover the continuity of the shape being formed.

Can someone claim copyright of that? i doubt.
Maybe if you produce a unique shape and not the actual spin. Which is originally made by Mandelbrot shape itself when an infinite loop of the fractal is mathematically performed.

You can find what i am talking about exactly in Art of Code here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avJHaC3C2U  ( time: (15:42 to 16:45) )


Thanks for this interesting info, their is more to it than I originally saw. I would not claim copyrights to a math equation but I definately would if someone downloaded my graphic and recolored it. 

18

Found two more portfolios on Adobe with my same fractal.  And dozens of Pinterest and Zazzle sites.  The file is in my portfolio on Adobe and Alamy.  I found pirated copies on Adobe but not Alamy.  I reported the info to both agencies.   


https://stock.adobe.com/ca/stock-photo/id/42924666

https://stock.adobe.com/ca/stock-photo/id/10432760

19
Indeed, and in addition to his talent with graphics.  If its the same guy, you can buy his books: https://www.blurb.co.uk/user/jobe451

20

I found a second Adobe account that offers a different version:

https://stock.adobe.com/ca/contributor/202731926/evbrbe?load_type=author&prev_url=detail

-Any experience with a similar issue with Adobe or advice? 

I file is also on many Pinterest and Zazzle stores.  Sad I never sold a copy myself. 


**If you find some of your work on these ports, please include info on this thread.


21
Doing image reverse lookup, I found the portfolio of this guy contains two fractals that I created, he simply recolored them and offers them on sale.  Looking at his stuff, he travelled the whole planet...

https://stock.adobe.com/ca/contributor/780/joel-behr?load_type=author&prev_url=detail

Will report it again and I hope this time it will be taken down...

The Tinyeye results reveals that many others - or the same person under different names - made different copies...
https://tineye.com/search/a4cec0ebeb7bd389a382945bf4c88f9277cd3f79?sort=score&order=desc&page=1

22
I qualified for the last two years but not this one.  Sales on my Adobe portfolio almost stopped in recent months. Sales on Adobe would not even cover more than a few months of a subscription  I cancelled my account.  Strangely, my much smaller portfolio on Shutterstock with 10 cents a piece sales generate more income.   Back to the GIMP for me.

23
Pond5 / Re: Pricing photos on P5
« on: June 07, 2020, 12:03 »
Go take a peek at prices for buyers on Pound5, SS, ALAMY, getty do not take my word.  Pound5 lists Disney and CNN as clients. I think big agencies like that would not buy a 5 dollar image.  They expect to pay a lot more..

24
Pond5 / Re: Pricing photos on P5
« on: June 07, 2020, 09:39 »
A full resolution file for $10 or 15 is way below prices available from Alamy, SS and many others.  I will not set lower prices.  I want to set fair prices for buyers and fair commissions for me.  Search P5 as buyer and see the great variety of prices.  Many way too low or too high.  IMHO...

25
Pond5 / Pricing photos on P5
« on: June 07, 2020, 08:48 »
Hello:
How do you price photos on P5?  Photos available from other stock agencies and photos exclusive to P5? Almost all of my pics are high rez-6000x4000. 

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