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Messages - f9photos
1
« on: March 18, 2024, 06:41 »
Hi everybody.
I have an established AS account which performs pretty well (no AI images). I opened a separate AS account for AI images 3 months ago. It performs relatively ok, but the wait times are incredibly long. It takes 4-6 weeks on average for them to accept 200 images, I'm capped at 500 in the queue and I have started thinking if it was a wise strategy. (The whole reason for having a separate account was "if they ban AI account then my real one will remain intact)
A couple of questions.
1. Is it true that established accounts that were there for about 10 years have much faster AI acceptance rates?
2. Would you advise mixing AI and regular content in the same portfolio?
Thank you!
Although it may violate Adobe's terms and conditions. So I would not recommend it either.
It doesn't. T&C explicitly state that you can have several accounts.
2
« on: January 05, 2024, 19:56 »
I see more and more better options that Payoneer or Skrill that have have hefty fees.
I heard of Revolut and now just discovered another one WISE .
I think all contributors specially european ones that have higher fees with Payoneer should write to the stock agencies to implement cheaper options like these Revolut or Wise
Ig is outragous to pay 5% to just retrieve the money to your bank acount( 3%+ exchange fees)
The best option would be a direct bank transfer. The German agencies I submit to do this , but also international agencies like Alamy and Canva can do it, so why not the others?
SS does it if you earn >$5000/month I think others don't do it because there are fees. You remember that Canstockphoto put the transaction costs on contributors even for Paypal/Skrill. And bank transfer fees are much higher, I belive.
3
« on: January 05, 2024, 19:54 »
@f9photos - I am from Portugal as well. I receive the USD in my Payoneer account and transfer to Euros to my Bank.
What do you do to avoid those transaction fees?
nothing. For low-earning sites I withdraw my once in few month to avoid $3 Payoneer fee. I mean if I earn $100/month with an agency, I don't request payout each month, but wait till I get say $500. That is probably the only thing we can do. Paypal doesn't have withdrawal fees, but the exchange rate there is extortionate.
4
« on: January 04, 2024, 09:06 »
rejections continue.
Still no answer from Mat here or from Adobe Support. Try to guess yourself what is wrong...
5
« on: January 02, 2024, 16:26 »
I will look into that. I receive most of my funds in Dollars, and then I retrieved them to my European account. So I was already charged a currency exchange fee by Payoneer. Now this will be add to the new 3% fee. A dollar account could work but if Paypal does not charge anything (apart from the currency exchange fee) to retrieve to my bank account this could be a much better option I think.
I also keep hearing about Revolut. I wonder if the main stock agencies will provide this option in the future?
i just went to their site and their fees are so much better than Paypal, Skrill or Payoneer.
Correct me if I'm wrong but you should be able to set up a USD account in your own bank and transfer to your own bank with no conversion that doesn't incur the 3% transactional fee.
As per the email it states is only on USD to EUR transfers
Hope what I'm saying is right and that it helps
You can only withdraw money in local currency on Payoneer.
But if you can find some way to get $ or Euros into a bank account in a non-Euro paying European country, I'd be happy to hear it. Agencies should add more ways of payout. Many of us would probably find it more worthwhile to pay out of our own pockets for international bank transfer than PayPal and Payoneer fees.
maybe it depends on the country, but in Portugal I can open a USD account and withdraw to it from Payoneer. It has 2% transaction fee. Withdrawals of 500.00 USD and under are subject to a minimum fee of 10.00 USD. And don't forget that everytime you receive a payment to Payoneer, it takes a fee of $3 (except for Shutterstock and Getty)
6
« on: December 26, 2023, 17:48 »
7
« on: December 26, 2023, 17:44 »
yes, it is possible to find something to cavil about in every image, but this is generative AI. The day when it will be impossible to distinguish it from real images is yet to come.
Of course, being a professional full-time stock photographer for 16 years, I see a lot of problems. But all AI images have them, not only mine.
Probably I should downsize (or actually not to upsize that much), but let's wait what Mat says.
I have tried Topaz, but personally I liked MJ upsizer results more.
8
« on: December 26, 2023, 06:46 »
So...
a) For actual photos (not genAI)... Do you "need" keep the meta data in the images? I submitted a batch of high quality photographs - and "all" were rejected... (I had cleaned out the meta data, i.e., what camera was used, and other details)... was that just laziness on the reviewers part (i.e., did they just "assume" it was genAI because of no meta data, so just rejected it), or what was going on - do I "need" to leave that data in? Extremely frustrating, as I had waited quite some time for them to be processed...
b) When I do some of the genAI,I do take the time to remove extra fingers, logos, make sure the composition is correct, etc... I realize there are probably many that don't (seeking 'genAI' riches with no work/editing/etc)... HOWEVER... it's also frustrating when it seems you get a lazy reviewer - that rejects 90%-95% of a batch that required a lot of time consuming editing to make sure it looked good... Matt, could you please fix that?
Thanks very much!
Removing metadata such as camera details would have zero impact on moderation results. The quality of the asset is the top criteria when it comes to image reviews. Without seeing the content you are referencing, I can only assume there were issues with the files and that the moderators got it right. I'm certainly open to being proven wrong and would encourage you to share a couple of examples here.
-Mat Hayward
I totally agree with you Mat, In my 15 years experience in stock photography I also many times got frustrated about rejections, but looking at those images 5-10 years later I see the reviewers were right in most of the cases.Without examples this topic is useless.
I see overall people thinking on quality only on technical aspect, but to me in one stock photo quality means also what value it brings to the collection and from there the quality of the Adobe Stock collection as a whole. Every image is like a small pixel who create the whole collection image. From this point I think with AI we have to think even more on this level of "hidden" quality and to think what our brain can create as idea and bring it to the image's heart, because a couple of years from now there will be an option in the AI tools to create millions of images in a couple of hours in bulk by group of criteria and prompts templates. I'm very excited to see our new role as stock photographers. Sorry, got a bit off topic.
Hi Mat, I am not afraid of showing my rejected images. Could you please explain to me what is wrong?             My only guess is that they are upsized too much, 8 mpx would be enough. I um using Midjourney, and edit my images in LR and PS to improve the quality and get rid of unwanted artifacts. In fact we all really need a more detailed rejection reason for images, AI images, Videos. "quality issues - Thanks for giving us the chance to consider your image. Unfortunately, this image doesn't meet our quality standards so we cant accept it into our collection.Common issues that can impact the technical quality of images include exposure issues, soft focus, excessive filtering or artifacts/noise."
Current "quality issues" explanation gives absolutely no chance to understand, fix it and improve. Is it so difficult to make multiple select checkbox list for reviewers to select the exact rejection reason? It will really help both Adobe and contributors.
9
« on: November 07, 2023, 13:34 »
I tried my luck again with 100 backgrounds (made with camera and not with AI) and within 2 seconds (looked at the clock) 94 were rejected and I don't even see a rejection reason - but how to add a rejection reason in 2 seconds too ;-)
In an upload before that, about 20 of 150 images had come at least after "in review" - 2 days later these 18 were also rejected -> rejection rate 99%.
And no, I upload there only things that were accepted on the relevant agencies without major problems.
Uploading anything on Canva really doesn't make sense anymore and if you then take into account the rip-off with the "one-time AI boost payment".
And what really surprises me - Canva doesn't seem to care at all, otherwise someone from there would have surely said something about it - because they are reading along here :-)
Happy Halloween,
Michael
PS: And yes, of course I realize that I am far too unimportant to interest anyone there - but you could also just say that, would at least be honest 
same with me. I am doing the full time microstock for 14 years (a recent interview with me - https://www.microstockgroup.com/general-photography-discussion/interview-with-dmitry-rukhlenko-veteran-travel-microstocker-$500k/), and have almost 100% acceptance rate everywhere. But Canva rejects 99% of my uploads in a second after I've uploaded them. I am earning $300-$400 a month with Canva and absolutely sure that I (and equally Canva) would earn more if my images were not rejected.
10
« on: October 23, 2023, 13:05 »
Thanks, interesting interview.
I'm curious how do easily replace background "skies" - does he just mask it and cut/paste? Wouldn't there be noticeable pixellation, or how do you compensate for that?
Thanks!
now it became much easier with photoshop Sky Replacement feature. Still it often requires tweaking, blending new sky with an original sky over the horizon, etc. No, I don't have any pixelation, I strive for it to look perfect at 100% magnification.
11
« on: October 23, 2023, 08:05 »
I read it yesterday, it was great interview, from both side, thank You
thank, I am glad that you liked it!
12
« on: September 26, 2023, 14:45 »
exciting news for us: Getty joined the "The Fair Diffusion Program" - a ground-breaking generative AI initiative launched by BRIA AI in collaboration with Alamy, Getty Images, and Envato. This is an alternative to the AI models already in existence that have been built on unlicensed content instead its designed to attribute and reward source material. More details here - https://ablog.wpengine.com/ethical-ai-image-initiative-alamy-announces-industry-partnershipSo it will not be unfair 0.000000000000001$, it will be a fair 0.00000000000001$  I would call it the double hypocrisy 
13
« on: June 28, 2023, 14:31 »
At least they paid the remaining earnings. But certainly they could have included the amount owed to an author in that email.
Communication with contributors is definitely not their strong point.
14
« on: June 27, 2023, 14:22 »
Did they give any explanation why?
Does it affect everyone who hasnt uploaded in a while?
They could have just sent a warning, so that people become active again.
their answer was Unfortunately the portfolio has been deleted because we are now focusing on more Nordic images
15
« on: May 03, 2023, 05:21 »
Yes, I have this too, and apparently most contributors have. Guess it's coming from the contributor fund, but they didn't update the earnings details (yet).
I have opted out of Data deals long ago and still have around 250$ in unpaid. So probably it is one of numerous shutterstock bugs
16
« on: September 26, 2022, 20:10 »
I'll test it out on all agencies see if they accept it.
I doubt it as the Shutterstock release explicitly mentions Shutterstock many times. It is better to use the universal release, or even better EasyRelease app on phone
17
« on: September 25, 2022, 14:19 »
you can download releases from Shutterstock, they are just images.
Not sure what you are going to do with docusign though.
18
« on: April 21, 2022, 04:10 »
That's the reply I have received from 123rf support today: Thank you for notifying us.
Our IT team has been already been informed of an unusual number of refunds occurring of late and are investigating the issue currently. Kindly give them some time to investigate the matter and we will update you by email as soon as we receive more information.
We thank you for your patience and understanding in the meanwhile.
19
« on: June 15, 2021, 07:36 »
is there any chance that a button "nominate all images on thee current page" will be added? Otherwise it is very time consuming task to manually select/deselect images/
20
« on: October 05, 2020, 13:36 »
both
21
« on: September 02, 2020, 17:10 »
Adobe seems to be out, at least I couldn't find any images from adobe with the badge. All the others seem to be IN like SS, Alamy, iStock, Dreamstime etc... and many of the smaller are also in already.
Photoshelter is very much IN whereas SmugMug seems to be OUT. This is strange as SmugMug has an integrated e-commerce site which would fit well with the badge directing there. For independent photographers this could open some possibilities.
I wonder whether photosites like Flickr or 500px will allow the required URLs in IPTC?
edit. I added the required URLs in metadata in Lightroom and exported it locally.
I then used this tool to check the metadata
https://getpmd.iptc.org/getiptcpmd.html
The exported file had all the nice ITCP fields with all the required URLs like
statement of rights and licensor filled up nicely.
Next I uploaded the image to my own site in SmugMug and used Google search console to index it. The image showed then in Google image search but did not have the licensable badge on it. So I downloaded my image from SmugMug and checked with getpmd whether the required ITCP field were still there. They were gone from the image.
I then double checked by uploading the image to my Flickr site, downloaded the image from Flickr and checked the metadata. All the required stuff was there.
This is fairly disappointing as I have lot of images in my SmugMug site with integrated e-commerce platform. It would have been very nice to be able to incorporate these images in the Google image license scheme. This could have been a major opportunity for independent photographers selling images through SmugMug. Now the images are side tracked as google badges are missing.
It would be very interesting to know which other sites strip the required IPTC from images and which don't.
I hope SmugMug will soon upgrade the engine so that the images will show up as licensable.
22
« on: August 29, 2020, 17:27 »
I think that what also interest the users of this forum is an easier upload process.
The actual one is a pain in the
or tax form submission process (right now it is mission impossible). I've stopped uploading when taxes were introduced. I don't like double taxation - in Germany and in my country.
23
« on: August 19, 2020, 09:19 »
Are bonus program for illustrator coming ?
+1 Vector artists get LR+Photoshop subscription, but they need Illustrator instead
24
« on: August 07, 2020, 13:10 »
Hey All!
Just wanted to let everyone here know that Envato has officially been certified as a B Corp. Here's an excerpt from our media release about what a B Corp is:
"Envato is now one of over 3000 certified B Corp companies in 71 countries and 150 industries around the world, joining a list of other Australian B Corps such as Culture Amp, KeepCup and Bellroy.
Administered by the non-profit B Lab, B Corp certification is awarded to businesses that have a positive impact across five key domains - workers, customers, suppliers, community and the environment - and in doing so, lead the way in using business as a force for good."
For more details about it, you can check out our post here: https://envato.com/blog/envato-certified-b-corp/
Have a great day!
So I guess we shall expect a royalty cut 
25
« on: July 08, 2020, 13:58 »
you are wrong. They are the team, and they were the founders of pressfoto, but that project was not of a great success, I belive. And they have excellent images, follow all the trends, shoot videos (more than 53 000 of clips in the portfolio) It's port of russian stock pressfoto.
Casual pics nothing more, lot's of them [it is only my opinion].
But it looks like i am getting that you are saying about uselessness of boycott.
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