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Author Topic: Dreamstime is killing me  (Read 8542 times)

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« on: May 15, 2006, 22:48 »
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They take lots of pride in rejecting me  ::)

I have 16 photos uploaded so far out of maybe 35 or more...and I have a few in pending too, so more rejections on the wayyyyyy...they are pretty harsh on me considering the ones they reject are accepted by almost all the other sites. 

Nonetheless, I know that it means that that I can use it to get better, but I thought I'd just comment on previous threads where I read that Dreamstime was letting up a bit.


« Reply #1 on: May 16, 2006, 02:58 »
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well you should have seen them before :)

Yeah, it is a bit of a pain that they are so strick sometimes.  I try to condole myself that they are trying hard to build a top notch library... something seems to be working though, they have half the images of fotolia, istock, and shutterstock and seem to be doing quite well.

« Reply #2 on: May 16, 2006, 17:28 »
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Some of their rejections are truly annoying, but overall I'm satisfied, especially with their new price structure.  One thing they are very strict is about "similar images" and about images that they have many similar ones in their portfolio already.

Regards,
Adelaide
-----------
http://www.geocities.com/photocorner.geo/

« Reply #3 on: May 18, 2006, 06:00 »
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DT has my highest rejection ratio as well.  30% of the stuff I've uploaded is in their bit-bin. :-).

I generally agree with their reasons, although they do seem to be slightly harsher on some aspects of the images which don't really have a great bearing on the value of an image for stock, almost like they are judging the images for a photo competition rather than for use as an element in an overall design.

I also have had a couple of very annoying rejections from DT, one for 'too many similiar' which I could only find two 'similar' images for using their search tool..  Not worth loosing any sleep over though!

« Reply #4 on: May 18, 2006, 06:55 »
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I have started to grow very weary of Dreamstime. I am getting to the point where I am beginning to think about pulling all of my photos from their site.

Dreamstime is EXTREMELY inconsistent in their reviews lately.

For example, I submitted the following four candles splashing into water a few weeks ago:





Well, the first two were rejected for "Lack of Concept", while the second two were accepted! "Lack of Concept"! Are they kidding? If they can't understand what the concept is, then they must have a lack of imagination.

And all of the images were taken with the exact same settings on manual mode.

So now buyers only have half of the series that I submitted, which will lower the amount of choices that they have. What if a buyer is trying to create a design for a first anniversary, first birthday or New Year celebration. Well, they will be just plain out of luck because Dreamstime reviewers don't have a clue. Buyers will have to go to one of the other five microstock sites that I submit to in order to get the photos. So Dreamstime is stabbing themselves in the back.

I emailed support asking them to review the rejections and haven't received one reply in over three weeks. I guess they don't care about their buyers having choices, nor do they care about breaking up a complete series of images.

Then there are photos of two general admission tickets that I submitted last week:



Once again, the first one was accepted and the second one was rejected for "Poor lighting setup, poor contrast or incorrect exposure". Well, the images were both scanned, so there was no lighting setup to speak of. And as you can plainly see, the exposure and contrast are both fine on the Blue Ticket. As a matter of fact, both images have been accepted at every other agency they have been submitted to. So once again, I wrote support asking for an explanation and here is what I received:

"The image is to dark and the lower part of the image that contains lights could not be amplified by processing. You can adjust the levels and lit up the image."

What lights on the lower part of the image are they talking about? Are they even looking at the same image? I have written back twice asking for a further explanation but haven't received anything yet and doubt that I will.

So once again, Dreamstime has limited the choices for a potential buyer and will send them to another site if they can't find what they are looking for.  Not very good business sense if you ask me.

Dreamstime wants to act like they are one of the Big Two microsites, but they aren't. Their sales have plumetted lately and their site has been down multiple times in the past few weeks.

And don't get me wrong. I can take rejections just like the next person, but it is the inconsistency that is getting under my skin. If I put up a series of images, then I expect them to either all be accepted or all rejected. It makes no sense to accept half and reject half.
« Last Edit: May 18, 2006, 06:58 by GeoPappas »

« Reply #5 on: May 18, 2006, 08:37 »
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I feel for you GeoPappas.

I have a horrible acceptance rating on that site for POOR CONTRAST, LIGHTING BLAH BLAH...and its really annoying because these pictures are accepted everywhere and they have been making excellent downloads on 123RF so far.  Its very annoying because of the fact that I know my photos aren't bad and that they should be accepted or at least given better reason for rejection. 

I got a POOR LIGHTING SETUP for a picture taken outdoors of a barbecue (which was lit up by the sun).  I guess we have to find humour and just keep submitting and hope that they stop being dumb about it.

« Reply #6 on: May 18, 2006, 10:11 »
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well in response to ichiro, a barbque could be poorly lit by the sun. Harsh shadows, over exposed highlights, too dark, too light.. and so on.  Just because it is lit by the sun doesn't mean it is good lighting.  The sun is probably harder to work with than a lighting setup.

Geopappas, yeah, that is pretty creazy.. they were obviuosly reviewed by two different people or one really lazy person.  I don't know how they should do it, but the sites need to figure out how to get more standarized reviewers.

« Reply #7 on: May 18, 2006, 10:34 »
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I tried to make sure that it was fairly good.  But then again, it doesn't matter what I do, DT doesn't like it.

Standardized reviews are key.  Not sure how they are going to do it because if a reviewer is having a bad day they could just destroy everyone even though they are a good reviewer.  I have no idea how the system works internally but the industry is still fairly young - the best companies will slowly emerge to the top and the rest will fall behind.  So lets hope one of these sites comes up with a crazy concept that makes them better and forces other sites to find new ways of accepting/selling/etc

Greg Boiarsky

« Reply #8 on: May 18, 2006, 11:07 »
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Standardized reviews are key.  Not sure how they are going to do it

The answer is quite simple, really--but costs money, which is why the sites don't do it.  The answer is to have three reviewers examine each image.  The final decision is what at least two of the reviewers agree to.  The key is that reviewers must independently review each file, with no cross-talk among them.  This assures that no reviewer is unduly influencing any other reviewer.  And, it assures that a maverick reviewer won't trash good files.

This system would obviously cost the sites some money.  However, there are two very important points to consider:  (1) The overall quality of a site's image base would improve, with marginal images being weeded out; (2) The number of complaints from photographers would decrease, resulting in good PR for the site, and increased uploads.  I would argue that the site might be able to charge more per image or subscription, because overall image quality in the image database would improve.

Just my two cents worth.

« Reply #9 on: May 18, 2006, 11:15 »
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I think you are absolutely correct.  The best way to do it would be that way - provided that reviewers are top-notch.  You would then have a system that would probably take a little bit longer but the end-result would be better quality photos and perhaps better feedback on the pictures. 

What I'd like to see (and hopefully one of these sites goes public or is bought by a public company) is the financial statements of a fairly popular one among photographers to see how well the company itself is doing.  I'm not sure if Getty is public, I'm going to look into that, but because they bought iStock, they would be mandated to publish the financials of iStock.  I would be curious to see how the sites do.

« Reply #10 on: May 18, 2006, 11:16 »
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Yup Getty is public.  Soon enough we'll have some info I hope (Getty bought iStock correct?) - I hope I'm not getting confused with something else

« Reply #11 on: May 18, 2006, 11:21 »
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Getty is public and bought Istock.  they have jsut published their results and apparently got hammered on wall street.

One of the other big agencies (macro stock but not alamy) started its own but i dont remember which two they are and if they are public.

« Reply #12 on: May 18, 2006, 11:38 »
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i believe jupiter images bought stockxpert and stock.xchng

« Reply #13 on: May 18, 2006, 11:49 »
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From what I'm reading, Getty had record revenue and some other stuff as well.  They also acquired another microstock company Stockbyte.  Never heard of them.

« Reply #14 on: May 18, 2006, 12:03 »
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leaf - that is the one I am thinking off.  weird that they would buy a free site based in Hungary and then try to change in into a pay site.  seems to be working.  i have seen some of the bigger players from SS hit their forums so expect lots more photos to turn up shortly.

I dont think stockbyte is a true micro site but does sales of CD of photos etc.  Maybe wrong.

« Reply #15 on: May 18, 2006, 12:17 »
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Hi, sure, I guess we all can complain about the reviewers. I think in general they are doing a good job at DT. Sometimes it seems silly. But what do you expect? If an image is borderline one reviewer might except it and one don't. And some might make mistakes. You allways find someone complaining about the reviewers, wether it is SS, DT, IS, BS or Fotolia. I do not agree that it would be good to have 3 reviewers reviewing an image. Especially for DT. They give us at least 50%! Much much better than so many other sites and they are one of the big three. However, mainly you and not DT will loose when you take your images off their site because you will earn much less. There are many who prefer DT over other sites who won't take off their images. I have pity with the reviewers. Going through thousands of images every day and allways getting complaints.

« Reply #16 on: May 18, 2006, 12:24 »
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If an image is borderline one reviewer might except it and one don't. And some might make mistakes.

I don't think that any of the images that I posted were borderline.  And to back up that claim is the fact that those images have been accepted at every other agency that I have submitted them to, including SS and IS (the two toughest reviewers in the business).

So, no, I don't feel sorry for people who can't do their job correctly.

If they don't know the difference between a good photo and a bad one, then they shouldn't be there in the first place.

Not only are they costing time and money for the photographers who are trying to submit good work, but they are also hurting the buyer that is looking for a good image and can't find one.

« Reply #17 on: May 18, 2006, 12:35 »
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Even if they were accepted at other agencies, DT might think differently about your images. That they are accepted at SS does not make them good. However they have an issue with noise as we know. IS accepted photos which were not accepted on SS. DT accepeted phots which were not accepted at IS and SS and also sold. So you really cannot say an image is good or bad if it is accepted or not from the agencies. But yes you can see a tendency..
I belief you can find a lot of good images on DT, which have good quality and in general good quality photos gets accepted on DT.

« Reply #18 on: May 18, 2006, 12:47 »
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i think geopappas biggest reason to feel ill-done by is that 2 of the series was accepted and 2 were rejected. That is where the problem lies.  Wether a company wants to be extremely pickey or not I can live with.

« Reply #19 on: May 18, 2006, 13:20 »
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Yes I am sorry for that, I would consider that silly too, but mistakes happens, everywhere not only DT and that is no reason to totally reject DT.

« Reply #20 on: May 18, 2006, 13:49 »
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I don't think anyone is totally rejected DT - we are merely stating are high discontent with their inconsistency.  Mistakes are okay but inconsistency is not as easily forgotten.

This "best-quality image/top quality/super-quality image" search is, in my opinion, a way to reject photos.  Photos with scratches and dust spots and bad lens flare and all that kind of stuff is bad and should be rejected.  With that said, I think that a market can be generated for marginally rejected photos by selling them through a discounted-style site for people who don't need the very best quality and they are just putting a .7 MP photo on a webpage somewhere or something like that. 

Again, I understand the desire for quality so I may be overruled fairly quickly which is alright as well.

My photos, which are not good for Dreamstime because they lacked concept, proper lighting and such,were good enough for 123RF and Fotolia and Shutterstock (the 2 that were accepted before they shafted me) and they are selling fairly well.

Cheers

« Reply #21 on: May 18, 2006, 14:59 »
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i think geopappas biggest reason to feel ill-done by is that 2 of the series was accepted and 2 were rejected. That is where the problem lies. Wether a company wants to be extremely pickey or not I can live with.

Yes, Leaf, that is one of the reasons for my discontent.

The other reason is the ridiculous reasons that they have given for the rejections.  "Lack of Concept" for the first two candles, and "Poor lighting setup, poor contrast or incorrect exposure" for the blue ticket.

« Reply #22 on: May 22, 2006, 09:15 »
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Just an update on my Dreamstime photos...I've dipped to 25% again  :-[  Everyone took this last batch - albeit was StockXpert and Fotolia and Featurepics (which is useless, haven't gotten a single sale) but what can you do.  I get the same "poor lighting setup" message.  But then again, I get the for everything I put in most of the time, so I really don't know what to do about it.  Still stuck at 18 photos.  Although 123RF seems to be doing well for me so I'm happy about that.


 

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