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Agency Based Discussion => Dreamstime.com => Topic started by: HughStoneIan on August 30, 2007, 10:36

Title: Verdict on Fotolia's V2
Post by: HughStoneIan on August 30, 2007, 10:36
(Oops!  This should have a Fotolia subject line and not Dreamstime.  I'm not sure how to change that now that it's posted---sorry.)

Share your opinions of FT's upgrade to V2.  Here are my thoughts from the United States side:

--- Improvements: The only one I have noticed is that sales credits are immediately approved now rather than the original 3-day wait.  Oh, yes, and that hover-your-mouse-over-the-thumbnail enlarged view---wow.

--- Detriments:
     - As slow as or slower than V1.
     - New watermark makes for much easier thievery.
     - As of this writing a couple of my files still have no keywords.
     - The staff seem to be super-hyper-sensitive to any criticism, even worse than Istock, which is hard to imagine.
     - I still get their "floating status bar" which makes it impossible to see portions of my screen.

Overall, not much of an improvement for contributors, I think.  Sales are starting to pick up for me now that vacation-time is drawing to a close, so I hope that at least their search engine has seen a real upgrade.
Title: Re: Verdict on Fotolia's V2
Post by: Peter on August 30, 2007, 12:52
Improvements:

-small licence 800x600 (higher prices for other licences)
-credit aproval without waiting
-it is faster generaly, but not much.
-loosing over 1.5 millions of old images, which is good for new submiters like me, my sales exploded after V2, I like that. :)
-nothing special
- fast reviews of images

Bad things:
- 4MP minimum size (why not 1600x1200?)
- search engine bugs, that are still not fixed. (hope they will be soon)
- removing exclusive licences (even though I never sold once, but I was still living in a hope, that I will earn 60 (or more) dollars for 1 sale, lol)
- when I click SUBMIT image, I have no option DELETE or EDIT before validation.
Title: Re: Verdict on Fotolia's V2
Post by: madelaide on August 30, 2007, 16:37
- 4MP minimum size (why not 1600x1200?)
It used to be like that until some months ago.  I guess smaller images are rarer now, but I also find it a pity because sometimes I "discover" some good old 2 or 3MPix image in my HD...

I can't actually complain of FT, it's not my best seller, but a steady one (even after V2) and the only one I ever had ELs (one last month, but others also in the past).

Regards,
Adelaide
Title: Re: Verdict on Fotolia's V2
Post by: sharply_done on August 30, 2007, 17:01
... sometimes I "discover" some good old 2 or 3MPix image in my HD...
You can probably upsize a 3MP to 4MP and get away with it - it's only a 15% size increase.
Title: Re: Verdict on Fotolia's V2
Post by: madelaide on August 30, 2007, 18:43
You can probably upsize a 3MP to 4MP and get away with it - it's only a 15% size increase.
That's a good idea, and I had a few carefully upsized images in some sites (even IS!) and one was even 100% from 640x480 to 1280x960. I wonder however how picky FT may be on that, any experiences?

Regards,
Adelaide