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Author Topic: Check Out PicturEngine  (Read 57506 times)

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« Reply #150 on: June 11, 2012, 11:57 »
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Sorry - I was in a hurry and didn't read the post thoroughly...


grafix04

« Reply #151 on: June 11, 2012, 17:19 »
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No problems :)


« Reply #153 on: August 02, 2012, 13:31 »
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[DELETED] Whoops. Old post. Anyway...

Yeah, I was reading through the FAQ. Sounds interesting and the prices seem reasonable. Do you have an ETA for when the site will go out of beta?
« Last Edit: August 02, 2012, 13:35 by cthoman »

« Reply #154 on: August 03, 2012, 10:32 »
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[DELETED] Whoops. Old post. Anyway...

Yeah, I was reading through the FAQ. Sounds interesting and the prices seem reasonable. Do you have an ETA for when the site will go out of beta?


Hi cthoman,
Here is the link answering the question on our FAQs -
When will the site be "live?" http://support.picturengine.com/customer/portal/articles/478852-when-will-the-site-be-%22live-%22

Here is our FAQ Support center - http://support.picturengine.com/

Best,
JB

« Reply #155 on: August 03, 2012, 12:43 »
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Justin:

This sounds very interesting. I read through all the posts here and the FAQs on your site and just have a couple very specific questions that I think others might have as well, so I'm asking them here. I'm pretty convinced that it's worth signing up during your beta period but want to be sure I understand exactly how this will work.

My site is with Photoshelter. I have portfolio images on there that are not available for licensing as well as stock images available  for licensing - some RM and some RF. I also license photos through various traditional and microstock agencies. If I sign up for the $10/month plan, am I correct that the only photos from my site that you will index are those available as RM, and obviously priced for licensing? Do I need to switch to the $40 plan if I want to offer my RF images from my site directly rather than from the agencies even though I have my own sales platform? 

You said you've been doing a lot of testing/polling. Are most of those you've polled traditional RM buyers or are they primarily microstock buyers - or, better yet, what's the percentage of each? I know many buyers purchase both trad and micro - but I'm just wondering which side of the business you'll be pulling most of your buyers from. 

Sounds like this could be a great way to get more traffic on my site, so looking forward to your response. Thanks.

-Marianne

« Reply #156 on: August 03, 2012, 13:01 »
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« Reply #158 on: August 03, 2012, 18:09 »
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One post removed (and user banned for a week) for unnecessary rude language and personal attacks.  As always, disagreeing is fine (and welcomed) but posts should still be respectful.  Crude language and personal attacks are simply unnecessary.

lisafx

« Reply #159 on: August 03, 2012, 18:12 »
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Justin, still waiting for word of if/when Ktools compatibility will be added.  Until then, a no go for me. 

sc

« Reply #160 on: August 03, 2012, 19:20 »
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Justin, still waiting for word of if/when Ktools compatibility will be added.  Until then, a no go for me. 

Also SmugMug.

« Reply #161 on: August 04, 2012, 00:37 »
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Justin, still waiting for word of if/when Ktools compatibility will be added.  Until then, a no go for me. 

agreed.  I think that would be a big selling point for both you and ktools

« Reply #162 on: August 06, 2012, 14:17 »
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Hi Marianne,
The Advertising Only platform is not license specific.  When a buyer clicks your image within the PicturEngine search results, they are sent directly to your platform to license the image, regardless of license type. 
All buyers surveyed were active image buyers from my traditional RM agencies, Corner House Stock Photo and Picturesque.  Many of our buyers actively license all types of images for different clients with various needs.

Best,
JB

Thanks. I just signed up.

« Reply #163 on: August 10, 2012, 11:06 »
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Hi MSG,
Until now weve focused primarily on the Photographer RM and RM/RF advertising, sales, and distribution platform.  The photographer platform is nearing completion and we are now beginning to focus on the Advertising Only.  Each step through our Beta brings us one step closer to launching. 

If you are interested in advertising your current distribution platform with our Advertising Only solution and do not see your platform listed when registering, please email
[email protected] including the platform name in the title of the email, such as AO List KTools,  AO List SmugMug, etc.  (Please do NOT send any other correspondence to this email address.)  This type of participation is vital to speed up development of your platform and encourage swift action from the various platforms we are implementing.

If your platform is currently listed, I encourage you to register now and show your support, as well as lock-in your Beta rate for the future.  At this time, there is NO CHARGE to register for Advertising Only, until we are ready to launch and actually advertise PicturEngine.  Those who have registered for Advertising Only will receive a PayPal subscription link via email shortly prior to launch.  Once the subscription link is paid, your images will be included, and your rate is locked in.  If you choose not to activate your account, your account will be deleted the day we go live and you can register at a higher price after we launch.

We are looking forward to a big launch soon and many successful years ahead.

Stay ahead of the curve!
JB

Lagereek

« Reply #164 on: August 10, 2012, 11:20 »
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Frankly Justin,  you could really be on to something here. Since its a collective pool I cant see why buyers should not use it, saves them going through a heck of a lot of irrelevant stuff. Having said that, I presume theres no editing or anything on your part, so in practice, any port is welcome as long as they pay their fee? The problem is then that after some time lots of second rate material and bad keywordings could yet again take up the space? have I got this right BTW? and in the long run it could be a pool of everything and yet nothing. One of the problems in a large micro-agency, is to constantly flaunt good, commercial and saleable images.

best.

lisafx

« Reply #165 on: August 10, 2012, 13:34 »
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Sounds good Justin.  Glad you are looking into supporting Ktools.  I just sent in my AO Ktools e-mail :)

« Reply #166 on: August 13, 2012, 09:49 »
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Frankly Justin,  you could really be on to something here. Since its a collective pool I cant see why buyers should not use it, saves them going through a heck of a lot of irrelevant stuff. Having said that, I presume theres no editing or anything on your part, so in practice, any port is welcome as long as they pay their fee? The problem is then that after some time lots of second rate material and bad keywordings could yet again take up the space? have I got this right BTW? and in the long run it could be a pool of everything and yet nothing. One of the problems in a large micro-agency, is to constantly flaunt good, commercial and saleable images.

best.


Youre asking a great question here!  A search engine for the industry is exactly what our image buyers asked for, one that is unbiased and free of duplication and clutter.  The process of creating a search engine for the stock photo industry has been challenging, a learning experience. When we initially spidered the world's top agencies, gathering over 300 million search results, we noticed a ton of duplication (just as image buyers were saying, the same images are everywhere), and about 1/3 of the images were exact duplicates.  These duplicates were easily removed using an algorithm to find the base agency for each image(oldest upload). The search results after duplicates are removed yields a more reasonable 180.2 million images, yet still a staggering quantity.  We then focused on the enormous number of sims of the same images / photographer / shoot, etc.  Using visual image recognition, we stack these sims to reduce the result count even further, making the search more manageable.  The stacked sims are displayed to the user with a special icon, and a simple mouseover unstacks and displays all of the visual sims in an appealing way, thus eliminating the users need to see the photographers whole unedited shoot within their search results.  Were currently in the process of perfecting the visual sim image stacking.  I roughly estimate that the sim stacking will further reduce the result count by about another 1/3 or more.

After removing the exact duplicates and stacking the visual sims, we initially sort the results using several proprietary algorithms.  We specifically target and suppress images that use stuffed, irrelevant, or inaccurate keywords, and/or any other method of artificially gaining rank within the search results.  We use technology in addition to good old-fashioned humans to tell us the images they like seeing, based upon images added to lightboxes, licensed, etc.  We complete ALL of the above prior to sending the results through our image ranking, learning suggestion engine.  Once all of our search features are enabled, youll notice the best images rising to the top of the search, and the junk people arent interested in seeing falling to the bottom.  Its also important to understand that our search and suggestion engine is both site-wide and user specific.  When our individual users search, click, view, add to lightbox and license images, these images will float higher within their individual search results, but not necessarily within the site-wide search results, however when enough users like the same types of images, those images will see a rise within the overall results.

So to answer your question, you are correct that technically we dont do a human edit on directly uploaded images or on images from agencies around the world.  We instead rely on current search engine technology, along with tracking our users habits, to make the search the best it can be.  Furthermore, we provide our platform photographers with vital live analytics showing them how their images rank individually and overall, hence assisting their decision making in adjustments to their keywording or removing their lower grade images to help their best images rank higher within the search.

Here is an FAQ that may help too.
http://support.picturengine.com/customer/portal/articles/415614-what-about-editing-and-image-quality-standards-

Best,
JB


« Reply #167 on: October 19, 2012, 19:10 »
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Non-exclusive microstock photographers whose images sell frequently on the current microstock sites may want to take a hard look at PicturEngines new portal and marketing strategy.. (www.picturengine.com)

This portal has five primary goals:
1 To make it possible for customers to review, in a single search, all the images included in the major RM, RF and microstock collections as well as images from individual direct contributors to PicturEngine.
2 To answer customer complaints about finding the same images on multiple sites. To accomplish this they remove all duplicates from every search and only showing each unique image once.
3 - To give individual contributors priority over distributors.
4 To allow individual photographers to set the price for the use of their images.
5 To pay photographers 100% of the fees collected for the use of their images.

For more information check out my Selling-Stock.com article (http://www.selling-stock.com/Article/picturengine-a-unique-portal-for-microstocker) which is available for free for microstockers to review.


Just Checked out www.PictureEngine.com
They seem like exactly what I've been talking about. Or something very similar.
Now what we need is to get EVERYONE on board and leave their Agencies!
If this isn't what were talking about then please elaborate.
Thanks

« Reply #168 on: October 19, 2012, 21:29 »
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Already on board!

« Reply #169 on: October 20, 2012, 02:20 »
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How much are people making from PictureEngine.com?  Are they covering their costs?  Are their images being found by buyers?  There's been so little feedback and I wasn't convinced that this was worth using.  It would be great to be proved wrong.  I know this has just started up and its unlikely that people will be making much money from it yet but I didn't want to be paying $40 a month for something that might never make me money.  If they had made it free for the first 6 months, or only taken a commission from sales, most of us would be using it.

Poncke

« Reply #170 on: October 20, 2012, 03:29 »
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The site is really slow. Also seems its not for small fish.

« Reply #171 on: October 20, 2012, 07:55 »
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The site's never been slow for me.  The reason for lack of feedback is it hasn't fully launched yet.  Still in beta phase. 

Poncke

« Reply #172 on: October 20, 2012, 07:59 »
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This FAQ doesnt make sense:

Quote
When will my Advertising Only images go live on PicturEngine?
Last Updated: Aug 16, 2012 07:36PM CDT
No, with an Advertising Only account you only need to provide PicturEngine with your unique URL or ID to your sales system/platform. 

To qualify for an Advertising Only account, your images MUST be properly keyworded and searchable online, you MUST have production-ready high resolution images available for instant download, and your images MUST have an online pricing calculator.  If you meet all of these criteria, we will create a feed from your sales platform and include your images within our industrywide search results.

« Reply #173 on: October 22, 2012, 12:10 »
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After doing a little research on Picture Engine, my first impression is...This is EXACTLY what I'm looking for in regards for ALL of us to leave our Agencies and list our own images, and take back control of our images.

Now migrating all your images to Picture Engine is easy. You set up your own Web site, which is great, because you know all of us our picky and want total control of everything...LOL
So you can be creative and make your own, or like I chose to use PhotoShelter from me. You can use KTools or whom ever you'd like. Price your images your own way, and make 100% of the money owed to you!!!

NOW is the time to JOIN, and LEAVE your AGENCY!!!

OK I know most of you need money, and are scared! I am too, but WE NEED TO STICK TOGETHER if we want to have maximum impact on the market.

Here's my idea!
Set up your website... List it with PictureEngine...If your exclusive with anyone, make sure you change your Agreement with them. Get everything ready to leave your Agency...When Picture Engine has all of the bugs worked out and is ready to launch... Everyone at the same time puts in their 30 day notice to the Agencies all at once...A MASSIVE exit all at the same time.... Now the Agencies have to remove your images from their Library or be liable to be sued! Picture Engine will now be the ONE source for Art Buyers world wide to find images...OUR images that we have 100% control over..

Look we've got to do something... Stock Agencies are treating us worse and worse every year! Their taking more and more of our share of our sales. Enough is enough!!! Let's show them who the BOSS is and fight back and tell them where to stick it!!!

I encourage you to look at your industry, and ask yourself has it gotten better or worse? Are you making more money or less? Are you happy with your Stock Agency?

I think you know the answers, and our only option is to STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK...TAKE CONTROL YOUR IMAGES AND WIN THIS FIGHT!!!

« Reply #174 on: October 22, 2012, 12:19 »
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Well? dont know really, from 8 this morning up to now, I ve made, 420 bucks. Can picture engine beat that, if I leave all agencies?  doubt it. SS alone stands for 35%.


 

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