MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => iStockPhoto.com => Topic started by: B8 on April 14, 2015, 22:23
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The new asset detail pages now contain no descriptions at all. No more ability to link light boxes or anything either to your images. I realize this was coming for a while, but in this case what was the point of that whole recent campaign of trying to get all contributors to go back and write longer descriptions on all their thousands of old files in order to get better Google image search results? A big waste of everyone's time it seems in having everyone do that for nothing? What a big circle wank!
In addition, they are now offering huge closeup images of 1,235 pixels on the longest side. Pretty soon people wanting a small or medium sized download will simply download the closeup images only and for free and then run either Inpaint Pro (https://www.theinpaint.com/ (https://www.theinpaint.com/)), Remove Watermark Pro (http://remove-watermark-pro.en.softonic.com/ (http://remove-watermark-pro.en.softonic.com/)), or one of the myriad of other programs out there that work in a content-aware way to automatically remove unwanted watermarks from photos.
I'll bet we can expect to see our sales ratchet down another big percentage here very soon.
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I'm not seeing any changes yet. And when it comes to descriptions they are still there. I think they're visible for the visitor the first time they view an image, and then the text is hidden but still on the page so it can be indexed by the search engines. Or something like that.
I agree that large watermarks is quite risky. I see this at many sites, where the previews are huge and the watermarks are tiny, almost invisible or just covering a tiny part of the image. It makes it very easy to steal. Can't believe they don't take this more seriously.
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They are claiming that better descriptions helps Google SEO:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=366063&messageid=7091657 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=366063&messageid=7091657)
Though I have sympathy with StanRohrer's post:
"So for those of us who are even IS exclusives, this SEO project just makes it easier for buyers to find the image across multiple Getty family sites so the buyer can get it from the lowest priced site and the contributor gets the lowest income. Why should I (contributor) spend my time to help lower my income."
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=366063&messageid=7091821 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=366063&messageid=7091821)
I also feel, in an adaptation of another post, that I'd rather an actual iS buyer was able to see my detailed description, than some 'organic searcher' was able to find and steal my image via Google.
BTW, can someone please tell me what 'organic' search is as opposed to an ordinary Google search?
Apparently under the present iteration of the new ADP, the ONLY time a visitor will see the description on a file is the very first page they see on the site until they've 'been cookied'. After that, no descriptions on any file.
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365525&messageid=7088449 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365525&messageid=7088449)
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Removing the descriptions is completely stupid.
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BTW, can someone please tell me what 'organic' search is as opposed to an ordinary Google search?
Organic search is Google search results that are not paid for (as opposed to the paid search results that show up at the top of the results and have a little yellow box that says "ad" in them).
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Removing the descriptions is completely stupid.
And I'll bet the search engines soon figure out viewable and non-viewable fields (just like keywords on HTML pages) and these descriptions rate them lower priority in search results. Hence the SEO long descriptions IS has asked for will have to become viewable again on the ADP. Then these long descriptions will be less than human readable and we will again be asked to shorten them up. Ha!
Chasing a search engine by SEO results may produce short term gains but likely is futile in the end.
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Removing the descriptions is completely stupid.
And I'll bet the search engines soon figure out viewable and non-viewable fields (just like keywords on HTML pages) and these descriptions rate them lower priority in search results. Hence the SEO long descriptions IS has asked for will have to become viewable again on the ADP. Then these long descriptions will be less than human readable and we will again be asked to shorten them up. Ha!
Chasing a search engine by SEO results may produce short term gains but likely is futile in the end.
Yes the search engines will just move the goal, which is (I imagine) to get paid for showing favourable results for other businesses.
Whatever, in my case, and I'm sure yours, any re-doing of information represents a mammoth task, many, many hours of work, with no real promise of any return.
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BTW, can someone please tell me what 'organic' search is as opposed to an ordinary Google search?
Organic search is Google search results that are not paid for (as opposed to the paid search results that show up at the top of the results and have a little yellow box that says "ad" in them).
Tx
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I'm not seeing any changes yet. And when it comes to descriptions they are still there. I think they're visible for the visitor the first time they view an image, and then the text is hidden but still on the page so it can be indexed by the search engines. Or something like that.
I agree that large watermarks is quite risky. I see this at many sites, where the previews are huge and the watermarks are tiny, almost invisible or just covering a tiny part of the image. It makes it very easy to steal. Can't believe they don't take this more seriously.
When I was logged in yesterday, every Asset Detail page i looked at, whether for my own files, or someone else's were the new design with no descriptions or light box links at all and showing only keywords in big blocks across the page under the image.
Now they are all back to as they were before and have always been. Very odd.
I should have taken some screen shots of what I saw and posted them, but at the time I assumed it was a permanent change already and the same for everyone so I didn't record it.
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I'm not seeing any changes yet. And when it comes to descriptions they are still there. I think they're visible for the visitor the first time they view an image, and then the text is hidden but still on the page so it can be indexed by the search engines. Or something like that.
I agree that large watermarks is quite risky. I see this at many sites, where the previews are huge and the watermarks are tiny, almost invisible or just covering a tiny part of the image. It makes it very easy to steal. Can't believe they don't take this more seriously.
When I was logged in yesterday, every Asset Detail page i looked at, whether for my own files, or someone else's were the new design with no descriptions or light box links at all and showing only keywords in big blocks across the page under the image.
Now they are all back to as they were before and have always been. Very odd.
I should have taken some screen shots of what I saw and posted them, but at the time I assumed it was a permanent change already and the same for everyone so I didn't record it.
First of all, the ADP was rolled out to a changing 5% of visitors at a time; then 25%; now, 'according to Lobo', "the ADP is only out to less than 50% of the membership right now. There might be changes to how content is displayed, if only ever so slightly."
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365525&messageid=7097089 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365525&messageid=7097089)
Worth keeping up with that thread, if this issue is of interest.
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What B8 described seeing doesn't sound to be changes on how content is displayed that are "ever so slight".
You would also think if they've rolled it out to 50% of the membership then those 50% of the membership would at least see the same thing all the time. But it sounds like a rolling change which seems to be pot luck for everyone at any given moment.
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What B8 described seeing doesn't sound to be changes on how content is displayed that are "ever so slight".
You would also think if they've rolled it out to 50% of the membership then those 50% of the membership would at least see the same thing all the time. But it sounds like a rolling change which seems to be pot luck for everyone at any given moment.
"Ever so slight" would refers to changes to the new ADP itself, not compared to the old one.
And yes, it's a rolling roll-out.
'According to kelvinjay', "there are numerous test versions of the ADP out there"
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365525&messageid=7096999 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365525&messageid=7096999)
Again, following the thread is useful for people who are interested in this, and those who have concerns (and are able to) actually contributing to the thread might have some value.
On the other hand, several people have asked why 'someone' thought it was a good idea to get rid of descriptions, and no-one has answered it yet; nor other questions, like
(ClarkAndCompany) "Lobo, do you ever report back to the people who make the decisions about the ADP about our concerns? And consequently is anything going to change ...? It always seems to be the way that a forum is a useful vent for HQ to simply ignore contributors ideas, questions and concerns."
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365525&messageid=7097063 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365525&messageid=7097063)
which certainly seems to be the case over the past few years. No matter how daft some of their ideas have been, they are a fait accompli, even when the errors are pointed out.
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These guys are idiots, whats the problem with displaying a description.
They're showing a description for editorial underneath the photos, what's the big problem
with showing it for commercial photos ?
Take a landscape photo, if you don't have the location in the title now the buyer wouldn't know exactly where its from.
Another thing I couldn't see how to sort by newest first on my own or anyone elses portfolio page. I normally scroll through to see how many of my new photos haven't sold yet.
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Another thing I couldn't see how to sort by newest first on my own or anyone elses portfolio page. I normally scroll through to see how many of my new photos haven't sold yet.
Unless they've changed that too, and you're on a different iteration than I'm currently seeing (!), on the search page, under the title near the top left of the page, "[Subject] Stock Photos", there are Best Match, New and Most Popular sort options, the latter being further sortable into This Year, This Month and All Time.
In your portfolio, it's in a similar place. Under [Username] Portfolio, if it's your own port, you'll have links to details, subscriptions, ELs etc, and under that, the three sort options above are in boxes.
If your layout is different from either the old ADP or the new version I've seen (which doesn't affect the above), you're on your own, sorry.
Added: just noticed Search Results look a bit different in IE than in FF (which I use). But the sort function is towards the top left in both.
(http://www.lizworld.com/Sort.jpg)
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Another thing I couldn't see how to sort by newest first on my own or anyone elses portfolio page. I normally scroll through to see how many of my new photos haven't sold yet.
Unless they've changed that too, and you're on a different iteration than I'm currently seeing (!)
Yup, they seem to be changing the Search Results Pages too. I've also seen a new version a few times todays. It pretty much sucks. No options for changing the sort order. No search options on the left side.
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^^ Another weird decision if it is a positive decision and not an occasional bug. (I don't check the bug thread there. Life's too short.
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IS's management motto is:
"If it's not broken, break it. If it's broken, break it some more."
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^^ Another weird decision if it is a positive decision and not an occasional bug. (I don't check the bug thread there. Life's too short.
It's definitely a new design. Very slow. No Loupe. But I did find the sort order…it doesn't show up when you're looking at your own portfolio, but does show up on searches.
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If some evil genius intentionally set out to make Istock as complicated and unusable for customers as possible, I can't imagine they would do a better job than they have done with these latest improvements.
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^^ Another weird decision if it is a positive decision and not an occasional bug. (I don't check the bug thread there. Life's too short.
It's definitely a new design. Very slow. No Loupe. But I did find the sort order…it doesn't show up when you're looking at your own portfolio, but does show up on searches.
That's what I'm seeing, able to sort in search but not my own or anybody elses "portfolio" page
I can go to "my uploads" page and see them in upload order
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I'm not saying it's a good idea to remove descriptions from the details page - the possibility of a caption under the image, as in the case with editorial, would be better IMO - but I'm not going to worry about it. Life's too short, and things change anyway. And just as a comparison, Offset images haven't got descriptions either, though their titles can be expanded more than on iStock.
FWIW, I haven't seen any real reason to change the way I usually do titles, descriptions and keywords, which is simply being as brief and accurate as I possibly can. Keywords show up more prominently on the page than what they used to, which I like, and this is where important additional information about the image can be found. I know a lot of people on msg are very critical of iStock, and in many cases for good reasons, no doubt. Personally I think a lot of the recent changes are good, so I'll just keep an open mind and see how things go.
Edited to remove ref.
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When I saw that new Asset Detail Page temporarily I also noticed that they removed the size options now and only offer the buyer the option to download the full, highest-res file that is available, even if the buyer may only require a small sized file for web use.
This means clients that are not adept at resizing photos may be putting the high res photos they download right onto their web sites, thus making it much easier for photo buyers to do Google image searches using the comp from the iStock site from the Asset Detail page and then locate a free copy of the full res image somewhere online for free.
This is just another level of decreasing security on our content and making it much easier for copyright infringement and loss of revenue to occur.
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When I searched for one of my primary keywords, and clicked "NEW" I saw four images from the last 148 approved, the rest are older.
As for the Caption and Description = Identical.
Another shut down tomorrow, which tells me, I should make a screen capture of what the pages look like now. :) Then Monday maybe I'll be included in the new improved view. I'm seeing the same old pages as far as I can see.
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I was just able to pull this up using Tor Browser without being logged in to the site. This confirms they are already using the new Asset Detail page design I first indicated when I started this thread and the layout contains all the elements I mentioned such as no descriptions, only the option to download the full-res image, and of course no lightbox links as expected.
I just pulled up this image at random, so there is no significance as to why I chose this image. If you pull up the Asset Detail page for any image then the layout and design will be exactly the same, but may show some "Similar Image" thumbnail options on certain images.
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And here are the high-res comps they are providing now which are very easy to remove the watermarks on. This file was 988K when I saved it as JPG from the zoom page and it is a 3.26MB file when uncompressed. I had to compress it down to under 500K though so I could add it to this post.
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A slight tangent, but I just looked at a few SS image pages, and these had no description on the page as opened (didn't look for a link, there might be one). Has this always been the case there? Also, I see their search now looks like the Google Image search. How long has that been the case?
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^^ Another weird decision if it is a positive decision and not an occasional bug. (I don't check the bug thread there. Life's too short.
It's definitely a new design. Very slow. No Loupe. But I did find the sort order…it doesn't show up when you're looking at your own portfolio, but does show up on searches.
I'm still on the old ADP logged in in FF, but logged out in IE, I'm on the new ADP, but can see the sort options in my port (remember, I'm not logged in), and a couple of old ports I tried.
Presumably, we are on two of the 'several different' ADPs which they're testing.
That's what I'm seeing, able to sort in search but not my own or anybody elses "portfolio" page
I can go to "my uploads" page and see them in upload order
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A slight tangent, but I just looked at a few SS image pages, and these had no description on the page as opened (didn't look for a link, there might be one). Has this always been the case there? Also, I see their search now looks like the Google Image search. How long has that been the case?
The descriptions are there, directly underneath the loupe link and the words "Stock photo" - some of the descriptions look more like titles than descriptions, though.
Istock has just delivered the worst four days for downloads that I have had in 11 years. Presumably it's something to do with the latest "improvements".
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It looks like a give away. Every time uploading to any agency already with a thought - will they use this for their own profit only?
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Istock has just delivered the worst four days for downloads that I have had in 11 years. Presumably it's something to do with the latest "improvements".
Shurely shome mishtake.
According to Lobo, "You don't know if people aren't buying your images because of the new ADP. You can make that assumption but there isn't any data to support it."
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365525&messageid=7097515 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365525&messageid=7097515)
Hohoho.
First 18 days of April were dire for me after the sudden boost I had (relative to Jan-Feb) in mid March. Looking back at previous Aprils, the Easter/Spring Break excuse doesn't wash with my previous stats. Subs is no doubt a factor too.
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Now, everything as before
they have rethought
it would seem (and I hope).
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Now, everything as before
they have rethought
it would seem (and I hope).
Only a percentage of people see the new ADP at any one time, on some sort of rolling basis.
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Istock has just delivered the worst four days for downloads that I have had in 11 years. Presumably it's something to do with the latest "improvements".
Shurely shome mishtake.
According to Lobo, "You don't know if people aren't buying your images because of the new ADP. You can make that assumption but there isn't any data to support it."
[url]http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365525&messageid=7097515[/url] ([url]http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365525&messageid=7097515[/url])
Hohoho.
First 18 days of April were dire for me after the sudden boost I had (relative to Jan-Feb) in mid March. Looking back at previous Aprils, the Easter/Spring Break excuse doesn't wash with my previous stats. Subs is no doubt a factor too.
Thank goodness for Lobo! Now I know that I don't know why people aren't buying my images from iStock.
But at least I know that it's iStock that isn't selling them!
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Ooops! Spoke too soon! There goes one....
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If some evil genius intentionally set out to make Istock as complicated and unusable for customers as possible, I can't imagine they would do a better job than they have done with these latest improvements.
Wasn't Yuri Acurs supposed to be their resident evil genius? :D
(http://images.moviefanatic.com/iu/t_full/v1364990936/dr-evil.jpg)
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Someone just bought a "Doha city skyline" picture from me. It was taken in 2004, before 40 or 50 skyscrapers sprang up and shows a rather sparse horizon. I hope they weren't looking for the current skyline because the absence of the caption removes the information about the picture's date - the sort of information that Getty apparently doesn't care about.
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and the sad fact is even though they are supposed to be using the descriptions for "organic" searches I still can't find any image of mine that has unusual words in the description (I know the CV keyword system would never pick them up)
I did an "orgasmic" ;D search on google and the terms present images from all the stock agencies and even Thinkstock but absolute ZERO showed up from iStock/Getty.
So their description based search doesn't work either. ;D
Frakking jokers >:(
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Not sure if this has already been brought up, but now all users have the ability to click on the "Switch to Classic View" button at the bottom of each image page which brings the user to the original page format showing the image with all of our original descriptions and links.
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Not sure if this has already been brought up, but now all users have the ability to click on the "Switch to Classic View" button at the bottom of each image page which brings the user to the original page format showing the image with all of our original descriptions and links.
Sadly and unfortunately, 'according to Lobo': "The Classic/New view is a temporary feature that will also eventually be removed."
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365525&messageid=7103035 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365525&messageid=7103035)
Let's hope either that they've changed their mind; or better still, they'll just get rid of the new ADP.
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Perhaps if the description weren't removed, this wouldn't have happened: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/donald-trump-campaign-ad-nazi-soldiers (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/donald-trump-campaign-ad-nazi-soldiers)
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Perhaps if the description weren't removed, this wouldn't have happened: [url]http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/donald-trump-campaign-ad-nazi-soldiers[/url] ([url]http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/donald-trump-campaign-ad-nazi-soldiers[/url])
I have always felt that the description is absolutely mandatory - and AFAIK they have not given even one plausible reason for why they are removing it - but it doesn't guarantee the buyer won't ignore it:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2007/12/taking_stock.html (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2007/12/taking_stock.html)
Besides anything that underlines Trump's idiocy is a Good Thing, in my view.
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Perhaps if the description weren't removed, this wouldn't have happened: [url]http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/donald-trump-campaign-ad-nazi-soldiers[/url] ([url]http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/donald-trump-campaign-ad-nazi-soldiers[/url])
I thought the same thing when I read the article. At the same time though we should be putting better titles on images, the title could easily have been "Group of German World War II reenactors", that would have been better even with the description in place.
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Yep.
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Then again you could have written perfect titles and descriptions but stupidly/inexplicably opted in to have them changed to 'improve SEO' and ended up with rubbish like that reported on this thread http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365797&page=5 (http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=365797&page=5) or others I've seen reported elsewhere or heard of personally.
Presumably they outsourced the work to a "group" of non-English speakers.
Eejits.