moori, I think it's fair to say that the people here like the site and would like to help make it successful, it's in all of our interests! I assume that MP want us to contribute - the site is advertising here. The rating system isn't working and it is annoying a lot of people. There are now many pornographic or near pornographic images appearing because they are not checked. How many female buyers are going to take offence with that? Sorry but I don't have the time to report each of these!

Of course they want you to contribute! Im not a spokesperson for MP in any way, I'm just talking out of my own ass

I couldn't agree more what you are saying about the near "pornographic images"! I read in the recent newsletter from MP that they are working on some kind of adult filter which will be released soon. I hope it will work well because some of these images will surely scare away some female (and male) buyers. They have also put in "Pornographic or any offensive photos may not be uploaded on Mostphotos" in the upload agreement. That was not there before (I think).

FlemishDreams : I contribute to Featurepics too and I do like that site. The upload is smooth and painless. It doesn't seem to generate a lot of sales though. (or maybe its just my work) One difference between these are that featurepics doesn't do any marketing. You are supposed to do that yourself if I understand it correctly?? MP is at least doing a lot of marketing in its primary market Scandinavia and will hopefully do more in the future. And btw the RF price at MP is 25 EUR, not 50 

When the site reaches a million pictures or more, a tiny shift can have a drastic effect in placement, and so become very important. When a site reaches a million or more pictures, a shift of only 0.25% can mean being pages back in the search results, and an image never selling.

Yap, my analysis too. It's the battle for page 1 and I wrote an article about it. Once your down the drains, no way to come out. It's a bit like the Flickr approach: upload daily but just 5 shots, so you will fly high in the radar beam. It's the basic flaw of political sites were network-rating drives popularity. I saw some tecnically bad shots on top of MP, and once buyers find out that MP has no real QC, they will hesitate to lose 25 Euro.

With all due respect to "perfect images" - but images are not being used at 100% magnification. Sure, a decent level of quality is a must, but a lot of images rejected due to "artifacts" print perfectly OK at 12"x8" size. There is a lot more to an image than pixel peeping and looking for "jaggies" at 100%. Particularly, when in a lot of cases "jaggies" and "artifacts" are just part and parcel of digital imaging - this is to say that they are not what they are called, but just normal effects due to the fact that the image is built from individual pixels. OK, I am awaiting flaming now 

With all due respect to "perfect images" - but images are not being used at 100% magnification.

1. Some are, for instance for posters or large calendars. I had an EL end last year on DT of a nature shot, and in the nex hour, the buyer (?I guess?) came back for more EL's of other nature shots, all full-size. I bet that wasn't for a 300px blog. With a price of 25Euro, customers pay in fact for an EL and when they find out that MP is a noise factory, they will go elsewhere.

2. Designers sometimes like to crop a detail, for instance with people shots or for banners.

3. Good isolations are essential for a designer's workflow. There are many sloppy isolations around, even on established sites. I once bought an "isolated" image from LO and when I wanted to make a composite with it, I found out the shot was full of non-255/255/255 in the "white" area. I had to do it all over. I made a naughty comment about on that image on LO, but what the heck... the comment is gone. I wouldn't dare to comment on any MP image since I don't want to be flooded with 1's.

4. Looking at some MP top images that show great on thumb but bad at 100%, I can just wonder why those people don't use their gear properly, and amongst that gear is PhotoShop. Most of those flaws are very avoidable.

5. It's your (?) site of course and your(?) choice. I just hope that your(?) customers won"t find out they can find perfect shots elsewhere for 5$ instead of unwarranted shots for 25Euro. Sometimes ignorance is a bliss (for the photographer).

6. I have some slightly out-of-focus images too, and even noisy. For noise there is a bag of tricks in Photoshop and I don't mean the overall NR that makes the image plastic. In that case, I just do all the patching at 10MP, then resize to 4MP (when it looks perfect), and upload the 4MP version.

7. Dedicated photogs don't have time to comment in a Flickerish way. We all started like that probably but found out it's a gigantic waste of time. Better invest that time in enhancing your skills. If I want to hang out socially, I go to a disco or to a dinner with friends ;-)

i ask my self sometimes why spend my valuable time to write comments for the same agencies which don't generate any or not good money for me...
So i make up my mind. i prefer to invest my time to shoot for agencies which returns money for my images.
Maybe all of us have to ask ourselves that question.

PS: of course this is out of question for those trying to promote these agencies and some times pretend they are contributors...

I'm not impressed with MP even though I have photos on the site. I'll leave them there for awhile

With a price of 25Euro, customers pay in fact for an EL and when they find out that MP is a noise factory, they will go elsewhere.

One positive aspect in MP for the buyer is the 100% zoom.  They can easily scan the whole image.  Were I a buyer, I would use that (SP also has a similar tool), especially for one of those special applications you've mentioned.

I think what really hurts a site are images with very obvious quality issues - lighting, color balance, composition.  I don't browse MP but I know what I see in SP - some people don't even bother rotating vertical images to the right position!  I would easily delete 5-10% of what's submitted there just by the thumbnails. 

Another common mistake that happens in SP and may occur in MP is image uprezzing - and I'm talking about making a 6MPix image out of a 2MPix one...  Even at smaller ratios, if the original is not really sharp the resulting image is so poor. Yet people think this is a good thing because people can print larger.

Regards,
Adelaide