Hi,

I am a complete newcomer to photography having picked up my first dslr on fleabay a couple of months ago.
I am having a bash at stock photography as a way of trying to learn and have been uploading to some of the sites with limited success, at the moment I am really enjoying just trying to get pics accepted, the handfull of sales are a bonus.

My dreamstime pics are http://www.dreamstime.com/resp2709173-free-images 

and fotolia http://en.fotolia.com/p/202044759

Any observations are more than welcome.

This one http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14783063/cow6.jpg was turned down at crestock for Artifacts and/or Compression flaws. I can't for the life of me see what they mean!

Any observations are more than welcome.

Perfect salable stock images. You don't need any lessons.  
Crestock, oh well. Who cares about that picky 0.25$ site? Try Shutterstock and keep shooting.

Thanks for the feedback.

I have had one failure at alamy and istock, haven't dared to try shutterstock yet

I use a lot of cow shots for companies selling ear tags

That's good info thanks. Half of my grand total of 7 sales are pics of cows. I hadn't worked out who was buying them, this just shows you have to think outside the box and there are markets that aren't immediately obvious.

hmm, very interesting!

I am using gimp rather than photoshop ( feeling virtuos after reading the piracy thread;) ) but I suppose i could have tried something similar, I've never had PS and certainly can't afford it atm and don't want to go down the torrents route.

I didn't wait or get any closer as he was starting to get rather fidgety and there was no fence between us 

Again, Thank you.

Can anyone give an opinion on the extra functionality gained by PS Elements over Gimp 2. Gimp + UF Raw (which are free) seems to have all the functionality I need but I am still learning how to enhance my pictures.

I take on board the "dark" comments. To my eye they seem ok, wonder if its my monitor ?

Can anyone give an opinion on the extra functionality gained by PS Elements over Gimp 2. Gimp + UF Raw (which are free) seems to have all the functionality I need but I am still learning how to enhance my pictures.

You could do a search here on the boards with "GIMP" as search term. The issue has been covered (I think). If not, Google for it. I'm quite confident you can do all you need with PE and certainly with GIMP. I remember PE doesn't have adjustment layers, but I just used those once. In general and for microstock, try to get the shot right (well lit, well composed) in cam. When not sure, just take many shots of the same subject with minor variations and only keep the best. The days of a 36 shots limit on a film roll are long over. 

I take on board the "dark" comments. To my eye they seem ok, wonder if its my monitor ?

It certainly does but there is a trick for it one of the gurus of this forum mentioned once. Your images will be bought by the thumb, so download some thumbs of similars from DT (since you're there), make a thumb from your image and view it next to those. The comparison will learn you if yours are too dark or the whether color is off.

Small disagreement with FD, yes Elements does do adjustment layers and if I remember right has since version 2 (the free one that still comes with cameras?) But they are up to version 9 which is much better than the free outdated, light version.

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/PhotoshopElements/7.0_Win/WSae2ea3b149d0c3591ae939f103860b3d59-7f8c.html

I use PSE 7 because I'm cheap. If there's some feature in 9 that I really, really, need, I'd buy it. Since I don't know of one, I'll wait. Many people qualify for the education version which is under $70 but walk into your local electronics store and you can find it for under $100, maybe under $90.

You and everyone else starting out, do not need Photoshop Creative Suit / CS5 or anything that does all that, at this stage. In fact most photographers will never really "need" CS. Lightroom may do it for you some day.

I found it funny where someone said they tried Elements and it didn't do what they needed. I asked what version and they answered, the free one that came with the camera four years ago. Well that's amazing, a free light version and they decided that Elements was sub-standard? 

I really don't know anything wrong with GIMP except menus and ease of use and since I haven't used it in over two years, that may be wrong on my part. Free is good but the convenience and ease at doing some editing functions may be the only difference from pay software.