Why are they doing all this, just for fun because they are jerks?

Yes, that's my guess. It seems to be their main form of entertainment.

My neighbors are harassing me�to the point that I'm suing them�and for months I've been sure they're disabling my Blink security cameras at night. They already broke into some wildlife cameras on my property, took out the SD cards, deleted the videos of themselves approaching the cameras and put the cards back in. Tonight I set up a cheap Panasonic video camera in a window in my house, and captured my neighbor driving down their driveway, turning off their car, and then pointing some sort of device�a laser? Infrared light? at the security camera on my front door. Whatever they're using is not handheld, because it moves smoothly up and down without any wobble whatsoever. They wait until dark, so my footage is awful. I lightened it in iMovie (can you tell I'm not a videographer?), but it's super grainy.

Does anyone have any idea what the heck they could be doing...and how I might get better video of them without using infrared light? I can't tell you how much this is creeping me out. If you want to see the bad video, PM me. Thanks!

I propose that you limit the maximum number of downloads to 10 photos per day, 2 videos, 5 illustrations ... and add 1 extra free per photo purchased with real money

I propose they allow 5 free downloads per day of their software per person.

Wouldn't it be better for Adobe to offer their software for free to attract people to paying decent rates for stock art? Makes much more sense to me.

Quote

The program also supports a need for creative democratization to make high quality content available to all.

Does this mean everything needs to be priced to the lowest common denominator, or given away for free? i.e. people who normally couldn't afford stock images or video are now able to acquire that content, just because the barrier needs to be lowered to cater to everyone?

Why? What's wrong with making content available only to those who can afford it? It's not like stock images are overly expensive. Do artists have to suffer income loss just because some people can't or don't want to pay a reasonable license fee?

Why not give Adobe software away for free to attract people to licensing images?

Quote from: Tenebroso on October 15, 2020, 21:12

Actually, the photos are paid, with an agreement between the artist and AS. Free is for the customer. AS pays for images, whether they are downloaded or not. Logically, you will have the best of the best, they will not give away anything that is not extraordinary. At an agreed price, whether the image is downloaded or not.

If that was directed at me, that's not the point. Regardless if the people who own the free photos are paid, more free photos hurts the people like us who aren't being directly paid.

Who remembers free ad-based internet from the late 1990s? You open the app to connect and while the 56K modem takes a minute to brrrr-weeee-bing-bong you get to stare at an advertisement. For a while a I didn't pay for internet. Why would I if free internet was available? Over time the free services would go out of business. So I kept finding new ones until there were no more free internet providers and I had no option but to pay. And that's what needs to happen with free photos. They need to go away because the more free options that are available the fewer people will buy photos. One of these filthy rich stock companies needs to buy out these free sites and shut them down. Or creatives need to come to their senses and realize they're hurting themselves and the entire industry by submitting content to free sites.

The problem is that they're not hurting themselves. Look at Freepik. They made their money by stealing work and offering it for free, and Shutterstock allowed them to earn affiliate money. Then when they had enough money to make people pay they suddenly got selective and invited a chosen few to upload high quality work, which they make good earnings from, if you believe what people are saying. So someone like me loses tons of money while they give away my stolen work, but Freepik makes money, and Shutterstock gets referral business, and a select number of contributors get chosen to get a windfall while the getting's good.

Freepik then went on to become an Adobe affiliate, and now Adobe has made a deal with some of those contributors to pay them in advance and give their work away "free" in order to attract more creatives to Adobe software. So you have a small group of contributors quietly cutting deals with Shutterstock, Freepik, Adobe, etc. while the rest of us get shut out, have our royalties slashed and eventually give up.

Sorry, but this is like someone punching you in the face ten times, and then after you ask them to stop because they�re hurting you, they punch you in the face nine times.

^^^ I can�t like this comment enough. It�s just like the statue of the brave little girl facing down the Wall Street bull, paid for and dreamed up by an investment firm that has a dismal record of hiring and promoting women. Smoke and mirrors.

And the request to keep comments about both announcements in separate threads, as if they�re not connected, and as if keeping the announcements separate will somehow keep us from connecting them.

Quote from: MatHayward on October 14, 2020, 13:04

...I reached out to the team ... I expect changes will be made in the future.

Mat, I don't envy your situation, and I know you're relaying information on our behalf, but...

We - contributors - have heard a lot about things Adobe will be doing on the contributor side of things, but not much has been delivered. Getting the stats back to what Fotolia had, searching our portfolios (on the contributor side) by keywords, and on and on - you know the list, I know.

If we could get a commitment from the development team and a rough date for when these changes (to ensure paid content shows in free searches) would happen, that would make this more than "let's do lunch sometime". Jim Pickerell's article says "Adobe intends to monitor and fine tune the collection on a daily basis". It doesn't provide details, but if work is ongoing, let's make this less of a gut punch for existing contributors by keeping paid content visible.

If I were in a position to define what should happen, in addition to showing paid content in searches with very few results, I'd also say that every single page of search results of free images should have one row of paid content (preferably up top, but even below would be OK). IMO, there should never be any page without some paid content visible. You could make the paid content row smaller thumbnails if you wanted, but it should just be there somewhere so the site doesn't look like Unsplash.

They were much too busy cutting deals with a few contributors and setting up a free section to have time to make any improvements for the rest of us.

Quote from: changingsky on October 14, 2020, 10:38

Matt. Do you think it is a good sign that people only viewed and still didn't comment? Not good feeling really. The pattern is already known

I expect there to be questions and concerns from the contributors which is exactly why I started this conversation before the email went out. I know many people read the posts in this forum without commenting so to answer your specific question, I don't "view" that as a sign in any way.

I can assure you that I've been asking hard questions of the team and I genuinely believe this program has the potential to benefit contributors in several ways. I'll share a couple of key takeaways from my original questions here.

First, the contributors with content in the free collection were compensated in advance for their participation. While it's limited to select contributors now, we'll allow others to participate as time goes on. The content in the free collection will be rotating to keep it fresh and relevant. As content leaves the free collection, it returns to the paid collection.

Second, and I believe most importantly, if you browse the Adobe Stock free collection, you'll see that there are a lot of assets that cover a wide range of subjects, but no one particular subject has a deep selection to choose from. That is by design. When someone who typically only uses free sites visits Adobe Stock, they now have the opportunuity to see more search results beyond free. This is a potential customer base that was not visiting paid sites historically. The result should be an expanded market for paying customers.

I welcome your feedback and look forward to the conversation.

-Mat

What I see in the free vectors, searching within my niches, is simpler ripoffs of some of my illustrations. I'm sure if other illustrators look they'll find the same thing. So now I'm competing against someone who's copying my work and getting paid in advance to offer it for free and take sales from me.

Yay.

Who knows of a good, free alternative to Adobe Illustrator? I'd like to switch to that, and maybe it'll attract me to Adobe's product and I'll feel the sudden urge to pay for it instead of the free software.

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on October 06, 2020, 13:57

With hindsight it's easy to say she should have retired but there very well could have been another Democrat in after Obama.

Actually, history doesn't support that argument. Neither one of America's main political parties tends to hold the presidency for more than two terms in a row.

There are exceptions, of course (Reagan's 2 terms + GHW Bush's 1 term), but generally you'll find a long-established pattern of two terms/eight years of one party followed by two terms/eight years of the other.

I have a strong hunch that Justice Ginsburg knew that.

Yet HRC won by almost 3 million votes. The country wanted another Democratic POTUS. Hanging chads, the supreme court and the electoral college have handed the presidency to losers. The Democratic party needs to grow a freaking backbone and fight like h*ll against the gross unfairness that leads to these outcomes. At this point only 29% of registered voters are Republican. Don�t blame Ginsburg for the nefarious machinations of the Republican party. Point the blame for this farce of a presidency and a stacked supreme court where it belongs.

Quote from: Shelma1 on September 21, 2020, 10:31

typically royalties received from your work are reported as self-employment income

Yes, that's what I said.  Thanks.

No, you said they're reported as "regular" income. I consider "regular" income to be wages. When you use Turbotax it separates wages, reported on W-2, from royalties, reported on 1099. Wages and royalties (or self-employment income) are taxed differently.