Thanks Joann. I was thinking an extended license would cover it. A person in the fine art group said she checked with 123rf, who said NO license covered it, which I don�t think is right, but I wanted to check with Adobe, too, since I still sell there.

May be 123rf was talking about re-selling as stock ?  I don't think any EL covers derivative art being sold as stock (because you would need copyright for that), while it does cover selling it in print ?

What everyone else said. Do the best you can removing images where you can. You did nothing wrong and she signed a release. The rest is out of your hands.

Thanks.  The problem is, she didn't do anything wrong either, it's just her family that is nagging her about it.  So if I can help her by deleting 4 images, no problem.

Do not offer her money! You may not use lawyers but they could and they could use that as an admission of having done something wrong or of liability in some way.

I am not a lawyer but personally I think I would delete the photo just to avoid the hassle. There's nothing you can do about the licenses already sold but buyers wont usually reuse photos for new campaigns so they should rapidly see less of it. Most news organisation or magazines etc. will have a subscription to a stock site and its easier to search up something appropriate than digging through old photos on file.

That makes sense, I can tell her that.  And the more I think of it, deleting the images is the least I can do as a gesture of goodwill.
And no, I will absolutely NOT offer her money.

@Anyka:
Are you aware of that you ensure at ss this image can be used for sensitive use ?

Yes, I am aware, thanks.

This brouhaha makes me glad I mostly shoot critters.

Not a single wild burro I've ever photographed has come back to complain that I didn't call him/her a wild donkey.   

Haha, this one made my day!

Glad to hear I did not use officially offending words!  The model is from the UK, not American, so I wasn't sure if there were cultural differences on this topic.  If he writes again, I'll tell him there's a difference between an incorrect and a racist word, and if he's searching for incorrect keywords at Shutterstock, he'll find billions of them ...

I woke up this morning with a facebook message about a Shutterstock batch of mine.  The series is of a black woman with african braided hair, which I call "afro hair" in the description of the images (because the model called it that way).  She is doing her hair looking into a mirror, so I cannot just ignore her hair in the description.
These images had reasonably good sales for 3 years already, and now I get this message on facebook :

• Please change your labeling of your photography on shutter stock as it is it is not even kinda racist.  You referring to a woman of color as having a afro hairstyle is completely disgusting. I spend hours looking for photos. and can't find them because of your complete race base labeling. I am attempting to convey the problem without anger.but there is not excuse. your whole photo shoot has not one afro. and to refer any women of color as default having an afro is completely racist. there is no way its a mislabel because afros are a thing specifically. thats the equivalent of me calling you from Belgium an asian.  for your benefit please update this soon it will support your pocket and creative directors looking through hours of shittly named photos.  I will check in on your progress in a few days before reaching out to shutterstock direct.

The message is from a person in North Carolina, and he obviously knows I'm not American.
I'm not asking how to reply - I already replied that I don't understand his point, because to me, to the model and to my Ghanese friends, this hairdo is called an afro hairstyle.
My reply was very friendly and polite, as I don't want somebody to get nasty on my FB business page or anywhere else.


But I do have 2 questions :


To the American Microstockers :  is calling this an "afro hairstyle" offending??  Here in Belgium, even between black people, it is not, but maybe in American culture it is
To all :  if he contacts Shutterstock about it, what do you expect their reaction would be?  Do nothing?  Delete the images?  Tell me to change the wording?  ??

Yes, same here, but I went back in time more, and noticed that the other months went up too, but for juli/aug/sept/oct ... it totalled to the exact 2x March amount, so that is understandable.  However, november is HIGHER than 2x March, and a lot higher than the real earnings.   ?

Here are the figures of an "oldie" : 


Compared to 2019 :

DOWN :   
CST -6%
IS -20%
SS -17% (I assume this is half sales decrease and half compensation decrease)
BIG -30%
123rf -32%
DP -12%

MINOR UP :
DST +9%
ADOBE +1%
AL +4%

BIG UP (due to the doubling of the March sales) :   CANVA +180%

Bottom line :  Canva saved the whole year.   I ended up with a +4% in total  (in dollars).
I did the numbers again, this time without the 8 month Canva upgrade (so only including the real rise in Canva sales) :  Canva went up with 55% !
Without the Canva effect, the overall loss would have been -8%.
This is MUCH better than I expected and even hoped for, considering that I hardly put any effort in creating stock imagery or growing my port.
For my photo studio, Covid19 meant the closing of the studio during 2 lockdowns already (1,5 and 1 month), but the Belgian government is very supporting, so the studio did survive up till today. 

Look what I got in my mail today : 


Contributor Updates December 2020 Extended guarantee We bring you great news! After seeing the response of Canva users in having your amazing content included in the Canva Pro subscription package, we are extending the double earnings guarantee until December 2020![/color][/color]The double earnings guarantee was originally planned to run from March to September 2020. We�ve done this to show how much we appreciate our contributors, particularly with everything that�s been going on in the world in 2020. We have already applied this to your October earnings which is reflected on your November payment.[/size][/color]
   

[/color]NOTE: Guarantee only applies if you do not remove any photos or elements from your portfolio. During the guarantee period, your total earnings will be at least double your March 2020 earnings, or your actual earnings for the month; whichever is higher. The extended guarantee period lasts for 3 more months (Oct 2020 to Dec 2020 inclusive).[/size][/i][/color]  [/t]   [/color]As before, Canva users who are not subscribed to Canva Pro will continue to pay for a license to use your content in their designs. [/size][/color][/size][/color]That's all there is to it! Watch out for more updates![/size][/color][/size]

I don't know anything about Macs, but I do know about windows computers designed for Adobe products.  I always have them built from scratch, and I follow Adobe's recommendations by the letter.  This means :
- 1 SSD for Windows + programs (C-drive) - 1 Tb is enough for that
- 1 SSD for editing work :  here you should put your SCRATCH disks on, preferably on a separate partition.  A 100Gb scratch disk for photoshop on a disk that is NOT your windows-drive speeds up all Adobe products that work with scratch disks.  The rest of this drive is for the files you are actually working on, so "work in progress".
- 1 HDD, a huge one, for storage of finished work.
- external disks for backup


This should be combined with a graphics card that is NOT on Adobe's blacklist.  With every new photoshop and LR release, the graphics card gets more important, so you should really check if you went for the right one.


This is just a summary, you should really read about the ideal configuration on the Adobe website.

Is that a new image or an oldie?  I did the test with a 3 year old photo.  I assume it takes quite some time to tag 300 million images ...