Quote from: eyewave on March 08, 2023, 03:31

Quote from: SVH on March 07, 2023, 16:27

You are getting a bit to emotional here and political as well. Totally unnecessary. The only point I'm making here is that if anyone with such a great audience place your art work it's worth thousands of dollars of promotion. Sure he doesn't pay for using your art but lot's of people will because he promoted your work and you will get a lot of attention of paying customers. And yes you can nag about things not being right but I personally would welcome something like this. And I will bet the artist in question will not be so unhappy as well. Even though she complains about not getting paid by Musk himself or being credited. C'mon think twice
But then still you can have another opinion. It's a free world still where we live, isn't it?

Can you tell me how in the world a microstock artist profits, when their work is stolen and published without mentioning the artist and linking to  their portfolio?

Let me try one last time

If you want to be succesful, with any product you sell, you have to reach a large audience. In that audience there are potential buyers. That is why we have advertisement on almost all media you use. You can make Coca Cola but if you don't tell people you have made this product nobody will buy your product.

So, if some lame ass with millions of followers tweets your photo then you get an enormous exposure.
In this audience you will have people that like this photo and will want to use it.
Among these people you have small players that might rip the photo of the tweet and use it and you get nothing. Not correct and a pity.

There will also be people that work for companies that have responsible policies and that obey the law of copyright. They will go and purchase the photo from the artist itself, or, in our case, from one of the agencies that sell our photo. Your photo will not be difficult to find and sales will be coming in.
Sales that never would have happened unless you would have spent a lot of money promoting your own work.

So that's why, even if it's fraudelent, wrong or whatever you want to call it, I (and again this is my personal opinion and you keep yours) would welcome any person that has millions of followers to expose my photo to his/her/it's audience, without them having bought the photo or credited me in the tweet.

Ask the artists in question if their revenues have gone up or down because of this. I am pretty sure that they will respond, if there are truthful, that it has gone up big time, even though they are whining about the wrongdoing.

edit:
So if this happens. You may want to sue the person, ask for a DMCA and get your photo as soon as possible of Twitter. I, on the other hand would let it stay there as long as possible. I might cause some trouble, to get even more exposure, but I would see it as a God given present.

The difference is, Coke doesn't get paid every time a photo of its soda is licensed. They make their money selling the actual can of soda. We make ours by licensing our photos, so "free advertising" and stealing/copyright infringement are one and the same. And they are not advertising our work for sale when they post it without consequences. They are using our work to get eyeballs on their own social media, and more likely encouraging others to repost with no $ to the photographer, and it sounds like no credit either, so there's really no way to call it "free advertising."

The guy isn't posting an image he bought to hang on his wall and saying, "Look at this art that I just bought" with a link to the artist's website. Even then, it may technically be a copyright violation to use the image, but it would also be a promotion for the artist and acceptable, to me.

Musk's tweets and attitude and actions are dangerous to our livelihood as photographers who make a part of our living from licensing. If there's a silver lining for this photographer, it will be because he's gotten a lawyer and sued. If he stayed quiet and said nothing, no one would know who he was nor would they buy or license his work, they'd just repost it if they liked it.

My opinion. Problem is, photographers who are happy for "the exposure" make it that much harder for the rest of us.

Thanks Mat & Adobe!  🥳 🎉 Good news indeed!

I also made a whopping 51 cents on Getty via 500px. They chose a handful of my photos a few years back and have keyworded them so poorly, it's surprising any get seen at all. I stopped uploading there when they did the Chinese deal and this month made $0.01 for a license to China. (I keep my 500px account open because sometimes when I've done gallery shows, they require a 500px account.)

I really don't see the point of adding anything new other than to Adobe, but perhaps I should start adding some editorial images to iStock? Any thoughts?

"63% Safe Product"

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/percentage-safe-product-vector-art-sign-2156377921

That one must have flown past QC - what a useful concept! Really a mess. We'd all do better if there wasn't so much useless content clogging up searches.

It's funny, I have some street signs on a highway that get licensed a lot. I originally filled them in using a New Year's concept and when I went to update it the next year, they wouldn't let me since it was "too similar." I argued, "what about clients who can't update themselves?" Nope. I think it's been selling since 2015 so I guess they were right. I should have uploaded a blank one at the same time.

Why do these places get to upload 100s when the rest of us can't even upload 2 similar images? I guess it depends on the reviewer, so inconsistent.

You'd think with the signs they'd say too many similar ones already in the collection too.

I see so many commercial uses for this one - not:

"A Close Up Of A Person Using A Laptop With A Bear On The Back Of The Laptop"

https://www.stockai.com/photo/a-close-up-of-a-person-using-a-laptop-with-a-bear-on-the-back-of-the-laptop:6331bc3be2d94362d787481e


I guess the bear ate the person but why is her hand sticking out of his hand and not his mouth? Very jarring and weird.

I still have my site set up for digital downloads but it's pretty rare that I license from my site anymore, and when I do, I usually get a phone call or email from the buyer and there's some back and forth - usually with web designers or magazine photo editors. My prices reflect that. Licenses were more common some years back when Photoshelter (which hosts my site) used to attract photo editors. Most recent sales were people looking for a location that they didn't find elsewhere and they are rare and for maybe $15-30 rather than $200-300 which used to be more standard. As prices have come down everywhere, including Getty and Alamy, the volume I'd need to make any effort worthwhile can't possibly happen. I'm more likely to sell prints from my site, but even then there's contact from the buyer first. They want that personal experience and if you're licensing images for small amounts, it's not worth your time.

This is just my experience. Others may have different ones. These days, it makes more sense to have an agency do the marketing & advertising.

@gameover obviously knows more about running a successful site than I do. I wish I'd worked harder to establish my site 10-15 years ago, but assignments and other things kept me too busy.

These days my aim is to slant it toward print sales, where prices have held steady, if I can find the time. I'm finding more success selling through agents even if they do take a big cut. I'd rather spend my time taking photos. The business end of things already takes so much time.

But it's sure nice to sell direct and keep the entire price!

@MatHayward  Just to clarify, does "generative ai" need to be one of the first 10 keywords?

I'm confused because I submitted 6 varied generative ai images on the same subject, with digital embellishments. Three were variations on a theme. Four were accepted (two of the variations) and two were put into the "Reminder" category telling me I could re-submit once I fixed the keywording and/or captioning. The captioning for one of the variations that was accepted and another put in "Reminder," were identical, but I moved generative ai from the 11th keyword to the 10th. All had "Illustration," "Generative AI," "Generative," and "AI" in the keywords and all noted they were generative ai in the captions, so I can't imagine anything else that could have been wrong with my captioning/keywording. I just fixed them today, so not sure if that cured the perceived problem.

Given that there have been requests for model releases when there isn't a human and other confusing requests on images submitted by long-time contributors who know to follow directions, I'm wondering how well reviewers have been trained on the new requirements? I understand when something's new like this there can be confusion on both sides.

                                                    _____________________________


I checked my images with Tineye & Google Images, and nothing even remotely similar showed up, even before I digitally edited them using my tablet.

I agree that AI is concerning - even frightening - for us creatives - just like microstock was for established professional stock photographers - but we can't change the march of technology whether it's the Model T or AI, there will be winners and losers with new technology. The best bet is to get on board and find a way to use it to our advantage.

I've been culling/reorganizing photos from the past 50+ years (personal stuff from childhood on, old family photos inherited from my parents, and my fine art and commercial work). I was struck by the changes in my lifetime (on so many levels! Those 80's shoulder pads!), as well as by how badly my color photos from as late as the 1980s have discolored even when kept in archivally sound environments. I put my faves aside to scan, knowing that, with the white balance eye dropper in Photoshop, they'll look better than new, ready to upload to my favorite photo lab, for delivery to my door overnight.

We can't pick and choose the tech we want.

Quote from: wordplanet on November 10, 2022, 21:28

At 7 dls for the week today and weekly rank has gone down to 30,600 which makes sense because average #dls/day has gone down.

Must be a wonderful feeling to make 100K downloads - and 1,500 in one day - I'm blown away!

1,500 in one week, not in one day.

I Mistyped : 1500 in a week is amazing! Congrats!
How many images do you have in total?

Nice setup - really great to see how you made these creative images.
Curious about the light app you used on your phone - what is it?
Thanks for sharing.

I tried midjourney where all is done in the public Discord channel & also put online so everyone can see both your "art" and the prompts used. As I was working on a concept, someone right after me simply copied my prompt verbatim and made a similar image. This is sort of encouraged, though they tell you to add your own words to the prompt.

I liked some of the stylized background rendered and am thinking about how to combine it with my own hand-painted work using my pen tablet in PS. I was working with a fantasy theme so didn't render anything realistic and nearly ran out of my free time.

It was fun to play around, but overall it's a distressing development - and I agree it will only get better and easier to use.

Im thinking overall the quality of what i upload to SS now is lower than several years ago.

Years ago they had proper technical checks, standards and stopped similars.  Since they axed that i've been far less selective and uploaded images i previously wouldn't have purely because they made it a numbers game just to be seen.
The stuff is in my view acceptable (technically its fine) but overall the quality on average is lower than previously where i only uploaded a few of the best from a particular shoot.

*Hopefully* they'll go back to stopping similar and applying technical standards consistently then i can do less work uploading!

I think last time anyone from SS commented they said 90% of images on the database have never sold.  That was a few years ago, i suspect that is higher now.

Then that would certainly streamline the collection 😎

Quote from: wds on August 24, 2022, 21:20

Not sure why PNG files we have uploaded and have been accepted are being sold as JPGs until the official launch. A customer may download a file that says it has a transparent background (as a PNG), but in fact they get a JPG that does not have a transparent background until the official launch. Not good for the reputation of the contributor nor Adobestock. Why not let these be downloaded as PNG's from the "get-go"?...would that really harm the launch?...there is no great secret here, competitors know that Adobestock will in fact be offering PNGs, so why the holdback of the files as a PNG? It would be better at least if the files were just not customer visible until the launch instead of misleading the customer who thinks they are getting a PNG but in fact get a JPG.

Good point, but as a rule of thumb I recommend avoiding mentioning the file type or transparency in the title, it's not best practice. These create more noise than benefits, and as you mention, they can lead to customer issues.
It is safer to rely on filters and other browsing options. Your transparent PNG is automatically detected and flagged as such and will be displayed in the given sections when we open them.
For new asset types, and the very case of the PNG launch that we're working on with you, a critical mass is needed across search queries in order to meet customer satisfaction.
The decision to sell them straight away as jpg's was made to ensure contributors would be able to generate revenue from their work without waiting for us to open NPG downloads. Going the other way would not have been fair on our end and might have hurt our sourcing ability.

Hi:

3 questions:

1 - I had 30 png files accepted prepared after initially reading the early discussion here so I put transparent as suggested by the AI and png in all the keywords and some titles. Do you recommend I go back and edit these ASAP?

2 - Although the Christmas leaderboards and other illustrations accepted as png files work with added white backgrounds, if downloaded by non-designer clients as jpgs, they might prefer red or green backgrounds. Should I include a version with colored backgrounds as a jpg file in those instances or will it confuse things?

3 - I did a search for "Christmas ornaments transparent png" today and thousands of files showed up - some showing the grey and white checkerboard and some a white background - the descriptions of those files all included png - so I'm confused - has the png launched or not? And if not, I'm assuming this will launch in time for holiday downloads since I've started with holiday illustrations (non-vector - I use PS) and want to be sure they'll be online as png files in time.

Thanks!