And I'm waiting for a Shutterstock payment that should have arrived last week. I've contacted PP's "help" center with no results.

Uh oh. That is not good. I hope it won't be too much longer. I'll post when and if I receive mine.

I requested payout on AS several days ago. But my PayPal account balance is still blank / completely empty. If I recall correctly, I think I may have requested payment around the end of November. I'm trying to remember if it's normal for there to be a delay between payout and the payment appearing in the PayPal account.

Yes, once I was late with providing my tax information. I then filled out the necessary forms online and after that, they payed me.

Quote from: dragonblade on November 29, 2023, 07:43

Actually, I do have another question regarding similars. Is it okay to submit both a horizontal and a vertical composition (as the main point of difference) of the same subject?

Generally yes, this is fine. Don't crop from one larger file to make two different compositions however. They should be unique images.

-Mat

Thank you Mat for the clarification.

Quote from: dragonblade on November 26, 2023, 21:51

I know that AS has a very strict policy on similars. I seem to recall that a change of angle is usually not acceptable when submitting more than one photo of the same subject. Though what if I changed the distance? For example, with a small subject, I stood further back for the first photo and then moved 1 - 3 feet closer for a second photo. Would this be acceptable?

You need to make sure that each asset you submit offers unique value to a potential customer. If the changes you describe in your post could be just as easily accomplished by a customer with a simple crop, then it's likely too similar. If it's a genuine difference in the image that could prompt a customer to buy both variations, then you are fine.

-Mat Hayward

Matt, thank you. I have a set of two images of a small subject where I moved closer and also changed the shooting angle as well. So in this case, it would not be possible to duplicate the second shot with a simple crop.

Actually, I just remembered that you can see pictures of advertising on the electronics store that features people. Though there are no living, breathing people in the photo. I didn't consider that before - pictures of people within a photo. Maybe we can't have pictures of people within an illustrative editorial image. Previously, I assumed the rule applied to living, breathing people.

Regardless, my accountancy firm photo features no people at all. And Her Ugliness, it sounds like your submitted editorial photos are the same - no people. So yea I guess we have to rely on a little luck to see if these photos get accepted.

I think Ive been getting a better idea overall of what gets accepted as illustrative editorial. In fact, the majority of my IE images do get accepted at AS. However, there have been a few surprises in recent times. For example, I have a photograph of an electronics store with the brand name clearly visible on the building. Additionally, there are no people in the image. I thought that this would be ideal as an IE image. But it was rejected by AS for not meeting the IE guidelines. A few weeks later, I submitted the same image again with a modified description and it was rejected again for the same reason. I also have a photo of an accountancy firm with the name of the business visible on the building. Once again, there are no people in the photo. And this one was also rejected for not meeting the IE guidelines. I admit I'm really puzzled by these particular rejections for these images. Mat, can you offer any insight?

Out of curiosity, is there much demand for 4096 x 2304 footage? I don't suppose anyone has sold any 4096 x 2304 clips?

In their ToS they write if you cancel your account, all images will be deleted within a year, but remain in their database till then. They do not mention any rules about how they proceed with images sold through partner sites. Though, from what I have heard, having images removed from partner sites even after you delete content or a whole account is very often problematic on all stock agencies.

Yea in the past, Ive read about Yay Images and the issues with removing images from that agency. I know that with Yay, any photos removed will still be available for sale on the partner sites. I was hoping that other agencies would be better in that regard (allowing removal from all partner sites.)

Quote from: dragonblade on October 22, 2023, 12:22

I am not a DepositPhotos contributor but out of curiosity, were at least some of you able to opt out this program a second time? And do you remain opted out? That is incredibly sneaky of this agency to place contributors back into this program after they asked to be removed from it.

Yes, after they opted me in against my will and I sent a mail totheir  support they opted me out again and I am still opted out.

Ah great to hear that you have remained opted out since the last mail. I'll have to be super vigilant if and when I sign up with these guys.

Not too long ago, I was also receiving the harsh rejections on my photos. Previously, I had a pretty high acceptance rate. Though more recently, reviewers are becoming more generous again. Reviews are good at the moment but very slow.

� I do find this annoying because prospective buyers will assume that I added this keyword myself. They would likely think that I'm trying to mislead them.�

It�s funny you think buyers would care about this.

Well when I do searches on stock agencies and come across highly irrelevant keywords that have absolutely nothing do with the images, I don't have very high praise for the contributors who choose to use those words. They come across as silly and desperate. I don't want to be lumped together with those kinds of individuals.

Ive looked at keywords from more of my images in my iStock port and I'm starting to notice a pretty serious issue. There are some important keywords (added by me in Deepmeta) that are not present. For example - names of buildings, street names etc. These really need to be included so that buyers can find the images. There is a tutorial video on Deepmeta that states that some keywords will not be recognised by iStock but will still be included if you manually select them. But that is not true at all. I did manually select these words in Deepmeta and they are not visible among the keywords under the photos when viewing them in my port.