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Messages - FD

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1251
I edit for SS and if iStock likes it, great.  If not, oh well.  
That seems backwards.  I think we'll all agree that iStock has the highest standards.
That might be but as a buyer for media, I don't even look at iStock for vectors or illustrations. They might look great at full size but media only need 800px max and rasterized is fine. Knowing IS rejects a lot that is very salable, I just look at DT. SS is no option since I don't have the volume. It will all depend on the buyer and his needs. IS certainly has a market but it's not mine.

1253
I am still waiting for the microstock-aware fill where I select the whole workspace by CTRL-A, then let it synthesize an istock-aware image with the exact feathering and no pixel distortions, and a shutterstock-aware fill with no shadows. Of course, the image should be unique and very salable. I don't mind if it's slow. I can always have a beer while waiting.  8)

1254
Microstock News / Re: Getty Images to aquire 123RF!!
« on: April 02, 2010, 00:33 »
April Fool's joke or not, I wouldn't shed too many tears over losing 123RF.  I earned just shy of $90 there last month, and that was a BME.  Hardly worth the effort anymore.
Yeah, same here. I had a WME with just 984$ at 123RF, closing in on Featurepics with just 793.05$ last month. Not worthwhile.  8)

1255
I've tried "Pro" Photo Tools before - it's the familiar Microsoft pattern, a half-hearted entry into a market they don't understand, heavily hyped for a while and then forgotten.  Putting all the keywords on one long line in a horizontal edit control - pathetic!    There has to be something better than this.
+1 - the keywords on 1 line put me off.
In 2006-7, there was nothing better, so I wrote my own script for keywords. Just like I wanted it.
Since then there is Lightroom but I don't like databases that I have no control over, especially for images. The Adobe model might have become a standard, but it's still proprietary. Moreover, Lightroom isn't free and I feel I have no control over what's it's doing exactly. I prefer Photoshop.
I'm a software developer. I could write the tool I want, but I don't have the time - I want to do photos, not write programs.
Coding is fun, now and then.  ;)

1256
I tried IrfanView.  It apparently only works with one image at a time.  Sigh.

That is one of the most stubborn myths surrounding Irfanview. It's almost as resistant as the myth you can't upload in parallel or in a queued way with Filezilla.
Of course Irfvanview can work with several images at the same time. Just push T to get the thumbs window. You can then select the images you want to tag in common like in the explorer: in series or at lib by shift/click or ctrl/click.
Once the selection is made on several images, go to menu|file|JPG Lossless Operations...|Set IPTC data to selected files...
You'll get the multitabbed IPTC info window and all you enter there will be injected into the selected images.
You can even inject conditionally (if field is non-empty) over existing IPTC info (check last tab).


1257

Colored numbers = March 2009.
In absolute numbers: total earnings down 21% compared to BME March 2009, despite 26% portfolio increase.
Down: most, especially SS; up: FT and IS.

1258
I prefer to play the game openly till the end. I just resubmitted the "feathering" rejects downsized from 21MP till 2MP. I want the original reviewer to lose his face. I also refeathered the originals up to 3px. ... They are game.
Update: 7 rejected for feathering again at 2MP, 1 accepted. Since it's a series, 1 only is pretty useless so I deactivated it. End of game. No resubmits any more.

1259
Simple, easy, and reliable.  Oh, and free.  Suggestions?

Flemishtagger: large fonts, spell check, mouse-click based: one-click delete and reorder. Exporting can be with many different separators, like <newline> , ; <space>.

The problem with directly adding the IPTC to the image is that there are a few different standards and flavors, and I don't like to ruin (even occasionally) an image. Even Exifer has bugs, but I never had problems with Irfanview. My script doesn't touch your image but you need to copypaste the keywords into the image via Irfanview.

The script is open and in Javascript, client based. That means you can download it and use it offline as a desktop app. It doesn't harvest other people's tags on the net like Yuri's tool, so you'll still have to come up with yourown keywords. I have a version with the CV/synonyms database of Princeton and a window for the IPTC title and description (where the nouns are copied into the keywords, optimized for DT and BigStock), but the code is still too messy to publish.

Yes it's free, no ads, no referral codes.  ;)

1260
Those who can't do, "teach" (or blog).
Hey! You stole my line!  :P

1261
New Sites - General / Re: Clustershot.com
« on: March 31, 2010, 08:40 »
I sortof gave up on them. They are not stock oriented at all. All the plans they announce have nothing to with building a virtual stock site and grouping acounts, nothing with licenses and sizes.
I planned to write some integration but they don't even have a unique image IDs that addresses thumbs and full size pages, so it's far too much work to integrate.
They are totally obsessed with Flickr and I'm not interested with Flickr after they phased out my Pro account in a too blunt way because my shots were watermarked and I had links to sales sites.

I don't like that in "similar images" on Clustershot are linked to ports of free account amateurs. I'm not paying a Pro account to drive traffic to snapshooters. I wanted:

- variation in licenses: edtorial, commercial / RF, RF-extended;
- variation in sizes: web and full size, automatically priced differently;
- a virtual agency where accounts could be coupled to show "similars" or at least the free accounts could be left out;

Nothing of that has been announced in 7 months, so I think I'll just have to swallow my 20$ loss and start deleting in August. They obviously aren't interested in what we want. The direct payment is just another PITA. Although I could easily incorporate, I'm not planning to do it just for them, especially since I had no sale whatsoever despite they being prominent on my site. The 100$ payout limit is ridiculous for an average uploader, and it seems to become one of those sites earning money and then vanish, like LO and FM and Crestock.

No thanks. I stopped uploading months ago and I curse myself for the wasted time since even their IPTC extraction is non-standard. Why the heck they have to import the location in the keywords? Why the heck they don't import the title? Wasted...

1262
I remember about three or four years ago an employee from a small site was uploading our pictures on other sites claiming them as his own. I cannot remember the name of the site...
Galastock. It killed them,.

1263
Off Topic / Re: LHC
« on: March 31, 2010, 06:28 »
BTW, I'm living 50km away from the LHC: I would be the first microstocker killed by the black hole. Hopefully my portfolio should survive  ;D
You can also upload to MostPhotos. It's better than a blackhole for your port.  ;)

1264
Off Topic / Re: LHC
« on: March 31, 2010, 03:22 »
Actually, nothing would happen to us if we are drawn into a black hole. Yes, we would evaporate and be annihilated for those who watch the whole process
You will be ripped apart mechanically by the tidal forces as you approach the center of gravity. You will not evaporate since black holes are focuses of gravity, not of heat. But as you approach the speed of light, the time around you will extend compared to a relative stationary observer, so it will seem forever.
Nobody outside the horizon of the black hole can "watch" the process as light can't escape. You should read more of Asimov.  ;)
It's possible to be dead and alive at the same moment....also, the information about you remains untouched. So, even if you disappear into a black hole the information about you remains
The information about you is stored in your myriads of synapses and their synaptic strength weights. As your brain gets ripped apart at first by the tidal forces, then concentrated in one point, the information that is "you" will be annihilated. There is still no way to make eggs again from the omelet. Your hard disk has gone through a shredder and that's it.  :'(

The only way "you" can be preserved is through a future technological process that can store the morphology of all your synapses (10 billion cells x an average of 1,000 synapses per cell = 10^^13) and their respective weights and cellular properties. "You" can be restored then in a bionic brain with exactly the same morphology of cells and synapses with the reloaded strength weights.

I think you'll need a Mac for that.  :P

1265
Off Topic / Re: LHC
« on: March 30, 2010, 22:12 »
Now, a theological and philosophical question: if we were sucked by a blackhole, would our souls escape its gravity?
Souls are immaterial so they escape the material laws of physics.

1266
Dreamstime.com / Re: Incorrect keywords DT
« on: March 30, 2010, 21:59 »
I just got the opposite of this. I had a message about a bunch of keywords added. This has never happened to me at DT. Anyone else have this?
Somebody must like you a lot.

1267
Alamy.com / Re: Alamy Forum
« on: March 30, 2010, 14:03 »
I've been banned probably a dozen times in that forum but i think only 2 or 3 times i received an email from the forum admin telling me to f.. off.
What's your nick there? Micromaverick?  ;D

1268
Dreamstime.com / Re: Is Dreamstime dying?
« on: March 30, 2010, 14:00 »
I still don't see the point in all the "details"  ???
I was talking from the viewpoint of a buyer (doing the math), offering some possible explanation as why there seemed to be an increase in subs. Probably, DT is very aware of this high-level images trap. As a contributor, total revenue is indeed the most important as the SS case shows. Subs are a can of worms, but DT didn't open it. Others did.

1269
Do you mean 80$ in sales without the 75$ upload bonus? That would be quite remarkable.
I forgot about the upload bonus. Actually it's around 90$, upload bonus included. Sorry for the confusion.

1270
One thing I can comment on based on the photos you posted -- SS absolutely hates shallow focus. I've had very, very few images accepted there with shallow DOF.
+1 - plus, SS hates shadows. The bridge next to the House of Commons in London was the main focus, yet most is in the shadow. That's a NONO for SS. The OP should learn to shoot with the sun at his back.

1271
congratulations MicrostockExp on having a $0.9 balance to lose! I wonder if anyone actually got to $25 on there?
Yes, to my surprise I'm close to payout limit, over 80$. I didn't upload there the last couple of years since I forgot them.

1272
Dreamstime.com / Re: Is Dreamstime dying?
« on: March 29, 2010, 10:23 »
Maybe you should modify this post (delete).
Sure, after you quoted it entirely.  ;D

1273
Dreamstime.com / Re: Is Dreamstime dying?
« on: March 28, 2010, 21:25 »
I am surprised that some people go to such detail! Well done.

Some buyers can count.

Does it mean that if a customer purchases a monthly package (let's assume they download 300 images), they would pay $129, but Dreamstime gets $0.43 per image for maximum-size level five. So this explains my subscription-maximum-level two $0.30. But how do you explain subscription-maximum-level four $0.70 (in my case) or how Lisa got $1.25 for her image sold, is it level five? Are you saying that the agency limits customers to download a maximum of 3 images max-size?

First of all, this simulation is done from a buyers' viewpoint. A buyer doesn't care who gets what commission and whether the scheme is viable or not for the agency in the long run. He wants value for money and he just has to look at http://www.dreamstime.com/credits and use his brain.

A sub sale of a level 5 image counts for 3 downloads (any size) an a sub sale of a level 4 image counts for 2 downloads (any size). See here: http://www.dreamstime.com/thread_18104. With the 129$ subs package (10 downloads per day), a buyer can download 2 max size level 5s per day, and 2 max size level 4s (3+3+2+2=10). In a credit package, a small size level 4 is 9 credits, and a small size level 5 image is 11 credits.

A custom credit package of 129.27$ (http://www.dreamstime.com/credits, fill in 129$, click "calculate") gives 139 credits. Those 139$ give you 14 images, half of it level 4, half level 5, at small size.
(7x9) + (7x11) = 63 + 77 = 140 credits.
This means that after 4 days only, a subs buyer breaks even, compared with a custom credit buyer.
Subs: 4days x 4dl = 16 images (maximum).
Credits: 14 images (small).

Now a months has 30 days, which is more than 4. Imagine the subs buyer only buys 4 days per week, there are still 17 days left he buys. His profit is huge. Not to mention he has access to the max sizes and in the credits hypothesis, he would only have small. Of course, this scheme has a few assumptions: the buyer needs high-impact images on a regular basis. His needs may vary, so he can buy by credits 2/3 of the year, and switch to subs (even for 1 month) when the need is there.

It's all just simple math and correct me if I'm wrong. It is not site defamation, since DT must be aware too of this perverse effect of the level system combined with subs.

----------------

About subs threads being blocked on DT, this is a perfect commercial decision. The DT forum is accessible to buyers too, and they do read it. Disgruntled threads about subs might scare them off or make them worried about the future of that program, especially when they are subs buyers or considering becoming it. It would be counterproductive to the marketing efforts of DT.
On a site forum, we have to present a uniform professional positive face to (potential) customers. I would never post a message like this on the DT forum since it might awaken sleeping dogs (customers). We have a common goal with the agency, and that is sales.
Customers don't read these independent forums, unless they are contributors themselves, so we can digress a bit...

1274
# If your bank account is outside Germany, please enter your IBAN and BIC (mandatory). ...
Also, if you prefer PayPal you don't have to give it to Panthermedia at the time of your account registration, you can indeed do it later.
Thanks. That solves it all. Somebody said here you had to pay upfront for Paypal. I use my IBAN a lot.

1275
Image Sleuth / Re: Pirated istock images ?
« on: March 28, 2010, 09:27 »
IMPORTANT: the images have not been taken down, the order has just been shifted. I just found my image that was on page 12 is now on page 16.
The Rapidshare link should be the same, so report it to Rapidshare.

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