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1251
« on: March 05, 2008, 19:25 »
does it work with Raw files? It doesn't work on the image files directly. It is just a glorified text editor for keywords. You will have to paste your keywords from/in whatever program you use to view/modify your images. So if you have a raw image viewer/editor sure, you can paste keywords in there, like you would do it from Word. I would never trust a program personally that accessed my images directly, unless it's PhotoShop or Irfanview. Even good old Exifer corrupted some images once.
1252
« on: March 05, 2008, 18:26 »
The past week, I did some tweaking of my Keywording Tool Flemishtagger to get the work flow of keywording shots a bit faster: spell check is now in all windows so that's one click less to spell check the keywords. Why FlemishTagger?It's a script (program) to make the work flow of keywording images faster, especially as to sorting the keywords in order of relevance. Primarily done for Fotolia a year ago, CanStockPhoto now also introduced a 15-keyword limit. In Fotolia you can sort on the site, but that's slow, very clumsy, and the result is not in your images' IPTC but on their site. OK, since the keywords are in the script anyways, I added some more goodies like - automatic removal of duplicates - spell check - 1-click delete of irrelevant keywords - templates (you can add your own templates!) - undo/redo - output with all kind of separators (comma, semicolon, newline, space...) - optional automatic sorting in function of the most popular keywords on SS and LO. For the lazy  - Yes I know you can do the same in Word or any word processor, but then you need a lot of cut/paste, mouse/keyboard switching. Since I'm lazy by nature, I liked to have a script where all could be done with simple mouse-clicks. I'm using it for over a year now and all my latest shots are priority-keyworded in the IPTC. If ever any other site comes up with keyword relevance in their search algorithm, my images are ready. Is it safe? Yes, totally since javascript can't access files on your disk except cookies, and those aren't used. The only connection to my server is to increment a counter. The source code is open anyways. Still paranoid? Download the script then on your PC (CTRL-S) and use it off-line. In fact, this will save you and me bandwidth when you use the script often. What does it cost? The same price as the tutorials of RJMIZ: nada, rien, nichts, nothing, wala
1253
« on: March 05, 2008, 16:49 »
Yes! GBC, unfortunately there's plenty of places where one can really waste time! In the mean time I made another sale. 25Euro on my account now, that's 38$. I'm uploading since January. And they hooked Laurin Rinder! (he is featured photographer now). If Rinder is there, that spells a lot.
1254
« on: March 05, 2008, 09:16 »
PDF + Word output include thumbs of the pics too. Some of the formatting may not be perfect on different systems so any feedback is appreciated. Neither of the 3 first methods gives thumbs (the most important!) The PDF method gives this: A critical error has occurred. Could not find file Great idea. We could do it with a simple offline webpage save too, but the Change page and Page size textboxes can't be altered. Funny comments of YawningDog ;-) Image thumbs 2215-2217 (uploaded August) are gone in this page. I hope these thumbs are a different set of what the customers can view. In the Sales Manager we can see for how much we sold and when, but a tiny thumb there would help.
1255
« on: March 05, 2008, 08:50 »
HA I'm weird. In that case I'm weird too coz I use a similar scheme based on file names. I have a folder per upload batch too, numbered from 000 to 132 or so now. It contains copies while the original shots (included the TIF stay in their original folder).
1256
« on: March 05, 2008, 08:42 »
I had a sale, got US$1.50. I used to jump through the roof too when I had a sale at LO. Seems we get more thrills from 2$ on some sites than of 12.5Euro on others. Just logged in to my MostPhotos too and I had a second sale. Account balance 25Euro now, that's 38$. MP has FTP, no categories and you even don't have to attach MRFs. It's all a question of work input to upload vs yield.
1257
« on: March 05, 2008, 08:20 »
I wish SV staid away from my keywords. I have 3 shots there and one is a lone palm tree on a tropical beach. For more than 6 months, it has only 4 views (mine). I did a search for 'palm tree', didn't work. Then 'palm tree beach tropical' and my shot wasn't there either.
So I had a good look at the keywords they put in, and there was 'tropical tree beach palm_tree' (where _ is a whitespace). No wonder nobody found it, since nobody is looking for palm_whitespace_tree. Don't even know how you have to put a whitespace in a search, and anyways, customers won't do that.
Whatever relevant keywords you put in your shot, they just ruin it. Can't they stay away from our keywords that are tested on DT,SS,wherever? Must take a lot of resources too.
Update. That was last week. Today it works, so they must have been playing with the search engine. And yes, the view count went from 4 to 9.
1258
« on: March 03, 2008, 08:17 »
their photographers page says they are behind in reviewing (about to get worse  but they are employing new reviewers so thats positive Hmmm... reading this thread, I signed up around 11am CET, uploaded 20 shots at 1pm, and they are now (2pm) being accepted. The mails are pouring in. Maybe they give priority to new uploaders?
1259
« on: March 03, 2008, 07:45 »
As it stands at the moment, because of the increasing size of RB - if you don't get involved in the community your images won't be seen or go anywhere. Community site is just newspeak for sites that make you lose valuable time commenting instead of doing photography On Topic: what is the status of RedBubble now? This thread has been very confusing with the trolling. Is the site reliable and clean and was it just all gossip?
1260
« on: March 03, 2008, 07:40 »
Well sometimes people forget to turn the in-cam sharpener off. In the Nikon RAW developer, I think there is some sharpening on by default. That might have misguided your friend. Just turn it all off. A customer can easily sharpen himself, but he can't undo your sharpening. You can make omelet out of eggs, but not eggs out of omelet.
I think also you can get some distortion when downsizing sharpened images. Downsizing sharpens anyways when choosing the bicubic > sharper algorithm.
The story is not complete. I found a trick on a tutorial site to oversharpen 4x upsized shots in the Lab colors lightness channel alone, then resize back to normal. It avoids halos. Blend this layer at just 10-30% opacity with the original one and you will get that little bit of extra crispiness we all love, but I always keep the original unsharpened file. Sharpening can introduce really bad artifacts when you look at 100%.
1261
« on: March 03, 2008, 06:27 »
after all changes made in PS using the Image Size - Resample - Bicubic? I do all the postprocessing on the 16-bit TIFF from the raw, and sometimes with two developments for problematic highlights. When all is done, I save that 16-bit TIFF as the master copy since it's lossless and it's the vault of all my postprocessing time. The raw isn't. Resizing and converting to 8-bit JPG is always the final step and when changes have to be made afterward, I always start from the saved TIFF again. Resizing I do in PS > bicubic sharper, and on the 16-bit TIFF. Converting to JPG and save as JPG (quality 12) is always the last thing. For SS, I downsize from 10 to 6MPx.
1262
« on: March 03, 2008, 05:34 »
Can you see FeaturePics? I tried in the first few pages but did not find it. I made a quick overview here. This is FeaturePics
1263
« on: March 02, 2008, 21:10 »
It seems that not only istock doesn't care about this quite inconvenient problem, but the users on their forums don't even want to say anything about it out of fear not to be perceived as negative by istock? Yeah that's why the Sowjet Union collapsed. No I'm kidding. You can say anything you want on the IS forum, anything 
1264
« on: March 02, 2008, 20:48 »
I love the start  That's all you'll love SS is a permanent one night stand. DT is your wife. CanStockPhoto is your ailing grandma. IStk is your mother in law 
1265
« on: March 02, 2008, 20:41 »
Anybody saw this curve lately? It's sad to see this patient slip away. It was the first site that accepted me August 2005. Soon sweet memories?
1266
« on: March 02, 2008, 15:54 »
Are all of your sales coming from the site alone, or do you have your own website with FP images for sale on it? I'm wondering if the only chance I have to sell a photo at FP is to set up my own site. I don't see much in the way of advertising going on. It might help. flemishdreams.com is full with links to my FP sales pages. Just hover over the images in the central column of the frontpage and you will see license this image on FP then click. If you would make such a site only to support your FP sales, it's overkill. But it helps, not only for FP sales since I"m getting BMEs everywhere lately. A site like that should funnel traffic to your sales. But it propably only accounts for 1% or so. Better go out and shoot more photos, but I just like site design as a way of relaxing. I killed my TV 5 years ago
1267
« on: March 02, 2008, 12:06 »
I started to change prices on FP some weeks ago. I sold a picture that I had change to 10 dollar but I just get 2 dollar for it Perhaps you checked the resize option so one of the smaller sizes got downloaded? (answered) At the moment they are moving servers so reply might be slow. I asked for another payout 4 days ago and it still didn't happen. My previous payout was done in 24hrs.
1268
« on: March 02, 2008, 11:59 »
Well - I can't say how it looks elsewhere, but here (NSW, Australia) taking and publication of a person's photograph without their consent is perfectly legal. There is no Bill of Rights here. Although, it is highly advisable to obtain release for any COMMERCIAL purposes.
In Europe things are different too. You can take a shot of a person in public and unless he/she objects on the spot, his portrait right is gone. In other words, he/she can't sue you any more for whatever. And if he/she does, he/she has the burden of proof of damages. The atomium has been refurbished with public money 2 years ago, and built 50 years ago on public land by a non-profit organization that got most of its money from the state, and some from sponsors as a gesture of goodwill. It was never built to make any money. At the contrary, the city of Brussels poured heaps of money in it since the exploitation balance sheet was negative. Yet, the private organization that copyrighted the atomium (with government agencies holding 100% of its shares) decided you can't put shots online of the structure unless you pay them a license. It might be stupid, unfair and ridiculous but it's totally legal. But that wasn't my point. I hope you read Dan Heller's post. The law in the US is different from Norway, Belgium, Australia. The buyer or the agency can be sued, and the nature of the American legal system is such that suers can obtain ridiculously high compensations. Whatever we think about it (it's crazy of course) is irrelevant. If MP wants to sell in the US, they should give the question consideration and at least make sure the MRF is there and OK.
1269
« on: March 01, 2008, 20:09 »
Personally I hate splashpages, it wastes users time and if the user has a slow connection they are likely leave straight away. If you install google analytics you will see the bounce rate for the splash page ....
Correct. I just checked now and all I saw was the splash page... nothing more, not even an enter button.
1270
« on: March 01, 2008, 20:00 »
Not asking for a copy of the MRF and inspect it properly like all micros do will bring MP in legal trouble, sooner or later. If even (semi)pros on Alamy fake MRFs, the more on MP were there is no treshold for amateurs that probably don't even grasp the concept of a Release or Royalty Free. That's OK in Europe, where the model has to prove damage to get a compensation from the photographer, not from the site. But since MP is going international, I wonder if they ever looked for legal advise in the US where the situation is different, as Dan Heller wrote here. Another thing are property releases. About every micro site now knows that the Brussels' atomium is copyrighted. Since I live in Brussels part-time, I have many shots of it but they were all refused on iStock and Dreamstime. I mailed the organization that holds the Atomium copyright for info and they wrote back that any site that puts an Atomium picture online has to pay SABAM (a license collector company) 150Euro per month per picture. Now look at this shot on MP: the atomium in full. No I won't flag it. I don't want a row of 1's back. Conclusion: MP is playing with legal fire and sooner or later they will have to introduce inspectors at least for the Releases. Note: Alamy does the same - a search on "Atomium" Royalty Free brings up 3 pages, half of the shots grossly mistagged, half of them with the actual atomium.
1271
« on: March 01, 2008, 10:00 »
With all due respect to "perfect images" - but images are not being used at 100% magnification. 1. Some are, for instance for posters or large calendars. I had an EL end last year on DT of a nature shot, and in the nex hour, the buyer (?I guess?) came back for more EL's of other nature shots, all full-size. I bet that wasn't for a 300px blog. With a price of 25Euro, customers pay in fact for an EL and when they find out that MP is a noise factory, they will go elsewhere. 2. Designers sometimes like to crop a detail, for instance with people shots or for banners. 3. Good isolations are essential for a designer's workflow. There are many sloppy isolations around, even on established sites. I once bought an "isolated" image from LO and when I wanted to make a composite with it, I found out the shot was full of non-255/255/255 in the "white" area. I had to do it all over. I made a naughty comment about on that image on LO, but what the heck... the comment is gone. I wouldn't dare to comment on any MP image since I don't want to be flooded with 1's. 4. Looking at some MP top images that show great on thumb but bad at 100%, I can just wonder why those people don't use their gear properly, and amongst that gear is PhotoShop. Most of those flaws are very avoidable. 5. It's your (?) site of course and your(?) choice. I just hope that your(?) customers won"t find out they can find perfect shots elsewhere for 5$ instead of unwarranted shots for 25Euro. Sometimes ignorance is a bliss (for the photographer). 6. I have some slightly out-of-focus images too, and even noisy. For noise there is a bag of tricks in Photoshop and I don't mean the overall NR that makes the image plastic. In that case, I just do all the patching at 10MP, then resize to 4MP (when it looks perfect), and upload the 4MP version. 7. Dedicated photogs don't have time to comment in a Flickerish way. We all started like that probably but found out it's a gigantic waste of time. Better invest that time in enhancing your skills. If I want to hang out socially, I go to a disco or to a dinner with friends ;-)
1272
« on: February 29, 2008, 17:01 »
Never heard of them. According to Alexa, they are going down the drains (take the 1yr graph). A rank of 300,000+
1273
« on: February 29, 2008, 14:42 »
When the site reaches a million pictures or more, a tiny shift can have a drastic effect in placement, and so become very important. When a site reaches a million or more pictures, a shift of only 0.25% can mean being pages back in the search results, and an image never selling.
Yap, my analysis too. It's the battle for page 1 and I wrote an article about it. Once your down the drains, no way to come out. It's a bit like the Flickr approach: upload daily but just 5 shots, so you will fly high in the radar beam. It's the basic flaw of political sites were network-rating drives popularity. I saw some tecnically bad shots on top of MP, and once buyers find out that MP has no real QC, they will hesitate to lose 25 Euro.
1274
« on: February 29, 2008, 07:31 »
Without a rating system you would need a physical reviewer to control the images, and then it wouldn't be that much different would it? Yes it would. Reviewers are trained and experienced to spot technical deficiencies, pixelation, noise, hazing, banding, jpg artifacts, isolation quality. At 50Euro, buyers are entitled to top quality. I like the fact that I can control what I want to sell. That can be done with reviewers too. A site like that exists already, and it's called FeaturePics. MostPhotos was second. If you don't want others to rate your work, sell elsewhere. Simple as that. MP could cancel the rating system and become a real quality Midstock site. People on this forum are probably more knowledgeable on stock than the average MP voter. They just try to help. It's as simple as that ;-)
1275
« on: February 29, 2008, 07:21 »
* The clicks that a photo gets has a very big impact on the MPI.
* The way buyers act on the site has a large effect on the MPI.
I just had a look at the most popular shot at MP. So, I added to the viewcount. It's a fantastic shot at thumbs size. I was curious and zoomed in on parts of the sky at 100%, and yap, full of jpg artifacting. That's why you need knowledgeable reviewers instead of glorified Flickr junks. A buyer at 50Euro is entitled to top quality, not to jpg and banding artifacts that obviously came out of the cam or by saving under 8 in Photoshop.
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