You should certainly upload to Shutterstock. I won't give you my referral link since this is an honest advice. You will enjoy a honeymoon period at Shutterstock up till 6 months after registration. Use that period well, and upload at least 50/100 images per month, not more. Extend your exposure by giving them 20-40 images per week after that. Resist the tempatation to upload your full port at once.

I use very simple script that takes n random images from a large pool and uploads to every agency every night.

Reviewers on  some sites  have private tools like matching images on EXIF dates. That won't work unless you edit the EXIFs.  

In other words if they are using the Flickr account as storage or sharing vehicle (between say project group members), it is not violation of any rules. Except that it sounds pretty stupid.

You can easily obtain that by setting those images "private" on Flickr, and then only your contacts/friends can see/download those. He didn't: all images are public and downloadable. That alone shows the criminal intent of unlawful redistribution.

Seems to me some of the other sites could benefit from having some kind "uniqueness" criteria for searching on images, kind of like what DT does with "Editors Choice" images.

The "Editor's Choice" isn't that much functional. I'm with DT since half 2005 but what I've uploaded till half 2006 was mostly crap judged by today's standards. Yet all my "Choice" images come from that period. I asked on the forum and and admin said they wouldn't be updated.

As to your 'uniqueness' idea, well, microstock is about sales, not about wow-images that don't sell. The level system relies on sales, and that's the best criterion for whatever, imho.

Quote from: FD-amateur on February 28, 2010, 07:02

I'm always checking at 300% around the edges. It can happen that edges are bleached out (especially hair) when your background is more than 1.5 stop overexposed. It's not because it's done in cam that it is good per se (I plead guilty).

But
  - why should we care about anything that's only "noticeable" at 300%?
  - you're describing a photographic/lighting issue, but their rejection implies a Photoshopped isolation.  You can't feather, or creae a "rough" edge, photographically.

At 300% it's easier to see and to remedy, but you will notice it at 100% too. To follow-up the fate of that series, it was first rejected for keywords, then for a logo (rightly so), then for "feathering", then a second time for "feathering". With the third reject, I finally got a decent explanation: areas out of focus should be feathered very softly as a hard feathering there looks "unnatural". The image can be seen here. The arm was slightly out of focus so I feathered it with 3px, but apparently it was not enough.

I have a disagreement about this with the reviewer, I'm afraid. Overwhites can be used as such on a white screen or paper background, but many people use them to cut those out easily. With a wide feathering, this is much more difficult as you can't get rid easily from the transition shades between the white background and the object. The same reason I avoid shadows under an isolated object. If the buyer wants to use the image as is, he can easily blur the out of focus edges himself, over any added background, and that would look "natural".

As a final step to recover the series, I combined the 6 21Mpx images into one, reducing the 120Mpx to 6Mpx, so that any out-of-focus would be gone (see here). Now this one was rejected with the reason: "please upload all 6 images individually".  

It will teach me a lesson never to resubmit on IS again, even if the reject reason is simple like forgot to attach a MRF. As soon as you've corrected those, they will find another reason to reject. It's simply not worth the hassle and the time to be sold now and then for 0.19$ as Xs, when it was sold on SS already a few times for double that amount.

Tthe point I was trying to make in my earlier post is that I don't understand the business side of this decision. Images produced by "image factories" have very high sales potential. If I was an owner of an agency, I would strongly encourage them to upload, not restricting their content.

In case you followed the thread on DT, the remark has been made by "burst-mode" uploaders that a weekly limit would be much more convenient. Why don't you just ask Achilles personally by a comment on one of this photos? He is very approachable (unlike what has been posted here sometimes) and he will certainly take your thoughts serious.

But, if there is a need to become personal:)

It wasn't intended as personal at all. You are one of the few monuments of microstock with a fabulous port, and the point was more that if even you isn't affected, others certainly won't. You are right about convenience if you tend to work in bursts, and if your habit is for instance shooting/editing 5 days per week, and uploading all 1 day.
The ones really affected would be the "image factories", production houses that host several photographers, or photographers that outsource all postprocessing.

Why do people buy 500 euro iPods when you can call and txt with a 20 euro cellphone?
Why do people buy Maseratis when they are never going to race with it and never can use them at top speed on public roads?
Why do women buy expensive diamonds when you can't tell the difference from cheap glass?

As Socrates said to his wife Xanthippe when she took a long time to dress up to go to the theater: You're not going there to watch, but to be watched.

I am not sure what they are focusing on though....

Be logical. 20 per day is more than 7,000 per year, that is 70% of your current port over 5 years. Are you really throttled down with "only" 7,000 images per year, especially if you're working alone and not with an editing crew like Arcurs? Are you telling that DT is not commercial with 7,000 per year, and IS is, with 750 or 1,000 per year?
If you produce in bursts, having particular days of 50 images ready for instance, the only thing you will lose is convenience, since you will have to submit them over a period of several days. It's still more convenient than on IS with weekly limits.

This is the telling statement at the head of the post:
"The gap between contributors with high approval ratio and low approval ratio is set high and several drawbacks were reported. Low AR contributors find it difficult to recover a mistake they did in the initial stages. High AR contributors usually don't reach the upper limit, generating less self-selection as the contributor hurries to increase his database exposure.This dillutes RPD, lowers the royalty percentage of the contributor and attracts more subscription downloads (leading again to a lower RPD)."

Very pointed.

It is very pointed, but only in the unique DT image level system. Most revenue comes from level 2+ images, so you should avoid uploading similars since this means competing with yourselve (and attracting subs, which is new to me). People like Yuri had no problem reaching the top on IS with just 15 per week, so those won't be harmed that much by "only" 140 per week. On the contrary, being more selective on similars might paradoxically increase their revenue. A sub site like SS needs a totally different approach. There are no levels so you can upload similars but mixed of several shoots per batch, so that every shoot will have extended exposure.

Dear Member:

We regret to inform you that as of 21 March 2010, www.thephotostorage.com will no longer continue operating as a stock photography agency.
On or before 21 March 2010 all files and accounts will be removed from our servers.
We thank you for your support and patient all these months.

ThePhotoStorage Team

Good luck guys!

Yeah - unfortunately the page came back up. I was hoping it was down because we got it ... guess not.

The real point is whether it's worth your time and energy. Those sites don't really pose a threat to your sales. Those are kids wanting a cellphone background for free. I don't even understand why the Bulgarian puts his time in it. He is probably bored. You can plan shoots in that time, market your wedding shoots, research uncovered concepts. We can only hit the guy by attacking his money source, Google Ads. But that should be a collective effort.