You need to be careful about transforming a photograph to a vector. There are several ways to do it in Photoshop (and in Illustrator) but most microstock sites will bounce you if it is obvious that it was a photograph first (they can ALWAYS tell!).  They will also require you to submit a copy of the photograph that was transformed to vectors, and you need to prove (somehow) that YOU took the photograph, it cannot be copyrighted to someone else.  Another potential problem for you would be that ALL paths need to be closed. Meaning, if you did a Live Trace you would have thousands (if not millions) of points and potentially many, many open paths that would need to be closed.  There is an Illustrator plug-in that finds open paths but on a Live Trace, it would be a nightmare, so labor-intensive that it would never be worth it.  It would be easier just to trace over your photograph, taking creative license to change the image enough to make it NOT look like a Live Trace.

I think your best bet is to stay away from converting photographs to vectors because they are rarely accepted at the microstocks (in my experience, and from what I've read on other forums).

Thanks marcviln... we love it, and I believe you may be right that it's on the side of the SS server... even my firefox extension is having problems with them.

Looking forward to further releases (with other microstocks on them)! Y'all are the bomb!

Love the Microstock Watcher!  Is anybody else having trouble logging into iStock?  It just sits there and goes round and round trying to log in.  I have double-checked the username & password... wondering if it has anything to do with their recent upheavals.

I have a friend who is an internet security analyst and i had asked him to make me a yahoo widget just like this!  I guess we were a little too late, guess he didn't need the money! 

Thanks Madeleine... i had gone into my profile but couldn't find it so I just dug deeper to find the dreamstime ID field.  Those are daily downloads, right?  Because mine says 0 right now (its early).

There's actually another one (i'm not going to mention it by name since i don't want you go to there!) that is owned by a certain rabble-rouser who shall remain nameless... many of you know him, he got banned from SS's forum, then banned from SS altogether... this board is the one that they were talking about in the Yahoo Microstock Group, where the owner removes "lurkers" and people who haven't posted in a while.  He had me as a moderator of the Illustrator board and then removed me, without a word, because somebody complained that I wasn't putting up enough tutorials, tips & tricks, examples, advice for uploading vectors, etc.  (SOME of us have a boatload of WORK to do because we are actual working artists!)  He even removed all of the posts that were in there prior to his dismissal of me!  I think that was *rude* ... but not nearly as rude as I have seen his posts in the microstock forums.  18 months ago when I started all this, I would read the SS forums and get so angry with this contributor... his insults and egotistical ideation were ridiculous, just meant to get people's hackles up... why would anybody do that?

I find SS's forum is the most supportive and instructive... and IS's is the most mean-spirited.  DT's is okay but you can get flamed if you say the wrong things or have any kind of anger or frustration in your message.  It's a free internet, though... so I try to just be a nice girl and not let it bother me.

Well that might be true but they are "up and coming..." and besides, did you take a look at the prices?  They are not a "dollar site" like IS and BigStock.

I love the critiquing that the approvers do, and now i am one of them.  We are now debating whether approvers should just let all the junk through just to build the portfolio, or be as stringent as the other microstock sites so that they build a reputation for quality (at those prices, they better, its hard to build a good reputation but its REALLY easy to get a bad one!).

Y'all check it out, its a great site and I pray it builds its customer base really quickly... the payout is awesome.

They finally accepted me... now I pray they're as good as everyone says (traffic-wise).  Thanks for your encouragement, guys.

I guess leaf was refering to vector files (AI/EPS), not derived JPEGs, which are accepted in many sites.

I guess you're right... I didn't realize they didn't take the actual vector file. Duh!  Have you submitted that to iStock?  I know as a designer I have purchased several vector files from them.

I have ONE vector on Dreamstime and it's my best-seller! It's just a rainbow but I searched and searched for a good one on stock and couldn't find one, so as much as I hated to have to design one for a $25 ad I was designing, I did, and submitted it, and it does very well.  More vectors in the future for me. 

I'm still waiting too... this will be my third load of pictures to attempt to get approved... i have a 6MP camera and use neat image and work really hard on purple fringing and other artifacting... I have my pics on 7 other sites... what gives?  I had heard it was pretty easy to get approved...