Quote from: FD-amateur on January 23, 2010, 15:39

There are some pretty bad trojans around that AVG doesn't detect.

And Spybot either? 

Trust me, I live in the heartland of the crackers, hackers and virusbreeders. I can get any game here (sorry Fran) hacked and working. Those guys have nothing else to do. I got a nasty bug last December by a USB stick in a netcaf� and the hacker left his cellphone number. I contacted him and he apologized, since I actually bought one of his "products". It was one of those rootkits that makes your OS think it's accessing the CD drive. My point is that none of those hacks were recognized by AVG, Malwarebytes or similar stuff.
The only way to be protected is work on a PC with no connection to the net. If you suspect an infection, the first thing to do is disconnect.

ETA: you're definitely right FD-amateur; checked the RAW and it's not there. Maybe it happened with cloning some dust out. Now at once we have the reason for the frequent overfilterings i get : "not enough eye for detail"...

You're welcome. Glad I could help you out on this one. I appreciate you put up the image full-size, since I read so many rants without even a port link or the image in question.
I saw immediately it's not like the lens bokeh of a shallow DOF, since it's not the same everywhere. It just "feels" different. It looks more like you tried to burn the edges of the shoe with the burn tool/medium tones.
Yes you need to go over your shots always at 100%. The eyes of the iStock inspectors are razor sharp  

If you colleagues have tips on whats wrong and how to avoid the overfilterings in the future you have my eternal grattitude

Smudge?

Just take a second to read why iStock rejected his application: "...we did not feel the overall composition of your photography or subject matter is at the minimum level of standard for iStockphoto." Nothing at all was said about technical flaws, which is why I think you're barking up the wrong tree.

It's the only tree he gave us to bark up. We do the guy a favor actually. If you don't even know the tools of your trade, don't try to deliver masterpieces. The times of landscapes are over, unless stunning and landmarks. What now? The only way to expand in stock is by people and product shots.

The technical comments listed earlier are, in my opinion, not entirely valid for the iStock application process.

No but the challenge is not to be accepted, but to get approved in day to day uploads. A creative photographer that doesn't know the tools of his trade can become a Flickr star at 600px. For IS, you need to take the technical hurdles first. An image not approved will never sell.

"I'd say the noise reduction is high...", "they're heavily processed..." There is very little NR or processing on the first two (the birches in fog and the winding road), the dock picture is HDR, otherwise it would be completely blown highlights and black silhouettes. We used just enough processing to make them pop and not look like dull RAW captures.

Considering the cam you are using, and considering you are telling the dock pic is HDR me thinks there is something very wrong with your workflow.

Here is an example of a landscape photo that was accepted on IS, and that by the way sold last week for 12$. On top the original with blown out sky part, in the middle the shot as on IS with filled up white sky, and at the bottom (200%) an eccentric blow up (200%) of a part that should have purple fringe and noise, certainly with a mediocre Sigma lens. Know your tools! Istock only wants the top. So be amongst the top.   Perhaps you'll need to study the tools of your trade first. May the holy Net help you in this.

(PS: I didn't use HDR - the shot is taken from my motorbike - I went to shoot a waterfall and when there I discovered the right light wasn't around, it was secluded by rainforest, and all the time fat women without MRF were bathing in it - Gostwyck was right: 200 clicks for nothing except this)

Some posters have said that IS allows keywords not in the CV - but I can't see a way to do that with DeepMeta.   It only allows words from the CV.

No you can add free keywords on top in DM. Mine are already in the IPTC. If keywords are not in the CV, they are colored blue in DM, but they still get accepted.

An example is the word "emo" (goth lifestyle, with a lighter touch). It always colors blue in DM but it's searchable as such on iStock. Just type in the search box for "emo" : Over 1,000 results. Click here.
It's a bit of a niche since 4 of my shots are in the top 6. And by the way, you can see that exclusives in general are not pimped in the search results since I'm not exclusive.

Of course, you need to use that opportunity very wisely, and only if you are sure. I never use it for plain English or common terms.

I heard that there is a forum section on iStock where new terms for the CV can be suggested. Do the iStockologists know exactly where?

I think the non CV keywords show up in DeepMeta with a blue background rather than a green one with various disambiguation options. So you can add your own keywords/phrases, they just won't be translated into other languages by the search engine

That's quite OK since "emo" is a global word, it's used in all languages I know.

I see pixel distortion all over, especially in the grass at the bottom. Your skies are blown out to white. The last shot with the sea has a huge purple fringe edge on the horizon and the sea is blown out too. That's what I bet they said (or will say). You can recover those blown outs probably by proper lighting and in the RAW. What camera do you use?

The shots are nice though.

Thanks!

What SCUBA certificate do you have? I'm a 4-star CMAS (the tough guys) but after 600+ dives (most in murky waters) I got bored.

See his post above except make sure you put your ref id # in there and not mine otherwise I'll get the credit..

I just copied "http://submit.depositphotos.com?ref=1003098" into a freshly installed Chrome browser.  My Firefox was contaminated probably by some undesirable cookies.

Wasn't the Getty subs site supposed to have replaced JIU by now?

I read somewhere on the IS forum (in the thread of Frank DM and his brainchild DeepMeta) that the project has been delayed. He was promised to have the API for the new Getty subs site by December, but he still didn't get it 2 days ago.
I'm not so sure any more StockXpert will be phased out by Getty. We all thought so last year, but perhaps they found out too that Peter Hanza (the original coder of StockXpert) is making a new site very deep under the radar.

If I were Getty, I wouldn't just phase out the market segment that StockXpert has now. Maybe they just will give a face-lift to JIU and position StockXpert as their B-site, JUI as their subs site, keeping iStock as their A-site. That makes total sense to me, having a presence in all the market segments, and attacking SS on their USP. Market shares are very difficult to come by, so why throw them away?

I can only dream of sales like Sharpshot reports there, and his reduction to 1/10th sounds almost incredible. I had a reduction when photo.com went, but just by 30%. In short, I'm not giving up at all on StockXpert for now. They might have some surprise in petto.

The ones that really goofed up are SS-BigStock. My sales on BigStock went down a lot, not compensated at all by an increase on SS. In fact, SS is losing for me consistently. 123RF wil cut itself deeply with the new strict acceptance policy and they weren't much anyways.
It looks like we will have a tripolar world soon, with the Getty-empire, SS-BigStock, and DT, - and with FT as a wild card.

web search

A thread of more than 3 years old revived... that must be a record.

You can upload a bunch by FTP in advance, leave them in the unfinished section, and submit when you can at a lower pace. You will just have to put them in categories then: all the other work is already done.