Extended licenses have always taken 7 days to clear (so cannot be included in payments). I don't remember the wording, but I don't recall it including "investigation" - but their English is always a little atypical. Are these some type of EL?

"David Giambruno, CIO of stock photography company Shutterstock, has left the company after just over a year"

http://www.ciodive.com/news/shutterstock-cio-departs-after-short-tenure/503145/

When you consider the big stories being told when he joined SS - plus the fact that he has no job lined up yet - you have to wonder what went wrong that he left so soon. SS filed notice with the SEC of this departure July 12th. Another article talked expansively about plans for a software defined data center.

Marty Brodbeck, the Chief Technology Officer, joined SS in January 2017 and is still there - might that mean there was some sort of clash and Brodbeck won?

For at least the second time in August, the site had problems where downloads weren't working - buyers on deadlines were not happy...

https://twitter.com/Shutterstock/status/900107766983000064

In the Q2 earnings call, Oringer seemed to be saying the new platform was essentially done. At one point he says "Now that we are on our new platform..." but elsewhere he says "...we believe we are making significant progress against our objective of moving from a content marketplace to a creative platform..." so some things are still not finished.

Platform or marketplace, making sure customers can download content seems like stock agency 101, so they need to fix the basics they broke.

Any other ideas as to what, if anything, this latest software departure means for SS's future?

Hello

I had a quick look at your portfolio and if you're looking to improve your stock sales there are a few key areas I think will help - keywording, lighting, choice of subject matter.

Taking the last topic first, if you are shooting beautiful images that no stock buyer has a use for, your sales will be low. As an example (with a bit of keywording advice thrown in) this isn't a tropical beach, no one would mistake it for hawaii, and even if I could see a sailboat (I can't), I don't see many buyers having a use for this sort of shot. It's too dark (shoot earlier when there's still some light on the foreground). Poland isn't in the keywords (not all sites search title and description) - if it's a famous Polish beach, then it might sell to local buyers if it's properly identified. It can't be both sunrise and sunset - keyword accurately. You can include things like twilight which cover either time of day.

On the topic of lighting, a lot of your images are very dark and I think you need to shoot earlier or later (a little) to let the light catch more of the image - here's an example of something that might work a lot better if the road were lit and the perspective on the fenceposts were corrected, especially if this is typical of rural Poland or is a locally well-known area.

Another example is this castle image - another time of day when the walls were lit would have worked much better (even bracketing your shots and blending them would have helped).

As far as subject matter, think about what buyers might be looking for - local foods or activities, well known places or events and so on. Make sure you include all the relevant keywords. Skip the rusty chains, generic pretty flowers or sunsets/rises.

Good luck

https://thenextweb.com/google/2017/08/21/google-shutterstock-watermark-stock-photo/#.tnw_uT0DWO1x

Shutterstock's new watermarks defeat Google's removal algorithm (as Google acknowledges)...

https://petapixel.com/2017/07/11/adobe-admits-lightroom-slow-says-speeding-top-priority/

https://fstoppers.com/lightroom/adobe-looks-improve-lightrooms-abysmal-performance-version-201512-187908

This morning I received email from "The Stockfresh Team" saying that uploads are back. I didn't know they'd been turned off as I haven't uploaded there in a long time.

They said they've been busy upgrading the site and that they have done a content review of their 6.5 million files and decided on even stronger curation - images that "stand out of the crowd, shifting away a bit from the current, standard mix of imagery."

As far as I can tell, they are not culling existing portfolios.

At the end of the email they suggested contacting them with questions, so I did. I suggested they try to explain to contributors what they are looking for so we can avoid wasting our own time and theirs uploading work they don't want. I had though when reading the beginning of the email I might want to upload a few new files to see what happens, but once I got to the end I thought that wasn't a good idea, at least until I have some idea whether having a portfolio that sells elsewhere might be a negative factor in their new curation standards.

Every site is of course entitled to set whatever criteria they want for content, but I'm not a fan of playing guessing games with a mystery process that no one will detail.

I'll post any information they share.

Jo Ann, did it make a difference?
I disabled the EL on SS and I feel like I was punished (my theory) ... I love how FT lets you set the EL.

I can't be sure, but I think it did. The high value SODs (versus those for a few dollars or a few cents) had disappeared completely - but other people were seeing declines in those, so you can't be sure.

The day after I turned ELs back on, I got a $66 SOD and two (rather lowball) ELs! I realized this wasn't going to be a daily occurrence - and it hasn't been, sadly - but I have seen a few high-value SODs each month since then. The theory that lowering EL prices would increase volume is bollocks - as everyone knew it was when SS made the change - but I decided I was willing to put up with those $17 and $19 royalties for ELs to try (for a year) and see if the SODs  returned.

I think a decent agency would be fully transparent about what happens if you opt out of various items, but I don't expect SS to do that, so I figured a 12 month experiment would give me enough of a guide that I could then decide whether to leave ELs turned on or not. If ELs are few and far between, access to SODs would make the overall deal a good one for contributors.

Are you asking how you could improve your sales or something else?

Assuming it's about sales, I think you have images that appeal to a small-ish subset of buyers and where the agencies have a plentiful supply. As an example, I searched for istanbul mosque on SS and (photos only) there are over 46K results.

Another example where you have good search position in a smaller pool (about 3.5K) of photos is arabic pottery, but I expect the buyer pool is small.

Finding subject matter you can cover well is a good thing, but trying to appeal to more buyers means either a range of subjects or a more popular subject. Possibly there are less obviously glamorous subjects that might make useful stock - my home's septic system, hot water heater and such have provided good stock - no one will hang it on a wall, but lots of businesses need these subjects.

Where you have control, it's entirely up to you to decide what to do.

On dreamstime, for example, I disabled ELs when they started giving them away (I don't mean that literally; they had some really cheap subscription deals that paid us a fraction of a credit EL). I disabled ELs on Shutterstock when they cut the royalties, but renabled them in April to see if it made a difference to SOD sales (I had a theory that perhaps images with ELs disabled were not included in searches for corporate clients).

If you don't think the price is fair, you can disable ELs. If you sell through your own site, you could hope to steer EL sales there by disabling at the agencies, but it'd be the rare portfolio for which that would make a difference - there's too much choice at most of the agencies and buyers will likely find something similar to yours that they like well enough to license it.

Shutterstock hasn't finished updating previews yet (at least I have a number of images, of all ages, that have "old" previews) but I have been able to check a variety of image types and what I see is that the new watermark is an improvement.

Looking at overall dark images and those with white backgrounds, both have noticeably more "marks" over the image. Not sure if this was just a side effect of them putting a name into the mix or something they wanted to do, but it's noticeable. I haven't found an example where anything is worse than it was before

I have three versions of watermarked previews for a sample of items from my portfolio - v1 was the white bottom border, v2 the dark gray and now v3 is personalized with dark gray border.

Edited to add: I did look at the amount of blurriness in the new previews compared to (a) the old previews and (b) my original images, scaled down to 1500 pixels on the long edge. It is very easy to see how much they've blurred the preview if you look at an image with lots of edges at 200% or higher. At 100% it's really hard to see that there is a difference and I'd guess a buyer would not rely on a zoomed in look of a watermarked preview that they know is scaled down.

I didn't see this when it was first published July 5th. Couple of things the author missed or was confused about (for example, doesn't understand that Adobe bought Fotolia and that all work submitted to Adobe is sold both places) but it's a interesting perspective.

https://petapixel.com/2017/07/05/want-sell-stock-photos-heres-comparison-major-services/

His comments on how terrible Getty and iStock's contributor interface and customer service are delightful For example:

"With a poor site, you�d think maybe they have good customer service for their contributors. Well, unfortunately you�d be wrong there too. Every ticket I�ve submitted has taken months � literally months � to get resolved. After a poor site design and no customer service it makes it seem like all that money they make, just goes right into their pocket and they don�t invest in the company itself."

Here's his very small SS portfolio

https://www.shutterstock.com/g/michaelgodek

Quote from: HappyBunny on July 17, 2017, 11:30

I can change the aspect ratio setting on my camera. I just wondered if customers prefer 4:3 instead of 3:2. So far I took images with 3:2 but then I read on the internet that for stock photography agencies I should use 4:3 and I can set my camera to 4:3. I do have enough MP.

Stick to 4:3

Why?