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Messages - Colette
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176
« on: March 08, 2010, 05:04 »
Yes, you can try to do so. But, like cuppacoffee said, this can easily be removed with Photoshop. And people who visit your website because they are interested in your photos, become irritated about your big tattoos and go elsewhere! They come to see photos and see only tattoos! No win/win situation!
I have done my thinking about this and decided not to publish anything on the web or publish and not to complain about theft. Don't publish too big images and don't use a high dpi. Use a watermark but don't put it too prominently in your image. When you see your images used in an illegal way: see it as free publicity and went on to do your doings. Until the time there will be a worldwide photographers union to help protect your rights there's nothing else that can be done. For what it's worth this is the best advise I can give.
And about your website: a friend of mine has a website (that is build for him by a company) to promote his business. It is completely copied. Everything! And the person who stole it published it with the brand name of his own company in it. Exactly the same website including all the colors, fonts, photos etc. He is ignoring all the letters about this. It is in the same country, so my friend propably could start a lawsuit. Which will cost him a lot time and money. Of course he will win and then he can start the next lawsuit for the next thief. He decided to went on with his business. (We do not have big claims her like in the US to avoid people from doing this kind of things, perhaps that makes a difference too).
Of course it's all wrong and of course it's theft. But what can you do except not complaining?
177
« on: March 07, 2010, 16:42 »
No, I don't say it's OK, but there's nothing that can be done against it as far as I know. Only not publishing your images on the web. When I decided to put my images on the web, I knew about the risks. For people with no much knowhow they can not easy be downloaded and why should someone who has the knowledge of getting images the way you described care about images of such a low quality? So why should I care? I knew what can happen, but are not able to do anything against that. There are more important things when I want to spent my time.
When I put an image on my website, it's 700 pixels on the longest site, or 850 when it's a pano. And 72 dpi. What can be done to make that a 10 mp image with 300 dpi again? I know about programs that can upscale images, I know Photoshop can do, but in these images there's so much info lost that it can never become an image of reasonable quality again. Or do I miss something?
178
« on: March 07, 2010, 15:24 »
Yes, this can be done, I know. But you can only download the webversions of the images, can you? Because that is the only image that can be found on the website. And by up-scaling them you can never get the quality of the original image.
So who cares if children use them for their schoolwork? Or something like that? I have seen such images downloaded and used for desktopimage stretched out over the whole screen! And they are used to make sentimental stories with text and music in Powerpoint and then send them over the internet to tell everyone to be ..... or to do .....or to show ..... (fill out on the lines what you like). ;-)
179
« on: March 07, 2010, 13:40 »
Remember the predictions of the "paperless" office when we got the first computers? :-)
Of course things change. We can't stop it. Some will win, some will lose. I don't think that there's anybody who can tell where we shall be in about two years.
About what he says on "digital learning at the university: Relying on "digital" alone will also makes us vulnerable. It is possible to study a book by candle light if needed, but what to do when there is no energy? Use digital, but don't ban the books!
But you can be a chicken and pick from the article what is useful for you...
180
« on: December 27, 2009, 12:37 »
You made a video of a christmas tree with lights and are asking if someone can give you a light? That's funny! :-) When you can not do it with your computer try to find someone with a Windows Vista or Windows 7 pc. Perhaps they do the job.
181
« on: December 27, 2009, 12:24 »
You are right, Kaycee. Avast is a good antivirus software, even the freeware version. Antivir from Avira is also very good and comes with a freeware version too. No antivirus software detects all viruses and every program can have 'false positives' sometimes. Here's an older article about this, but nothing changed since then: http://ask-leo.com/i_run_antivirus_software_why_do_i_still_sometimes_get_infected.htmlI always give the advise to use a firewall too. And one that blocks incoming as well as outgoing traffic. The firewall in your router only blocks incoming traffic. So you need a firewall softwareprogram too. And Windows update! There is no way to stay safe for all 100 percent. Better not to have 2 antivirus programs installed together on the same computer. They can see each other as a virus and give false warnings.
182
« on: November 25, 2009, 11:07 »
Cushy stock for managing all photos and stocksites and most of the other options it has in it. Picniche for all its options, only not for FTP upload and Filezilla for uploading to a few sites that does not work with my version of Cushy stock. And sometimes Adobe Bridge for the repair of problems with XPM and IPTC keywording. All of them does a good job for me. At the moment I'm doubting if I would do better to use XMP instead of IPTC for keywording all my new images.
183
« on: November 06, 2009, 18:46 »
Can you read the German language? If so, I suggest to answer simply in English. Most people can read/understand that. Try to use simple language for those who are not so familiar with the English language. (Not: 'Me Tarzan, you Jane' off course! :-)) For English is not my native language, I know how difficult it can be to explain things. Especially technical things. It is easier to explain in your own language. Mostly people will understand what you mean if you do so.
184
« on: November 06, 2009, 18:34 »
I am using Cushy stock 1.8.5 and I can upload to Yaymicro without any problem. You can mail Alex Bakulin on the Cushy stock website or the forum about your problem.
185
« on: October 24, 2009, 12:12 »
You can reach the last page, if you want, by clicking it on the site. But it seems to me that it is nearly impossible to reach the images that are in the middle of the search results with the old system. Mostly you can make jumps over about 5 pages. But would you do that several times? I am curious if these images with number 1500 or higher show up quicker now on Dreamstime. It's easy to scroll, scroll, scroll and then wait a moment until the images are loaded. You can quickly scroll up and down in your search results... For what I've seen from it, it looks like a great idea...
186
« on: September 29, 2009, 18:18 »
With Cushy Stock you can upload one image to multiple sites with the Cushy Stock Lite version. After uploading close the program, start it again and upload the next image. Not very useful when you want to upload a lot of files. Very time consuming.
With Filezilla it seems that you can schedule your uploads. Try this topic: How to schedule uploads with filezilla by greener. Otherwise use the Search option to find that topic. Filezilla is freeware.
187
« on: September 29, 2009, 03:49 »
I am using Cushy Stock for multi upload to the different stocks. Because I am using an older version of Cushy Stock until now (1.8.5), it doesn't work well for Featurepics. So I use Filezilla for Featurepics uploading. In Cushy I do all the titles, descriptions and keywording, then the uploading to all the selected stocksites together. When I come back home, all is uploaded an I only have to submit the files. Also for stocks that doesn't support FTP, I can do the titles and so on in Cushy. The stocks can read the IPTC data. Only for Istock I have to copy and paste the info from Cushy to the website when uploading a file. Recently I discovered about iptc and xmp (see other topic about iptc). I use the up-loader on the website for Zymmetrical, because when I upload with Cushystock or Filezilla the images don't show up on the site. (And yes, I did upload them to the subfolder.) Filezilla works fine, but it doesn't show thumbnails of the images, only the names of the images. Cushy stock shows all: the thumbnails, the names and the iptc info. When a site is down, or there are ftp problems on a site, images in Cushy stock get a "failed to upload'. Next time I can easy select the failed uploads to try again.
188
« on: September 26, 2009, 03:37 »
There's IPTC and XMP. XMP is used by Adobe (Adobe Bridge and Lightroom) to store keywords (and also by Istock). Irfanview uses IPTC. I had problems with double groups of keywords until they told me that one group was in the IPTC and the other in the XMP of the photo. For I didn't know this before I wondered why only my older keywords did show up on some stocksites like Istock and I had to copy and paste the newer ones. Cushy Stock also uses IPTC. In the next version of Cushy Stock there will be ability to show metadata separately for IPTC and XMP.
189
« on: July 03, 2009, 12:06 »
I don't know about Canstock, but BigStock does not hold back any money. Fotolia does, as far as I know. They hold back 1 euro for every pay out request. Paypal holds back some money when changing dollars to euros (and v.v. I suppose).
190
« on: June 29, 2009, 18:44 »
I use Cushy Stock too. As far as I can see it does most of the things I wish for and the rest I asked Alex Bakulin, who wrote the program, to change or add things if possible...  (He's working on a version for Mac an Linux too.) My workflow: when images are ready I save them to submaps on my harddisk in a map called "Photo's Stock" and when I start Cushy Stock I can automatically find them like in Windows Explorer. They are viewed by thumbnails and with their filenames.Then adding keywords, titles and descriptions. I can do this by copy and paste. Also possible to copy and past whole sets of keywords to a bunch of images. When copy and pasting two sets from different images together to a new image nothing is double copied. Then I can simply add some more keywords or delete the ones that are not correct for that image. Works fast and easy. Also there is a keyword generator. You can choose if you will have the keywordgenerator based on Dreamstime or on Shutterstock. I use Dreamstime. Then I select the whole group of images which are ready (same way as in Windows Explorer) and for the stocks I wish them to upload to I put the settings: "Ready to upload". Then close Cushy and start it over again (otherwise it gives a problem on my computer, don't know if others have that problem too), I open the wizard, select the images that I set "Ready to upload", take a control if I did not forget to fill out anything and click: Start uploading. All the selected images are now uploaded to all the selected stocksites and I am going to do something else. When ready they are automatically set "Pending" for every site. Now I only have to submit them on the different stocks. When they are accepted I set them "Accepted". Otherwise "Rejected" or "Resubmit", depending on the problems that are found by the reviewers. When clicking on an image I can see immidiately the results for every stock. Also when uploading of an image has failed it is automatically set : "Upload failed". Reasons given for rejection can be written at "Comments", so by clicking on a image I can see the whole list of reasons for rejection from the different stocksites for every image apart in a list. When I click on the different Stocksites on the left, I can see the maps with "Accepted", "Ready to upload" etc. for that stock. Also I can update financial statistics for the supported sites by one click and simply back up everything bij copying only one file (Cushystock.dat) from the program to 2 other harddisks. I have set my my backup program to do that automatically every day, together with all my images. The program is also translated in different languages. Also it's possible to add Stocksites by yourself. There are a lot other options. Some I don't use, some I didn't explore yet. I have searched the web for programs that do the same thing for stockphotographers, but could not find anything until now. When there are more people who are using this program: Would you like it if there is a topic started to ask questions about "How do...", or discussing workflow problems? It costs me some time to learn to work with it, perhaps I can be a help for others and perhaps some of you will have answers for me... There are also some bugs in the program yet. For that reason I use version 1.8.5 and not the newer versions. I did not try the newest versions (2 and higher). When FTP is not supported by a stocksite, or it doesn't work well, you can do the settings by hand for that sites. Not a big problem, but costs some extra work. I hope you understand my bad English and the info is helpful for someone...
191
« on: June 12, 2009, 07:34 »
Isn't it a better idea to start a new topic about Zymm problems? It's confusing seeing the message every time that all uploads are stopped, while in fact that happens more than a month ago...
192
« on: May 31, 2009, 03:52 »
Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. -- Clive James Last weeks when I was reading on the SS forum, everyone seem to be a little bit bored. "Show me your last download", "What is your last upload"....etc.  I think everyone has been awaked now! SS throwed a really big stone into the pond!  There are topics started in all kind of languages! Nice to see you here. You brought a lot of humor to SS forum... Hope you will be back there soon.
193
« on: May 30, 2009, 17:49 »
In the Netherlands sunday and monday are holidays. The same with christmas and Easter. I saw this idea on Talk micro: http://www.talkmicro.com/calendar.php?c=1&do=displayyear&year=If you like it and wish to know, you can perhaps make a calender like this and everyone can add all the holidays that they have in their own countries... But to see what the effect is on downloads you also need something like a statistic overview to see in how many countries the same days are holidays. National holidays only have effect on downloads when a lot of people live in that country, I think...
194
« on: May 30, 2009, 00:50 »
No problems here with Cushy stock at all. It updates financial statistics from Shutterstock as it did before. Strange enough FTP uploading to Shutterstock doesn't work here. Anyone who uses Cushy stock who knows how the settings has to be filled in in the program? The other stocks do work well with FTP, so I can't find out why Shutterstock doesn't..
195
« on: May 26, 2009, 07:06 »
Yes, I agree with that too! So even very experienced photographers like he is, say the same. When prices are too low, you are not able to shoot the more expensive images anymore. That is surely true when you are new and your income from stock is low. When stocksites don't have a view for this, there will become a lack of certain needed images and they will lose even buyers as contributors. And they don't come back... When you left a shop and don't want to buy there anymore for bad quality and service and you find a better shop, you will not go back to the other one when quality and service become much better there. I have seen several shops that has to close their doors for that reason. And it always started to go down when they start to disdain or contempt their customers. You can never get a good name back when you lost it. But some people never learn! Someone wrote on this site that one person can build a stocksite to a very succeful one and then one fool can destroy it in a year. I don't remember his name and how exactly he said it, but it is true... So I am curious what will happen to the world of microstock in the next few years!
196
« on: May 25, 2009, 04:57 »
Quote from Shadysue: "I'd imagine that most of the companies which use Yuri's kind of image are percisely not the little 'mom and pop' businesses that iStock mainly supplied in the beginning, so they'd be able to make the budget available to buy from the macros."
Sorry if I understand you wrong, but that's what I tried to say. If you have to start today a company like Yuri's you have to be rich enough at start. And if you are rich enough: for what reason should you join microstock? So who is able to fill the need for that kind of images in microstock, when all that photographers move to macrostock? When you start as newbie you get the lowest prices for your images and it takes time to see your income grow. I don't think a newbie can ever reach the level that the topcontributors has build up in the "golden years'. But what about the midgroup? Those who do this for years, make a living out of it... Are they able to fill the hole if the topcontributors move to macro? What I has read is that a lot of them also are trying to move to macro- or midstock already. And it's not only the quality, but also the quantity that is needed. All stocks ask for "people, people, people', but you can not produce that cheap and you can not produce enough! What is the reason for a midstocksite as Zymmetrical to start just now? I have read that he has been in the stockworld for seventeen years. Does he see this situation coming? That there will become a lack of high quality images on micro in the near future because of the mid- and topphotographers stop uploading them to micro. And the reason they stop with micro is that the costs to produce their images are to high for the income they get from them? And what someone said about Dan Heller seems also true to me. Most people don't expect to get top quality when you can get something to a bottomprice. Why should buyers of images think different? We know that the accepted images on stock are of good quality, but do they believe if they can get them for 30 cent? But perhaps stocks don't care about long term thinking. When they earned enough they simply sell it, like Istock. :-)
197
« on: May 23, 2009, 19:26 »
What I am asking myself: What if prices keep on going down and the Photographers that join Microstock for years quit uploading? I suppose Yuri Arcurs par example has now a very good and nice studio etc. to work with and because of reaching a high ranking and having a big portfolio (and so high earnings) he can pay all that costs. But how many people can do so if photographers like he decided that making stockphotos for microstock has become too expensive and has become a waste of time and money? For most photographers it is too expensive already to make images the way he does! It seems to me that the 'golden years' are over, so will new photographers ever have the chance to grow to that level in the future? With prices going down and down? When the 'big' contributors quit, or move to mid- or Macrostock, where will microstocksites find photographers that can fill the need for that kind of images for the buyers? I know that there's a big, big load of images in the stocksites, but this type of images with models, interiors and so on, need to be renewed all the time otherwise it get outdated. There is need for a lot of them and they are not very easy and cheap to make! We have a saying that when two dogs are fighting for a bone, the third one will run away with it... Perhaps I see it all wrong ( I don't do this for a long time), so I am curious what the feelings are of the photographers that join microstock a lot longer than I do...
198
« on: April 23, 2009, 18:44 »
Yesterday I got a rejection for 'an unacceptable amount of purple fringing' on an image with a field of purple hyacinths! I am laughing about it for 24 hours now!  And indeed looking at 300% or so, I can find a little bit purple that seem not to be original to the flowers. Using software removes all the purple from the image and cleaning up half a million tiny hyacinth flowers by hand... no, I don't think so! Of course there's nothing wrong with your image. Demanding this level of perfection is deadsting to creativity. Perfect beauty is boring. And when you might ever reach that level they sell it for 0,30 ct....  These rejection reasons seem extreme to me and you need to have a little bit of sense of humour when uploading to Istock!  (and not only to Istock...!
199
« on: April 20, 2009, 15:16 »
Yes, I have problems with newer versions too. 1.8.5 is on my computer the last stable version. Otherwise I get problems with FTP uploading. Mostly it helps to close and restart Cushy when making changes. Like adding keywords and then uploading. When I don't restart I can 't see the thumbnails in the wizard. It's perfect for organizing images, keywords, financial statistics and so on, but importing portfolio doesn't work very well. With stocks like Istock I set the image "pending" first and then go uploading. The same when using the "batch uploading" from stocksites. When installing a newer version I make a recovery point first and then for safety an extra backup from the file "Cushystock.dat" in the program. (That file you have to backup daily). When I find problems after upgrading and testing I can simple go back with the recovery point. If you want to try 1.8.5 and can't find it. ask Alex Bakulin for it and he will send it to you. (some providers don't allow e-mailing "exe"-files)
200
« on: April 09, 2009, 10:44 »
I was asking myself what was going on with all the stocks, but now I know: the easter-bunny!  To Gaja: I suggest to do your duty to your people and country and went to a cabin etc.... To be send in exile won't guarantee you water and electricity either...
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