I use Neat Image when really necessary, but as Travelling-light says, it's best to try and avoid noise reduction if at all possible.  Seems to work well, but I've no experience with anything else.

When I do use it though, I use it very sparingly and on a separate layer, with a mask so only the bits needing it are visible, like in the sky or whatever.

No, ClipCanvas.

DLs:

• SS
• iStock
• P5/CC equal

$$s:

• SS
• P5
• CC
• iStock

Only a small portfolio (just over 100 at the most) though.  No sales on Revostock or anywhere else, though as SS/P5/CC/iS have been more successful, I have concentrated on them and do have the larger collections there.

I'm been in the IT industry for decades, and I would never get a RAID system for personal use for the simple reason that if the controller board fails then you will probably lose everything on the drives.  RAID is useless without a controller board and finding one that exactly matches the system that you have is almost impossible.  While having a controller board fail is not too likely, I still wouldn't want to take the risk.

RAID systems are also usually more expensive.

I would much rather just buy two drives and synchronize them with cheap software (such as SyncBack, etc).  Basically, everything that you save on one drive will then get copied to another drive.  If you lose one drive, you just buy another one and copy the files from the other drive and start the synchronization process all over again.

Not so at all.  With RAID 1, the drives are mirrored, and if the RAID controller fails you can always just mount one of the drives in another PC or external caddy and it will read it just fine.

At least, that's my experience.  Perhaps other RAID controllers operate differently, but that's always worked for me.  Besides, I've never yet had a controller card fail;  the disk is the most vulnerable item.

People who were forced to have their images on TS, and the independents who have no choice, were unhappy that they didn't have the ability to Opt. out and their images were producing roughly $1.20 less per download.

On the other hand, Exclusives who now have their collections back in the higher paying area are unhappy because they can't make 28 cents a download selling subs. They feel left out of potential income.

The inevitable conclusion is this, no matter what IS does, someone will be unhappy! 

Actually, Exclusives made a minimum of 38 cents a download in the PP, or more depending on their royalty level - but your conclusion is still valid!

Quote from: bhr on October 27, 2013, 07:13

Quote from: ShadySue on October 26, 2013, 13:01

It depends what people report. I only sell RM at Alamy.
However, if I post my Alamy stats, it punts me into iS indie, so now I've stopped posting Alamy figures.

... I added to the September stats and that included Alamy RM. Where are you seeing that it is classing us as independent if we do that ?

Someone asked about it a few months back and Leaf confirmed that the system would do that.

Leaf, is that still the case?

When I report stats in the poll, I also add Alamy RM, and video sales on SS, Pond5 and ClipCanvas (not that I get many, but it does happen...) so presumably I'd get counted as an Indie too, some of the time anyway.

Would it be possible to change this so we can register ourselves as iStock Exclusives somehow in the poll?

Back to topic though - I too think it would be useful if you could separate out Symbiostock and "other self-hosted".

I may be wrong here as I only submit footage to ShutterStock, not photos, but my understanding was that you didn't need "credentials", as such - you just need to provide an editorial caption in the correct format, which is, for ShutterStock, a little restrictive.  The event in question also needs to be newsworthy in some way and the caption needs to explain that, all in 200 characters...

But it could be that for events such as those you mention they would also require a release because photography at such places may be restricted, I don't know.  Perhaps someone else here could help?

Have you followed the requirements for editorial captions on SS as detailed here Shutterbuzz: creating the perfect editorial caption

Quote from: Pickerell on October 10, 2013, 08:55

The problem with the $25 number is that means there would have taken 8,400,000 downloads to generate $210 million and that puts total downloads counting non-exclusive at 13 to 14.5 million which is much higher than the analysis of 192 of the leading iStock contributors would indicate.  (See: http://www.selling-stock.com/Article/istockphoto-download-trends). I still think my download analysis or around 10 million is fairly accurate. I would like to see more exclusive contributors weigh in to this discussion and let us know what their average sale is.

My numbers show that buyers paid between $25 and $30 per image.  Taking 192 members and extrapolating for everyone just may not be that accurate.

I'm Exclusive.  My numbers are very similar to those of tickstock - based on my royalty percentage, buyers have paid an average of between $24.49 and $30.77 per image for my sales, this year, not including ELs, PP or GI.

And some of us, strangely, just enjoy taking pictures anyway...

Agreed, ShutterStock and Pond5, with ClipCanvas, are the only ones doing anything much for me, though my video portfolio is very small and very simple.

You should also consider that those sites accept editorial (unreleased) video clips too, where iStock doesn't.  An extra bonus.

No, you can't do that with iStock.

Quote from: Gannet77 on August 11, 2013, 12:50

Well, I would consider myself a fairly "average" exclusive, but like ShadySue, I don't make anywhere near $2500/month on iStock, and even my BME isn't close.

I suspect it's a case where the sample size and variation is such that the average isn't very representative;  it is likely skewed by a few very high earners against a large number of moderate sellers.  I would think the median figure given in the poll, $12,405/annum, is much closer to the experience for most of us.  Certainly it's a lot more like mine.

There are a lot of people doing it full time and $12,000 is nowhere near enough for a full time living so I'm pretty sure there are many people making more than that.

But the figures from the poll you are quoting don't refer only to full time exclusives.

There's information on GI Connect here - for what it's worth.

My understanding is that all content is available to GI Connect, and that it's some sort of pay-per-click advertising thingy, so yes, your images will potentially be on it.  But don't expect to make much out if it.

As for the black bar appearing and then disappearing, there was a problem with GI Sales for Exclusives where they all got lumped in to a GI Connect payment for Feb/March (it varied) so some of us had some brief excitement when a couple of hundred dollars appeared for no obvious reason - but it was just an error, and when the GI Sales were reprocessed correctly it was taken away again.

All of which doesn't explain why your payment would have appeared and then gone away, as you're not Exclusive and presumably don't have any GI Sales.  Anyway, GI Sales are normally rather more than that.  But it could be related somehow.

I suspect we may never know...