Painters do not work with yellow and blue.
They work with indian yellow and cobalt blue.
or maybe preussian blue if they are suicidal.

it is about white ballance, and shadows. Conflicts.

I always bought Cadmium Yellow and Phthalo Blue. I guess those are named more after the pigments and dyes though.

Not much different looking in Bridge CS6, but it seems to be a lot better than CS4. I haven't had any dropped metadata since I started using it.

One result of consolidating ownership of ISP and SS under a single company would be to reduce downward price pressure in the market and allow both to actually increase prices.  Which could be good for us, assuming the new management doesn't also try to boost profits by trimming contributor commissions. 

I think that would be bad. Like Ghostbusters "crossing the streams" bad.

Thanks for the clarification.  I agree it is difficult at this point to drum up support for new ideas.   

Stockfresh definitely is not the problem in this industry.  But they may not be the solution either. 

That's pretty much how I feel.

Seems like a good time to start a stock agency and wait for these agencies to tear themselves apart. 

I know full design studios that only have a subscription to SS and that is it. They would and could easily spend about 10 times more on stock images, but they don't need to, because they got most of their demand covered with their subscription. SS has lured the customers in on a simple "as is" kind of business model. Now it is time to make the real money. They are sitting on a gold mine. I predict that if SS opens the opportunity for exclusive content in a premium subscription package they just doubled their revenue in a year or two's time. And further more. I will bet a that this will happen. Anybody want to bet?

Best Y

That makes sense to me. They already have been adding more higher priced content with the On Demand and Single Image prices. It seems like next logical step to add some sort of premium content. That said, I wonder if they can add that content and differentiate it without messing up the balance.

Thanks for the link. The video sounded interesting. I guess it all depends on the details. Food for thought, I doubt I would join a new site at 35%.

Sorry to see you go. I try not to take this site too seriously, although I do need to take a break from it now and then (when it gets overly negative). For me, it's mostly entertainment. I just like to see everyone's opinions and what they are doing. Maybe, "edu-tainment" or "info-tainment" are better words to describe it.

As far as being optimistic, that's a mixed bag. I'm confident in what I'm doing, and I think I'll be fine. My revenue is increasing, and I like my game plan. That said, I'm pessimistic though on a lot of the industry. It seems like it has hit its growing pains, and the solutions to remedy those aren't necessarily positive or effective. I could be wrong though (it happens... a lot. More than I like to admit).

But worse comes to worse, I'll just have to get a real job. Then, you'll see less of me too. 

Doesn't seem that weird. I don't like talking business on sitemail. Plus, I'd prefer to have a record of it in my email.

To add on to my last post, I think selling vectors is a very different marketplace too. Sometimes I wonder if they should even be sold on the same sites as photos. The sites that only sell or focus on illustration seem to be decent sellers for me. Maybe, it is because their marketing is more focused on what I do.

Quote from: Microbius on May 17, 2012, 06:28

The only way would be a Union...

That always comes up in these discussions, but probably will never happen and even if it did, I would probably never get involved. I'm not really the joining type.

That's kind of how I feel. I think I disagree with 100% of people on this forum about the "right" direction for microstock, so it would be hard to find a union to represent my interests.

It might be good for us if all the sites were owned by greedy investors that kept lowering commissions.  We would eventually have to do something about it.  I'm tired of this long slow death of microstock.  At some point we are going to have to get together and do something or forget about making money from microstock.

I still think if we all withdrew from sites that paid less than 50% commission, everything would change.  Buyers will go to wherever they can find what they need.  We have the lifeblood of the sites and some of them have taken it for granted that we will supply them whatever they do.  Some people have left sites but it would have to be a big coordinated effort to make a real change.  Just imagine how the valuation of sites would change if their suppliers left and buyers moved elsewhere.  It might seem impossible but it could be much easier to do than we think.

It's never too early to start working on your own personal escape plan.