I think some of the confusion here stems from what "print on demand" is, as it's a term that means different things to different people.

Firstly, our standard license specifically prohibits images from being used in "print on demand" applications and other resale uses. The images can not be used on products.

Our enhanced license agreement ($50) permits images to be used for "t-shirts, postcards, greeting cards, calendars, mugs, and mouse pads". Even with this license, we do not specifically allow "print on demand" - we only specifically permit "t-shirts, postcards, greeting cards, calendars, mugs, and mouse pads". You can not use the license to sell copies of images, etc.

If you are not comfortable with your images being used in the above manor, you can set your images to not offer an EL option.

I'd always recommend people read the license agreement completely before submitting images - in this case the relevant portions are quoted above.

Hope that helps -

Indeed we're fast! The time displayed on our MSG banner (on the right) is the live review at that moment - to give you a better idea of how quickly we're moving at any point. Our usual average is under 2 hours.

Welcome aboard!

Sorry about the trouble - this impacted only a relatively small number specific users, which is why we did not know about it right away. Everything should be working normally now.

Thanks

While the title of your image is fine, the description should be more... descriptive. So maybe, "dragonfly hovering over a flower". It should describe the subject of the image.

The keywords should be related to the actual image. For more information on keywords, go here and read the sample tutorial.

Glad we could help!

Hi There,

You can upload the EPS images individually and we will automatically generate all needed thumbnails from them. You can also upload them zipped with a JPG file, which we will use for importing saved keyword information (JPG is not used for making thumbnails).

Then just enter the title, keywords, and description in English. We have advice on how best to keyword your images in our "Help" section.

I hope this helps.

Duncan

Oh okay, yeah the update page was doing circles at one point this afternoon - that's all fixed now.

Feel free to send us a support message as well if you ever come across something unusual - I pop in here fairly frequently, but we always have people staying on top of the support tickets.

Thanks,
Duncan

Slovenian,

We haven't had any unplanned outages for quite a while. What specifically happens when you try to visit the site?

Could you do a "raceroute" and let us know when it says? I would expect that it's probably a local DNS problem - or in other words, your local service provider is having a network connection problem which impacts the route needed to get to us. This would show up in a traceroute as a time-out before reaching it's final destination (us).

Duncan

AttilaTheNun,
Thanks for the kind words! It's so great to hear when our hard work is noticed & appreciated.

Slovenian,
We are presently working through an unusual backlog of images, so files are waiting to be processed after approval for longer than normal. Usually this process takes less than a minute. Our review times are the real actual average time that images wait to be approved, at that point in time - there's absolutely no marketing or trickery to it.

We're a fair agency that from day 1 has always been focused on treating photographers right. That's how the agency was started - out of frustration with the options available. It's true that we don't sell as many images as the biggest sites, although we're working hard and growing every month. Of course we can only do that with the support of our contributors. While some people's mileage will naturally vary, we are proud to say that our monthly payments to contributors have increased every month for the past several years straight.

xalex,

Our Moneybookers payments normally go out around the 1st and the 15th of the month, although our last batch has been delayed. We expect Moneybookers to send the batch today or tomorrow. I'll check our records to see if I can find your original support ticket, as it's unusual that we didn't respond within a few hours.

Thanks,
Duncan

Sorry about that, should be fixed now!

Yep, if you embed them with Illustrator, we'll automatically pick them up!

Duncan

Quote from: Slovenian on September 01, 2011, 10:33
BTW current review time is supposed to be an hour, I have approximately 50 images waiting for review for over 24h (I just got those rejected for missing MRs yesterday).

New model releases first go through a review process with our legal staff, which can take a day or two. Once those releases are approved, then the subsequent images will be released for inspection.

You'll notice that any images w/o model releases should typically be inspected in about the same time as the front page shows.

Slovenian,

Yes, if the files were rejected for not having a model release, you can re-submit one more time without having to re-upload. In general, just remember that any image that shows up in your Unfinished section can be re-submitted. If they show up in your Rejected section, then the files have been deleted.

The easiest way to tag model releases is from your "Release Manager" page. This is what it's designed for. From there, select the release you want to tag, and then just click on every image you want to tag it to. You can order the images by "Date Taken" to group similar images together.

Tagging the files one-by-one using the "Edit" function in the "Unfinished" section is possible, but slow. This is more suited for making individual changes. But if you wanted still to do it that way, I'd suggest clicking the "Edit" field in the top title bar to expand all the images. That way you don't have to click each one.

Hope that helps,

Duncan

We've suspended the account while we investigate further.

I'll PM you for more details.

Edit: If anyone ever finds their images on another account on CanStockPhoto, definitely send us a message so that we can take action as fast as possible.

While (northern) summers are always slower than the spring/fall, our August sales have been right on track. If you've had a significant decrease, then I'd attribute it to the luck of the draw - and more than likely you'll see see it bounce back again with time.

Cheers,
Duncan

Just send us a support ticket and we'll update it for you. For security, there is not an automated way to update it through your account.

Cheers,

Duncan

Hi click_click,

While 55MP is certainly a big image and I can naturally appreciate your point, the reality is that it's 5x larger than our average size images. We base our pricing & sizing on the assumption that the images submitted will be a standard 10-20mp file. Panoramas of course are much bigger files and are exceptions. Perhaps we'll look at adding a larger JPG size to accommodate unusually large images, but that's not something that we have in the works at the moment.

We periodically review our pricing and make adjustments when they're supported and responsible. I'm sure everyone in the business aspect of microstock would like to see prices trend upwards, but we also need to balance other market demands and realities. In the mean time I hope that our contributors can appreciate the high commissions that you noted we pay, vs. the much lower percentages paid by many others (also noted earlier).

Cheers,
Duncan

Hi bartee,

I checked to see if I could find your unanswered support ticket,  but it looks like your username must not be the same on CanStockPhoto. We usually reply to tickets quite quickly, but have not got through everything from this morning.

Nevertheless, there are only a few possible reasons why images might be held up:
- New model releases. Each model release has to be approved by our legal staff first before the associated images can be released for inspection. This can sometimes take a couple of days. But once the release has been accepted, the images will no longer be held up.
- Videos. They go through a separate process and take a fair bit longer to approve.
- Specific keywords. There are some keywords that may flag the image for review by our legal team. Although rare, this can make the associated images take a fair bit longer to be approved.

I would assume in your case it's model release related. But if the above does not seem to fit your case, just contact us through support. If you've already done this, PM me the support link you were sent by email, so that I can personally check up on it.

Duncan

Quote from: lisafx on July 07, 2011, 23:41
FWIW, the series editor doesn't seem to be working at all.  Every time I try to use it my browser completely freezes up.  I disabled all my java add-ons and it still doesn't work. 

Duncan, can you take a look? 

Hmm, that's strange, it works fine for me. We have not had any other reports of trouble with it that I'm aware of. Could you kindly try another browser? Or try your current browser after restarting it?  If you continue to have trouble with it, could you let us know what browser and version you're using?

Thanks,
Duncan

Thanks for all the great feedback! Almost all the critiques so far have been on points that we anticipated before launching, but wanted to gauge everyone's feedback. Certainly it is all very much appreciated, and will all be taken into consideration. I'm sure we'll see continuous tweaks in the coming days and weeks.

We're looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts and impressions, so keep them coming!

BTW, for comparison, a light drop shadow was added to the logo. If you refresh, you should see it. We'll keep it there at least for tonight.

Duncan

You all beat me to it

Yes, we have some awesome new changes. Not only a new design, but a brand new search which is incredibly fast, and many other upgrades.

A full list of changes can be found here.

We are very open to any feedback, so don't hesitate to let us know!

Duncan

Quote from: steheap on June 28, 2011, 19:43
does the categorization make any difference to sales - ie do properly categorized images sell more often on Canstock?

Our search engine does not use categories. So as a result, having categories associated with your images has little buyer impact.

We kept the option in place for people who like that added level of control. Adding the categories may also help your images be found better by Google. However, we do not think the benefits outweigh the potential time burden associated with them, which is why we make them optional.

I should note that the above-mentioned tool is not officially supported or endorsed by us.

Quote from: jm73 on June 24, 2011, 16:19
I have about 1300 images on CanStock and 600 on Veer. You can get your 680 images uploaded and approved on Canstock  in one day.

Ellerslie - we'd be happy for you to put this to the test

Indeed this sale is for an enhanced license. They sell for $50, so you get $25.  Although it sounds like we could improve the reporting for this product type, so that there is less confusion.

Hope that helps!

Duncan