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Messages - Eco
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251
« on: December 23, 2007, 02:23 »
Vonkara
ICC profiles are something quite different from the IPTC data (title, keywords) that you entered. I am not sure why the procedure that you described changes the ICC profile. ICC (which stands for International Color Consortium) profiles are simply look-up tables that describe the properties of a particular color space. They define the most saturated colors available in that color space; i.e. the bluest blue or deepest red that the particular monitor can display. If there is no profile the red, green, and blue values that make up a color have no particular meaning. It is thus important that your files are tagged with the correct ICC profile. Normally I convert my RAW files to Adobe RGB, do all my editing in PS in this color profile, but convert it to sRGB when I save the final jpeg file. I suggest you make sure that your jpeg files are in the sRGB color space and tagged with the sRGB ICC profile. If this info is changed you may have a problem with the colors not displaying correctly when viewed in an application other than PS. I use PixVue to ad my IPTC data, but there are many other methods as mentioned by others, which will not change your files ICC profile.
252
« on: November 11, 2007, 10:59 »
I bought quite a few of Fred Miranda's PS plugins - never had a problem during the actual purchasing. The Digital Velvia is really great - that is the ONLY tool that I use for adding saturation to my images.
I bought several of the Intellisharpen plugins - one for all my different camera models. I use them extensively in my automated actions when I want to create downsized (1024x768) versions of my images for screen display. However, they are no good for preparing images for submission to stock sites. Contrary to the claim that they do not create artefacts they do indeed create artefacts when viewed at 100%.
The resizer plugin you can skip. I found the normal bicubic downsizing (or upsizing) in PS give much better results.
253
« on: October 31, 2007, 14:15 »
Eco is that from this month  ?!
I wish it was for this month only. If I can earn that many EL's each month I may actually be able to live off my Microstock earnings. 
254
« on: October 31, 2007, 11:40 »
I always wondered why some stock sites sell more EL-licenses than others. I have made a quick list of all my EL-sales and from this it is clear that FT and SS is the best sites for selling EL's, while DT is the worst despite being third on my earnings list. LO sold quite a few, which is surprising considering the relatively low sales there.
FT - 39 EL's
SS - 26
IS - 11
BigStock - 4
LO - 4
123RF - 2
DT - 1
Total: 87
Do your distribution of EL's look similar?
255
« on: October 22, 2007, 15:15 »
I have tested it again. If I log out of StockXpert and log in again the amount shown on top is correct and corresponds with the amount shown next to "This cycle". The moment I go to the daily stats page the amount at the top change to a lower amount. It is like this since yesterday - it is thus not a momentary issue. It is almost like the stats page is frozen in time. I cleared my cache and reloaded the page, but nothing changes.
256
« on: October 22, 2007, 13:09 »
I noticed the same problem with the thumbnails. While we are discussing problems at StockXpert. Do your sales show on the new stats page? Since the introduction of the subscription sales and new stats page I did not have a single download - four days in a row nothing. Now that is very strange. Nothing like this happened to me before. Furthermore, when I go to "My account/home" the amount shown next to "this cycle" differ from the earnings shown on top of the page. The amount shown there is higher than the amount on top of the page. They should be the same, or am I missing something? Could it be that downloads since the changes to the stats page is not registering on the new daily stats page?
257
« on: October 08, 2007, 07:59 »
All my images that were in the queue (some for more than 2 weeks) were accepted today. No rejections.
258
« on: October 08, 2007, 07:44 »
Yes, Albumo has gone mad. I only submit "tried and tested" images to them - those that I know will get accepted by most sites and that sell. I had 560 images submitted without a single rejection. Now all of a sudden more than half of each batch is rejected. There are also no logic in what they reject and what they accept - total madness. Oh well, there go another site that I though had some potential. Needless to say I will not upload to Albumo again soon.
259
« on: October 07, 2007, 07:53 »
This just demonstrates something I experienced sporadically on many sites before. These surprising, illogical and counter productive rejections that suddenly happen against all previous experiences. It just annoy photographers, while doing nothing to improve the quality of the images on the particular stock site. These rejections are often not a reflection of the official policy of the particular stock site regarding rejections. It is more often a result of a new reviewer that is either incompetent and/or inexperienced. You are either lucky or unlucky in having this particular reviewer review your work or not. Hopefully this particular reviewer at StockXpert will either gain sanity or StockXpert should kick him/her out before he/she does more damage. This recently happened at Crestock where they removed some unreasonable reviewers and they even reverse some of the rejections combined with an apology to the photographer. I don't think we should hold these rejections against the stock site, unless they turn a blind eye to these incidents and allow this to continue indefinitely.
260
« on: October 07, 2007, 01:16 »
Why don't StockXpert not simply disable uploads temporarily like BS did to catch up with the reviews? Mass rejection of submissions just as a time saving measure is in my opinion one of the worst sins of any stock site. This will definitely compromise the relationship between StockXpert and its photographers and in this competitive industry it will hurt them more than us in the long run. I have three batches pending - the first one now for more than two weeks. Fortunately I did not (yet) experience this kind of mass rejections, but I will rather play it safe and wait with my new uploads.
261
« on: October 03, 2007, 12:35 »
15% for an exclusive image? That is an insult. I cannot think who will be willing to agree to that.
262
« on: October 03, 2007, 03:50 »
Some constributers indicated that they will stop uploading when StockXpert introduce subscription sales. Maybe it is a planned move of StockXpert in order to get rid of the long pending queue. Some of my submissions are now pending evaluation for more than 10 days. Very disappointing of StockXpert that used to be the fastest in reviewing submissions. I surely hope this is not the beginning of the end for StockXpert.
263
« on: September 28, 2007, 00:58 »
My beste month there ever. Two EL sales and a number of normal downloads. I few more and I will reach my 3rd payment.
264
« on: September 24, 2007, 06:26 »
Congratulations Jan. Despite the controversy I think your image is fantastic. I understand the mixed feelings of winning a major prize and then have to read a lot of negative comments - almost as if it is your fault. I also experienced a bit of that after winning the Canon 1Ds MK II in the Crestock competition. One positive though - the bad feeling disappears quickly once you hold that new camera in your hands . Enjoy the new camera.
265
« on: September 24, 2007, 06:16 »
Oh no not again! While I can see the potential benefit of separating the keywords in order of importance this will be a major task to separate them in the three groups. I think it will be more time consuming than the IS disambiguation, which took me months to complete. Wonder what will happen to those images that are not updated? They will probably not show in searches at all. I would rather spend more time uploading new images rather than spending hours updating existing images.
266
« on: September 17, 2007, 04:01 »
I experienced the same problem last week. Uploaded them successfully, but they never appeared in my "unfinished files" section.
267
« on: September 01, 2007, 01:06 »
My earnings for August are 9% up from July but far from a MBE. My breakdown is as follows:
SS: 29.4 %
IS: 23.8 %
DT: 10.5 %
FT: 9.2 % (1 EL)
123: 8.8 % (1 EL)
SX: 8.1 %
BS: 4.4 % (1 EL)
LO: 1.3
Rest: 4.5 %
The biggest surprise of the month was 123 that done very well in relative terms, even outperforming SX. Another notable feature is that though SS and IS performed consistently well for me some of the smaller sites has gained on them.
268
« on: August 16, 2007, 02:17 »
Immediately after the V2 implementation disaster a lot of members reported record sales, but now these record sales are suddenly gone. My guess is that buyers had used all their remaining credits at the first opportunity they could and then left. I think Fotolia and we as photographers only now really experience the consequences of the disastrous upgrade to V2 and I cannot see how it will improve anytime soon. I hope I am wrong.
269
« on: August 04, 2007, 12:23 »
If examined really critically I think there will be very few images submitted where you won't be able to find one or more (often minor) problems. In my personal opinion the problems pointed out in your image (all valid) is not enough to warrant a rejection. Some reviewers is just hyper critical, especially the iStock reviewers. Sometimes it borders on paranoia. My suggestion with this particular image: be careful with sharpening - rather use too little than too much, clean up the few dark spots, downsize to 6 MP and re-submit.
270
« on: August 03, 2007, 01:37 »
Well I don't know if they have given up (will not be too surprised if they do). I certainly have given up on them months ago. At this point in time they are a total waste of time. What a pity.
271
« on: August 02, 2007, 01:42 »
I have the slightly older model the S9500. Great camera for the money, but not quite up to the quality of my Canon SLR's. I particularly like the 28 mm wide angle and tilting LCD screen, which are very useful. I have quite a number of images from this camera accepted on the various Microstock sites. However, I seldom upload the full 9 MP image from this camera. I always downsize the images to avoid rejections for noise or artifacts. Landscapes from this camera at 100% look particularly bad. I have tried shooting RAW with it, but in my opinion RAW is not very practical on this camera. In RAW the camera is very slow and the files are huge compared to my Canon RAW files. I shoot jpeg with all the settings on the default values and only use ISO 80. Alter tweaking the color saturation and sharpening in PS I downsize the image to 5-6 MP and apply a small amount of noise reduction in the uniform areas (like sky) with NeatImage. After this I have a perfectly usable image for Microstock. Here is one example of an image from this camera demonstrating the value of the wide end of the zoom lens: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-3551917-ghost-crab-ocypode-sp-on-the-beach-at-sunset-mozambique-southern-africa.html
272
« on: July 30, 2007, 00:57 »
Also no problem with payment. Last week I requested a payment through Moneybookers and received it the next day.
273
« on: June 29, 2007, 03:00 »
What do you think of the new Fotolia watermark? Look at this image for example. It will take me 15 seconds to clone out the small 'Fotolia' letters and have a perfectly usable web size image without a trace of a watermark. I wonder why they have changed it. http://www.fotolia.com/id/974101
274
« on: June 26, 2007, 16:44 »
I think i am putting off uploading for a bit - till they get things worked out. I had registered to reserve my name, but the your name has to be at least 5 characters long........ so 'leaf' didn't work Not to worry leaf. That is just your login name that needs to be 5 characters long, which is not the same as your screen name. I was also confused by that until I discovered that elsewhere (I think under 'profile') you can enter your name/alias as you want it displayed on the site and it can be any number of characters.
275
« on: June 25, 2007, 01:48 »
And their requirement to have a PayPal account before you can join will exclude a large number of "photographers from all over the world" that live in countries that cannot receive payments through PayPal.
I was expecting much more from the Corbis giant. Their site looks just like another one of the back yard stock sites that appear (and disappear) every month. Very disappointing.
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