I am also in the same camp. There are actually some new features in the PS CC that would be of interest to me, but I don't like the rental model. Paying $120 for a year or $240 for two is not that much, but once you stop paying, you don't have anything.
 
It seems that there are quite a few people who think likewise. That would explain why Adobe has extended that deadline several times, trying to hook more users.
 

It could be the Search problem.
If you enter - Black, African-American, or African American, you may get different results at different agencies.
Sometimes, you'll have to try several variations to find the right image.

Silly me, I thought search placement was based on sales, quality, views, rank, maybe ratings, and other factors. All this time wasted trying to send new and improved images... and it's just luck and gambling?

Maybe if I rub the monitor and eat herring, before I upload, plus keep a four leaf clover and a rabbits foot on my desk, I'll have better luck and make more.

It would be more effective to take pictures of the monitor, herring, rabbit's foot, and the desk, and submit those.
 

Quote from: Ron on March 28, 2014, 02:28

Quote from: tickstock on March 27, 2014, 17:50

Vastly different?  They are free to share, what's misleading?

You were arguing in the other thread there are several degrees of free. What changed? According to you free isnt always free, so there is room for misleading people, in your logic. Of course now that argument doesnt help you defending Getty, so you change your tune.

If I remember correctly what I was saying before was in relation to 'free images' this is 'free to share', what I think I said was that 'free images' can have more than one meaning and possibly be confusing (although in this case it doesn't take much to figure out what it means) but 'free to share' clearly doesn't mean use commercially or in any way you want.

Whichever way, if somebody is announcing any images "free to share", is inviting troubles.

OK, I see what you mean.
However, some agencies will penalize your old bestsellers and push them down a few pages - to give the new images a fighting chance.

I found the fact that she misunderstood this a bit frightening, because art directors like her are the people who have access to hi-res comp images through corporate accounts. Of course, in order to license an image for a client, things still need to be negotiated with Getty by an art buyer�who, I hope, knows that ad agencies still have to pay the same amount for images�but unfortunately, that's how unclear the news about the Getty deal is.

Large legit agencies will still pay, but what about smaller companies with employees who misunderstand?

I don't think that lady is alone in her thinking. Many people see FREE, and they don't read any further.

Quote from: LesPalenik on March 24, 2014, 22:01

Also several "artists" re-selling celebrity portraits. Look up just Audrey Hepburn - you'll find over 100 listings and many of them are identical copies. And I mean COPIES.

Everytime, one of these pictures gets sold, the listing "artist" receives from others dozens of congratulations and encouraging comments, such as - great work, amazing photography, nice image, awesome capture, even - Really like this one, good composition and processing, can see why it sold. 

I pointed this infraction twice to FAA through direct emails and on their forums.  Only once I received a reply to my email stating that it is not allowed to post any copyrighted material, trademarks, or other proprietary information without obtaining the prior written consent of the owner of such proprietary rights. BUT - it is each artist's responsibility to make sure they have the permission and rights for uploading work to the site.

In the meantime, new copies of existing portraits are being added and sold.

Really? I did exactly the same about the same actress - I even gave them the name of the photographer and the studio and a link to a place stating whose copyright they were and that they were not for resale or commercial use.

It seems clear that they have no intention at all of protecting any of their amateur artists against action for violation of copyright, they reckon they've got a get-out for themselves with their position that it's up to the artists to get necessary permissions. They can argue that they haven't done anything wrong, it's the artist who has violated the uploading agreement.  Whether a court would swallow a defence of willful ignorance I have no idea, but as far as FAA is concerned, it isn't at risk and turning a blind eye to flagrant violations is the best policy.

A lot of the Rembrandts are from the Bridgeman Art Library, which has a licensing deal with the museums that own the works, so there's nothing wrong with that. I suppose that's a help for FAA because they could point to them as an example of the fact that some people do have proper rights to selling other people's work/property.

And that's just the two of us. I wonder how many such infractions were reported by other photographers and ignored, thus sanctioning the blatant copies.

With these numbers its mathematical certainty that participants will see diminishing returns.  More and more hopefuls, more and more disappointments when they can't get their work seen through all of the clutter.

I agree. Very similar phenomenon as in the stock world.
And since in most cases they sell simple wall art, some people will discover that they can take their own images to Costco or Walmart and make inexpensively their own "fine art". So I don't see the drop in sales as a cyclical change, but more as a sign of gradual decline.

It would have been easy enough to invite a group of power sellers in for a weekend conference and hash out all of the issues.  And then perhaps attend a few industry gatherings to learn how the business works.

That would have been a good idea. It seems, that right now everybody there has very different expectations or worries - the site owner, the stockers, the stock-haters, the painters, and the totally clueless. The main question is: who will be the buyers?

I don't know if there were other similar studies done lately, but the programming methods have changed a lot since then. At that time, you had to code everything, nowadays there are many already debugged functions, libraries, and plugins. So the emphasis shifts somewhat from pure code writing to code and function assembly.

There must be many references about the original study on Internet, but most are buried deep under all kinds of advertising links and annoying spam. Here is one link that will get you started:
 
http://www.devtopics.com/programmer-productivity-the-tenfinity-factor/

ADDED:
In the 1980's, there was also a story about a software project at Boeing that had 80 programmers working on it. The project was at risk of missing the deadline, so they called off the 80 people from that project and brought in a super programmer who finished all the coding and delivered perfectly worked program on time. 

I always worry about essentially one-person companies

There is always a great element of risk in these situations, but often one competent and motivated designer can accomplish more than a team of mediocre demoralized programmers. Examples include not only Sean Duff, but also Leo Blanchette, Linus Torvalds, Thomas Knoll, and others. I will not mention here programming teams at some large companies who shouldn't even take such a test.

The famous programmer productivity study that was conducted in late 1960's found the ratio between the best and worst programmers was about 20:1, of program size 5:1, and program execution about 10:1.

This experiment was done with professional programmers with an average of 7 years experience who were committed enough to come on their own time and spend whole weekend doing the test. If you have programmers with less experience and less motivation, the differences could easily approach 50:1. Sounds incredible, but I've seen it. Not mentioning that a great many software projects are aborted altogether before they are finished.

 




 

He gets a lot done. How many people in IS software department?


BTW, he just mentioned in related FAA thread:
I know what I'm doing. This is going to work. Why? I've got all the time and patience in the world to make it work, and I don't have to treat our sellers like garbage like every other company in the space.
Quite refreshing approach.

Any biz school consultant would tell him to stick to his companies strengths especially with competition from Getty's prints.com coming online.

Most business consultants understand only conventional, established practices.
They would have never sanctioned Jeff Bezos ambitions when he started Amazon, or even istockphoto and Shutterstock ten years ago.