I don't use Parallels any more, but we have some PCs here as well as my Mac and Chrome runs fine on both. Can't you run Chrome or Firefox on Parallels if you run into IE problems with any of the sites?

I won't miss any particular forum for my day to day business, but I am sad about the history going away - as I was in a minor way when the school I went to (from age 4 to 18) was bulldozed and a neighborhood of McMansion houses built on the site.

For a while - in the distant past - I was very involved in the critique forum, request forum and most discussions about site and policy changes (back when contributor input had the possibility of influencing things). It's all ancient history, but it was nice knowing it was there if I cared to use Google search to find something.

The forums were laid waste - on purpose I think - and they've long since lost anything I found of interest.

As I am still technically a contributor, I assume I'll be able to look at the new forums, but if they're anything like the sterile Getty contributor forums it's essentially a bulletin board/announcement forum.

There are lots of people who sell both illustrations and photographs (and video, and other media formats). This artificial bifurcation of the self hosted artist site based on two of the many media might make sense to the two who agreed to it, but it's just crazy.

As it stands right now I can't "go forward" with either path - not with Leo because I have things that aren't illustrations I want to sell and not with "Robin" because I have no idea who he or she is, what he or she can do (in micrsotock or as a developer). The fact that Leo and "Robin" are at odds does not inspire confidence.

I may take the time to remove the old Symbiostock logo from my site's front page, but other than that, I think I'm going to let some dust settle before doing anything. For the moment my site is functional.

What Leo and "Robin" should take to heart is that squabbling with each other is hurting both of your projects.

I think that a bigger problem than your lack of technical skill (which definitely is a problem) is that you appear not to know that what you're looking at is not good - not good composition or lighting and generally without any clear subject. Without that basic eye for design and story telling you will have a hard time with illustration, 3D modeling, photography or anything visual.

You certainly have some determination to your credit. Sometimes people know their images aren't any good - not even nice snapshots - but they don't know how to make them better. That can be fixed by learning technical skills.

If you honestly thought these were pleasing images (forget even being good stock) then you need to wait to learn techniques until you have some notion of light, shadow, composition and telling a story visually.

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but I don't think it helps to sugar coat things.

And if you knew these images were awful, what made you think they might work as stock? Do some searches on Shutterstock or Stocksy and look at the images there. That's your competition.

Good luck

This says it's available as Lightroom 6 as well

http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/21/8459127/adobe-lightroom-6-release-available

I'll give it a month or so for other people to have fun with the bugs before I upgrade. LR 5 is working well and I have no interest in being an early adopter in this case

Has anyone used the new Canva FTP yet? Is it faster?

I've used it; I didn't time it so I have no idea. I set Fetch going to upload a batch, do something else and later note that it's all done. I now see the images are in review, but that wasn't instant.

I was able to connect and upload a batch, I hope in time for this weekend's ingestion.

I see the same display as Uncle Pete.

With the new option, they get - assuming a buyer downloads all 350 - 48.28 cents per image and pay me 38 cents. For the first time they make a profit, guaranteed, on every sale.

With the older 750 a month plan, they run the risk of losing money (even though it clearly doesn't happen with most buyers) as they receive 33.2 cents an image on the one month deal and 26.53 cents an image on the yearly package.

At a bare minimum, they should have communicated with contributors about this up front.

And also at a bare minimum, they should increase our royalties on the 350 a month subs even if they leave them alone on other products.

They've trumpeted that they're a technology company and shown themselves good at site updates without breakage (mostly), so they shouldn't find that hard to accomplish.

Back in the day when they gave us raises, they would increase prices, wait a month or two to see how buyers behaved and then set the royalties they paid us. It'd be reasonable for them to do the same here. I can wait a month or two for them to figure buyer behavior out.

I think the risk of a buyer downloading all 350 is higher with this product than with the 750-a-month product, but I'm guessing many buyers will still leave a few on the table. The smaller the bundle and the looser the terms (i.e. having one monthly limit versus daily ones), the greater the likelihood of a buyer using up all their allotment.

But even so they can afford to pay the top tier 45 cents instead of 38 on those $169 a month packages.

Photos have been going though within a day, but we're temporarily switching to a weekly submission cycle while we sort out the last link in the submission pipeline.  So from now, they'll all go through on the weekends. 

I have a batch that I submitted at the end of March and they haven't shown up in my portfolio, not even as in review. Will these show up at some point or should I just upload again?

DP is not alone in refusing to give contributors a list of their partner sites. Veer wouldn't do that either, and wouldn't let contributors opt out of partner sales. That's why I left them last year.

In all cases, contributors should be entitled to a complete list of partners - how else are we to tell thieves from partners? None of the agencies will go after the rogue sites, so it's left to us to try and figure out who's a partner and who is not legit.

I think it is ideal if an agency allows contributors to opt out of partner deals one by one and at any time.

Next best is if there is an opt out and it's immediate (like Dreamstime's is; the thumbs stay in searches for a little bit but nothing can be purchased as the sales are all via their API)

Next best is if there's an opt out of any kind, even like Alamy's where it's only once a year.

Backup solutions are cheap - staying with a lousy agency because they let you download your own images is a terrible bargain, IMO.

This fantasy that the agencies are increasing our exposure is often peddled to persuade us to allow multiple predatory companies to take a share of the earnings - a share that should be going to the creator of the work.

In the age of the internet, the role of distributors should be going away or gone.  As with other bad-for-contributor terms and conditions, too many people continue to supply the partner deals, so the terms don't get any better. If you want to be treated any better you have to be prepared to walk away...

There is a mighty big difference in how the two companies address their contributors. It feels like Shutter is making business with us, contrary to iStock who used us for their business.

I would point you to this page - their Leadership team - and there is no one there who has anything to do with contributors. Says a lot

http://www.shutterstock.com/aboutus.mhtml

I didn't realize that Scott Braut left in December. There's someone who is VP, Content Operations (i.e. not Scott's title) and who was there before Scott left. The linkedin corporate-speak describing his job includes:

"Hired to scale global content operations; extending international teams and content management systems to achieve new levels of operational excellence while driving iterative process innovation & improvement disciplines while strengthening key performance metrics.

Includes:
- Content operations vision and strategy
- Media technical and compliance standards
- Content supply predictive modeling and analysis
- Revenue growth and business strategy
- Operations production, financial and cost modeling
- Workflow development and process improvement
- Contributor and artist support and success
- Content integration, integrity and quality evaluation"

If I were to translate "Content supply predictive modeling and analysis" it might be something like: if we make contributor terms & payouts x% worse, how much content will we lose?

And I would think "Contributor and artist support and success" might include talking with contributors, not just publishing stuff in a blog.

I don't think Paul has been in here though.

Now if they can identify plant and bird species names, city & country, people's gender, age & hair color, I'll upload there just to get the keywording help

If there was a syndicate of micro-photographers, this could easily be reverted.

The truth is, agencies rely on us as much as we depend on them. If the top 500 contributors got together (95% of content) things would be SO different. How come that never happened?

Because it's too easy to divide and conquer and even the top folks are a sufficiently diverse group, with diverse interests and approaches, that even if everyone's upset with the agencies, that's about all they have in common.

Also, there's too much power in the hands of too few agencies (it was Getty and as they are fading a little, Shutterstock is rising). Contributors would do better if they could play the agencies off against one another and agencies were competing for contributors.

The Stock Artists Alliance was around for a few years trying to battle Getty's many predatory anti-photographer moves, but they folded a couple of years ago.

We've done reasonably well with some minor actions, but over the long haul, even those can't wield enough influence over a long enough period to get the agencies to make substantial changes (Dollar Photo Club being a recent example; their collection shrunk and they made some concessions and then kept right on * - although the fact that they keep paying people to say "DPC is so wonderful" on twitter suggests things aren't all rosy)