The Symbiostock thread on this got wiped out in the forum change, but most of the information is in this blog post about it

http://www.digitalbristles.com/image-authorship-with-google/

The Google webmaster tools is now showing me all the structured data stuff as it re-crawls the files, so it takes time to propagate fully, but the first of the images showed up within a few days

I don't know of any way, but even if I did, how will that help you if you license your images?

It's the buyers' sites that will control how the image is displayed on their web site and a thief could find those via the agency thumbnails - again, an image you don't control the format of.

I think we have to live with this search (and Google has hosed writers and musicians as well as photographers with making it so easy to find usable stuff). What I have been doing it trying - starting with my own web site which I do control - to ensure Google knows I'm the creator of an image. What I hope is that it will then be impossible for companies who pull the "we couldn't figure out who owned it" nonsense to claim that as I will be identified as the owner of the images in Google searches.

If you look at these search results you'll see some hits for agencies but one with my web site's image and me as the owner of that - with my avatar. I'm on the first page at least

It takes time for the results to propagate, but if my tagged results show up wherever the agency results do, I think I'll have made a step in the right direction.

The outright thief is something I can do nothing about (other than stop licensing my images) so I don't worry about it.

I won't repeat bunhill's clear explanation of the issues of color profiles and how the agencies handle uploaded images, but here are a couple of useful tools to check what a given web browser is capable of.

Read the instructions about rolling over or clicking on the two sets of images and what it means for the capabilities of that browser given tagged or untagged images in various color spaces.

http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html#

This tool will let you see whether the browser handles v2 or v4 ICC profiles (Safari handles both; Chrome and Firefox on the Mac only handle v2)

http://www.color.org/version4html.xalter

The only other comment is on whether you'll notice the differences if the agencies strip the profile from your images when they create thumbnails and your images were uploaded in sRGB (which is the color space all the browsers assume for untagged files). It in part depends on the image content as well as on which color space you used. For some fairly muted images, especially those without people, you may not see a striking mismatch. But if you have images of people tagged as Adobe RBG and an agency creates an untagged thumbnail of that, the people will look rather sickly and washed out.

Cambridge in Colour has some good diagrams and explanations of color spaces and color management for those who want to get a clearer picture of the subject

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/color-spaces.htm
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/color-space-conversion.htm

If you want to avoid surprises with images - when printing, delivering to others or uploading to an agency - you need to work in a color managed environment, embed profiles in everything you produce and be aware of those environments that aren't color managed and aware so you deliver to them only what they can display accurately.

If you don't, you  may get lucky - or you may not

Read the instructions about submissions on each site. You will see that they all tell you not to watermark, add borders, etc.

Completed and shared on FB

The only thing I would want to know more about is whether any of the dump truck loads of Getty content foisted off on istock.com are included in the contributors that Jim Pickerell tracks. I assume they're not.

Those numbers have been significant enough, I would think, to have taken internal market share away from the "real" istock exclusives (i.e. not Getty, not Yuri exclusives) and thus account for part of the drop. I realize that the people who really know won't say, but it certainly seems plausible that iStock downloads are lower - given so many people who have reported that for several years. That's usually followed with a note that their income is up (and possibly another note that their portfolio grew by more than the increase in their income...).

Given my year didn't include much uploading and SS really grew over last year in money sales, I can't imagine where else that growth would have come from other than losses by the previous top dog(s).

I would take a different approach. Go for the top four and in particular Shutterstock. Getting work accepted at Canstock really doesn't mean much as they are very lenient with acceptances. You'll learn much more if you can get accepted at Shutterstock and get work past inspection there. Once upon a time I'd have said the same for iStock but they now have effectively gutted inspections (in addition to how badly they pay and treat contributors).

If you really want to sell microstock you need to learn from the painful rejections. If you go for the easy agencies with low sales, you won't really learn much - in addition to not earning very much.

As far as checking out agencies:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=microstock+agency+reviews

Just to add a note about post processing...

I don't think this sort of subject has much of a shot at sales at Shutterstock - not that much demand and too much supply - but I do think that you can improve on your post processing even for shots like this. But bear in mind that shooting at ISO 100 instead of 400, even with a 5D Mk III will give you something much better to work with as a starting point for a stock image.

I post processed the unmodified JPEG you provided and was able to improve contrast and appearance without introducing halos and artifacts:



This is using layer masks to apply high pass sharpening very selectively, noise reduction to the background (which is most of the image) and Curves adjustment layers, one set to soft light and the other to hard light to increase local contrast. You don't get the crispy crunchy look, lose the halos and still improve on the appearance, IMO. Let me know if you want the PSD file and I'll stick it up on my site

I had a quick look at your site and I may have missed some important aspects of it, but what I saw did not impress me.

The prices are all over the place - some images are free and some are so ridiculously overpriced and of such low quality that if I were a buyer, I think I'd just go to one of the more established agencies.

Which brings me to the main thing you didn't talk about in your post - why would buyers come to you versus Shutterstock, iStock, dreamstime, Fotolia, etc.? If you can't answer that question, a 50/50 split and setting your own prices doesn't matter.

Your video about uploading shows a browser based upload and entering details about images. If you expect any large portfolios to be uploaded you'll need FTP and to read IPTC data - is that in place?

I was going to create an account today and got to the part where I had to check the box that I agreed with the terms and conditions. Thought I should have a read

I found a couple of things that didn't seem right to me.

There were some odd wordings that puzzled me (such as if I failed to renew my registration my account would be disabled - what renewal term applies here?) but one big one jumped out that it appears Stockbo takes all merchant/PayPal fees out of the contributor's earnings. It's possible that this means that the fees are split 50/50 - I've read this a couple of times and it's not clear to me

"...the registered User ...will receive the amount of the payment less the commission and administrative charge (including credit card, PayPal and merchant fees) by Stockbo at 50% of the payment."

First, this needs to be much clearer so we know that contributors are paying 50% of the actual fees, 100% of the actual fees or either of those percentages of some "administrative charge" that is determined by Stockbo and which could include anything they want it to.

A little later on in this clause it says "Stockbo reserves the right to vary its commission and administrative charge depending on any changes in the rates imposed by PayPal or any of its third party merchant facilities on the transactions. Stockbo will notify the registered Users who have uploaded Stock Content in writing of any changes to the commission and administrative charges."

If you're taking some portion of the fees out of the payments to contributors then you have to stop saying you're paying 50% royalties because you aren't.

There's a reason that big name stars want a percentage of the gross takings from a movie, and that's because there are endless games that get played if they get a percentage of net profits - typically that profits are creatively accounted to zero.

The costs of operating the site sit with the site owner, just as the costs of producing the images sit with the contributor. Contributors should not have to pay site owners costs out of contributor earnings.

Moving on in the payments section, there's more language that raises questions (emphasis added by me):

" The balance after the deductions under clause 7.3 are made due to the relevant registered User will accrue weekly. A summary of the accrued payments will be generated and the payments will be credited to the relevant registered User�s PayPal account fortnightly on a Monday GMT+8."

This sounds as if you don't have a minimum payout threshold and that contributors have no choice about when to receive payments from you. I think that's a mistake. For various reasons, contributors may want to take their earnings more or less frequently. You don't say anything about how the timing of this weekly accrual matches with the timing of the payment schedule, but I would hope they'd match up.

Does this schedule mean that contributors will not be able to see what they've sold in real time (ideal) or daily (reasonable)?

My notion of an ideal agency is one where:

(a) you can choose to be paid automatically when the balance hits a certain amount, or at the end of the month (assuming you're over the threshold)
(b) the agency pays via masspay so the contributor doesn't get stuck with a PayPal fee to receive their earnings
(c) the threshold is low while the agency finds its feet with sales volume

None of this says anything about what sort of sales records will be available to contributors to be able to track sales and payments - I think it's worth spelling out.

The next clause is some sort of "not my fault" verbiage:

"There may be some delay in payment due to Stockbo�s payment systems. In such an event, the relevant registered User must contact Stockbo and Stockbo will take all reasonable steps to provide an estimated date of payment."

So if you're late, we're obliged to let you know that? Shouldn't it be other way around?

Section 10.1 (d) talks about contributors granting you rights to use the images in marketing for Stockbo but doesn't talk about whether that's watermarked previews or full size images, and for free or with compensation.  Given the modest cost to you, I think full size image uses should be licensed by you, even if it's for marketing

Regarding changes in the terms and conditions, there's wording about changing things whenever and they're effective immediately. Then there's this clause:

"  It is your sole responsibility to periodically check these Terms for any changes. If you do not agree with any of the changes to these Terms, it is your sole responsibility to unsubscribe from the Site and Services. Your continued use of the Site and Services will be deemed as your acceptance thereof."

I think the very least you can do - and I do mean the very least - is e-mail contributors about changes. It would also be decent and reasonable to provide some sort of notice period - alamy's is 45 days, Getty/iStock is 30.

There is no language at all (unless I missed something) about distributor deals and compensation for those. What I'd like to see is that the agreement doesn't permit you to make them and that if you were to make a change to include them there would have to be some sort of notice period. For the most part, distributor deals are not good for contributors and many of us would want to opt out - where removing our portfolios is the last resort for opting out.

I don't see any language in the agreement that says the contributor is entitled to delete their entire portfolio at any time - I know you said it in the thread here somewhere - and rules about payments to contributors who close their accounts.

I realize all of the above is moot until the agency becomes viable, but it reads like something lawyers wrote with primary focus being protecting the site owners and virtually no consideration being given to protecting the other party to this deal.

Does the system read IPTC data yet?

I haven't seen any contributor e-mail saying that it does, and the last e-mail saying it was on the list and should be done next week was December 18th.

With FTP and reading IPTC data I'll give upload a selection to see what gets accepted or not and how simple the upload process is.

It's working fine now - I can see posts and follow links while not logged in. Thanks