Hmmm.... that looks and sounds like a 15 word limit to me.

Ley me see if I've got this straight - this agency is rejecting whole batches of stuff from Lisafx and Lev Dolgachov who are two of the most successful stock photographers in the world. 

They appear to have few customers and yet preach the 'holier than thou' stuff as if they are something of a leader in the industry.

Sounds to me as though someone has escaped from the cuckoo's nest.

If I recall Alamy's recent financial results video correctly (warning - old brain and unreliable memory) they said that 70% of their sales are editorial.  Yes, that's 70%.

They sold �25 million of pics last year and have a five year target of selling �100 million annually.

Well Miz, I for one find your tutorials very useful.  I like your style and I like your simple approach.  I've learned some very valuable and time saving techniques.  Thank you for all the time and effort you devote to your work.

I use my new D300 on neutral settings and sharpness set to 2.  Initial impression is that the pictures are sharper than the D200 at the same settings.

I haven't noticed any improvement in detail or color but then I always apply saturation in photoshop rather than in-camera.

All in all, I'd say the D300 gets the same or slightly better quality images at 12mp compared to the D200, but there is very little in it.

I'm using Lo1 iso which is equivalent to iso100.

I am intrigued as to why a stock photo agency specialising in multicultural images should choose to call itself 'gogo'.

From Wikipedia:

Go go may refer to:

In music:

Go-go, a form of funk music that arose in the 1970s
The Go-Go's (1960s), a UK band
The Go-Go's, a 1980s American band
GO!GO!7188, a Japanese indie-rock band sometimes referred to as GoGo
"Go Go", a song by Galactic from Coolin' Off
In history and culture:

Gogo (ethnic group), or Wagogo, a Bantu ethnic group in central Tanzania
Gogo language, a Bantu language spoken by the Gogo people
Gogo (mayor of the palace), 6th-century Frankish mayor of the palace of Austrasia
Gogo, Burkina Faso, a department of the province of Zoundw�ogo in Burkina Faso
In science:

Gogo (genus), a genus of Ariid catfish
Gogo Formation, a limestone nodule in Australia
Gogo Fish, Gogonasus, a Devonian fish named for the limestone formation
In fictional characters:

Gogo (Final Fantasy), from the Super Nintendo role-playing games Final Fantasy V and VI
Gogo Dodo, from Tiny Toon Adventures
Gogo Yubari, from Kill Bill - Volume 1
Estragon, or Gogo, from Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
Gogo Germain, from the 1958 film St. Louis Blues
In other uses:

GoGos, the original name of the children's game Crazy Bones


On the same subject there are TWO photo agencies that have chosen to call themselves 'gecko' for some unexplained reason, then there's another new one that is something like zymmetricle (but no-one will ever find it because the name is impossible to spell unless one has seen it first).

Subscriptions at StockXpert and DT are a double edged sword - on the one hand you get an increasing number of sales that pay only 30c thus diluting earnings, but on the other hand if you opt out those sales are lost and that has an effect on the popularity ranking.

The clear answer is to exclude the larger sizes from subscription, but that will never happen unless Shutterstock makes the first move.

StockXpert seemed to be doing so well but the whole tone of the place has changed since subscriptions were introduced.

Istock converts all thumbnails to sRGB.  XS and S purchases are supplied to clients as sRGB, and larger sizes as RGB (if available).

Yeah, StockXpert and 123 are waiting to see what Shutterstock do.

But whatever happens, the gap between credit pricing and subscription rewards is widening rapidly and there is a swell of photographers reacting against the idea of subscriptions per se.

What's annoying is the way that Dreamstime and StockXpert lured photographers with the promise of 50% commissions then hit those same contributors with subscriptions once their libraries had reached 1 million.  This appears to have created a bad reaction and generated rather a scathing view of those agencies.

DT and StockXpert both have the potential to be excellent agencies, but the RISK is that they alienate the contributors who provide the products they need to sell.

While we all wait to see what happens with subscription commissions at SS in May, the gap between credit pricing and subscriptions at StockXpert will be too wide for customers to ignore.

I've used both and I wouldn't spend my own money to upgrade to CS3.  Try to find an inexpensive copy of CS2 and spend some time with it first, because its bound to be a whole different ballgame compared to photoshop 6.

An excellent tutorial as usual Miz.  Your efforts to educate us are much appreciated.

Ordinarily I don't reduce the size of any images submitted to any agency (including SS).  I submit full resolution.

Very occasionally I will reduce the size if I feel that quality or editing is 'borderline' and in these instances I use bicubic or bicubic smoother (like sharply) to reduce to 90% or 80%of original.  I've found that 'smoother' gives a more even tonal result than 'sharper' when downsizing.

Nice to see so much excitement here - but be aware that Shutterstock's subscription and search algorithm model condenses long term sales into short term sales; in other words files can do very well for a month or two but then sales will dry up.  You have to keep the beast alive with new uploads on a regular basis.

Whereas with agencies such as IS, DT and possibly FT a file can generate an income for four or five years, with SS all of those future sales happen in a month or two due to the mad rush by subscribers to maximise their monthly image allowances.

SS is great for a short term rush of adrenalin, but its a poor long term investment.

If you stop uploading for a couple of months your sales will drop dramatically - by 70% or more.