Miklav, it's generally within hours- however at the moment as we are expanding the servers some parts of the 'assembly line' in the system have to be slowed down or put on pause in order to allow the move.   I am working on this expansion all weekend with our tech guys - it's a classic work hell weekends but will be worth it.

ok, apparently I've chosen a wrong time for my trial upload Will wait then... (so far my images are still unsearchable).

It is common for iStock to reject pictures that were accepted at exam.

iStock has the most consistent reviewers, so if one photo was rejected by one it will probably be rejected by other too. If you see "Can resubmit" next to your image that means that the reviewer consider your image not too bad and you have a chance to fix the issues and resubmit (but it doesn't guarantee it will be accepted second time).
It's up to you if you want to bother spending time fixing and resubmitting your image(s).

Don't resubmit those images that are just rejected without "can resubmit". You may end up being punished.

commented


http://www.stockxpert.com/browse_image/view/31448131

I think the problem arrises when we try and pull detail out of shadow that is not there.

Correct.
My point isn't about shadows, it's about underexposed pictures. Underexposed pictures will get noise and artifacts even at lowest ISO even with a best camera.

I often hear a phrase "my photo was rejected for noise/artifacts despite it was made at ISO 100". Some people don't realize that the issue is not with the ISO but with sufficient exposure. Underexposure will result noise and artifacts in shadows even at low ISO.х.

To give you an opposite example:

this picture was taken with ISO 800 (Canon EOS 40D), no flash, fluorescent light and manual focus. It was accepted by iStock (and others) even without downsizing.

No special tricks used during post-processing. Normal RAW conversion, then standard retouching, brightness/contrast using curves etc. The only filter I used is a slight touch of deJPEG that I apply to virtually all photos.

To extend the previous post - another point that Lee has mentioned in his blog is that if quality standards increase will continue at microstock, this will push many amateurs out of this business. The entry to top agencies is already much more difficult than it was a year or two ago...

Quote from: MikLav on January 23, 2009, 05:42

They don't have any SLA at all (i.e. they don't guarantee your data is safe); and there are quite a few stories in the internet about people who lost their data with Carbonite.

Therefore I would not rely on such service as a primary backup - although it could be not bad for keeping an extra copy.

BTW this was discussed in another thread a few weeks ago with various backup alternatives mentioned.

Not that I wan't to argue about maybe a few mistakes... I don't know of any, but for those of you, who might be interested, below I have inserted a description published by the CEO.  He's email adress is incluted so it should be possible to obtain a full technical description of the security setup...:

fljac - perhaps you have different background than me and the word "SLA" isn't as meaningful for you as it is for me; of may be I wasn't clear in my previous post...

Coming from IT services I don't have a complete trust in service that doesn't provide measurable guarantees. It's nice that the CEO takes an open approach but he still doesn't address the point from a business service point of view. "Guaranteed 99.9% up time"; "all data backed up on tape daily"; "24 h data restore time"; "128-bit DES encryption" are measurable guarantees. A set of such guarantees for a certain service is called a "Service Level Agreement" or "SLA". And statements like "97% of our customers are happy" is a marketing part, not a business service term.

So far the only online storage solution that I am aware of providing an SLA is Amazon S3 (not taking into account hosting providers aimed at web hosting rather than backup/data storage).

The options of online and offline backup were recently discussed in this thread; following that discussion I've chosen my own backup method that I described in my blog.

Quote from: MikLav on January 21, 2009, 17:03

I didn't notice that before. Objectionable splitting indeed... Some of my "Excellent" have 0 Dls, some of "Good" have tens of dls... All "OK" have 0-2 dls but some of my best pics are among "ok" - so it seems buyers might be paying attention to that.

not sure if i understand MikLav. how would it be that buyers are paying attention? you just said your EXCELLENT have ZERO dl. if buyers take the rating seriously, would you not be getting the most DL from the ones rated EXCELLENT?

I don't see a contradiction. What I mean is that (I suppose that) buyers always select "Excellent" or "Good" in their search and simply ignore "ok". What they buy is a different story, that's why even "Excellent" might have 0 dls.

Quote from: MikLav on January 21, 2009, 09:35

I tried CushyStock and I deleted it the same day. The interface doesn't allow effective management if my entire portfolio; and the upload isn't better than direct FTP upload because I still need to get to every site for entering categories.

It would be great to have a tool that would not only transfer the files but place them into the queue for multiple sites; just similar to DeepMeta

Could you be more specific about your comment that it "doesn't allow effective management of my entire portfolio"?  Also, if I used Filezilla or some other ftp program, would it enter the categories for me?  I'm a bit confused by your response and would like some clarification.  I'm also a bit confused about your comment about files "place them into a cue for multiple sites" because in Cushy Stock you can mark a photo as being ready to upload for each site and once you tell it to upload, it logs onto each site and uploads them.

Paula, I tried it some time ago - although not very long but don't remember exact details. Basically, I didn't see a general table view at all my images in all agencies with their status (ready to upload, pending, accepted, rejected); and I didn't see an easy way to manage my model releases. That was enough for me to not waste any more time with that software.

It isn't completely clear to me if cushystock can completely place the files to the queues, i.e. whether I still need to login so each site after the upload, assign categories and attach model releases; or cushystock will do it for me.  I understood from the other posts in this thread that I still need to do it myself thus my comment. I deleted the program before I came to the point of checking this part by myself.

What I would like to see is the software similar to DeepMeta. It would record all my pictures, keywords, categories and model releases; upload the images fully automatically to all agencies; check status of my upload.

My current process is Filezilla (except iStock with DeepMeta ) and Excel table to track images and uploads (which I update manually).

quite frankly I don't like either in their current form.

Particularly I dislike vertical text in the orange one; small letters in the blue; too much text in the blue

I tried CushyStock and I deleted it the same day. The interface doesn't allow effective management if my entire portfolio; and the upload isn't better than direct FTP upload because I still need to get to every site for entering categories.

It would be great to have a tool that would not only transfer the files but place them into the queue for multiple sites; just similar to DeepMeta

Moral rights under the CDPA include the right to be attributed as creator of the work, the right to object to derogatory treatment of your work and the right not to have someone else's work falsely attributed to you.
The first two would not be consistent with selling images as RF stock, hence the waiver. The copyright remains with you, however.

Yes, and for those interested here is the law itself: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/ukpga_19880048_en_4