Quote from: Quasarphoto on September 08, 2017, 11:32

A topic which never runs out: image reviewers. Not sure how is the daily life of an image reviewer, but consistency has never been a proper word for it. Either they cut like they on a revenge path, either they let through all the junk. Sometimes I wonder if the photos are reviewed by humans at all, maybe there is an automated system in place already? The rejection reason sometimes sends my eyebrows on a rollercoaster.

I think there might be a element of automated assistance and some simply "waved" through for some contributors. Considering SS must be reviewing about 1.5m images weekly I wonder how much time each pic gets to be reviewed?

Hybrid is easy. Size, standards like srgb, jpg, repeating keywords, and who knows what else the proprietary software can do. That is a precheck for automated fails, saves wasted human time. Then a reviewer opens with special software that shows measures, lighting, histogram, focus, does the image match the description, type, editorial or other. Then a bunch of buttons to click, one of them is accepted. I'd guess around 5 seconds an image.

That's where the faulty and ridiculous reviews come from. Make quick money, reject big batches while watching FA cup. It must be a burnout job, we can guess new reviewers are not as smart, some are just lazy. Means when in doubt or don't know, just reject. $36 an hour at 5 cents, 5 seconds a review, and a fired brain. 

Accepting 1.2 million, I think you are right about the 1.5 reviewed.

Also Video, Illustration, Editorial, Etc, different areas, have different specialized review teams. Submit different types at the same time and the accepted review notices will be at different times.

Quote from: ShadySue on September 04, 2017, 08:44

To be fair, although they're a bunch of foetid dingoes' kidneys, my rpd is much higher than it was in 2007, but vastly lower than it was subsequently up to 2015, when they chose to join the race to the bottom.
However, downloads are far, fewer.

But why now? What's changed? What has changed is how they report $$. Given the defection of artists, a highly probable defection of buyers, I can only conclude that the reporting was very inaccurate in the 'older days'. My personal evidence is that when this ESP reporting started in Jan I more than doubled to almost tripled my income from about $200 a month to $500-$600 a month with doing NOTHING.  This happened only after they transitioned to the new reporting system, so it was quick, not gradual over time.  Leads me to believe there either is or was very inaccurate reporting.  I bet IS/GETTY would CR_AP their pink panties if their royalty system was audited for the last 10 years.

All in, class action suit, I'm for it. Make them tell the truth.

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on July 07, 2017, 09:38

Quote from: Chichikov on July 06, 2017, 06:55

Thank you, but the subject of the thread is *Ring Flash* (tube and led),

I did some reading about LED ring flash a few weeks back. I came away with the impression that LED was not a good option, but I can't recall exactly what it was that put me off, so I can only suggest that you research carefully if you feel inclined to take that route.

I have read bad reviews about some LED ring flash, like the Polaroid one, used with rechargeable battery. If I have understand well the tension of the rechargeable batteries (1,2 V) is not sufficient to produce the right amount of light and the flash fails. While with the normal flash it is not a problem, the condenser just needs a little more time to get the maximum capacity.
The main advantages of the LED are the (low) price, and the possibility to use it as continuous light.
But to spend little money for something not working is not a great deal!

There's no condenser in a LED flash from what I've seen, so you are mixing up technology, especially that the rechargeable doesn't make enough power, which is also not related to the capacitor charge value, except how long it takes to cycle. Think about that? It's the capacitor that fires the flash tube, not the battery. LEDs have to flash and no capacitor. It's just a trigger that turns on the LED.

Use the LED continuous, they hardly use any power and will run for hours on any batteries. Standard batteries might be brighter than rechargeable but unless I compare, I can't say yes or no. At any rate LEDs do not flash.

Just wondering, does that fake sun effect increase sales? Some indoor images without a window or anything even have a sunny glow. Looks weird, but I guess your sales prove me wrong.

It's not fake Sun it's flare and it's been a trendy thing to do for over a year, sometimes with colors instead of just light. Look around in magazines and billboards for the next trend and get in more at the beginning. I think this one may have run it's course?

https://photographylife.com/what-is-ghosting-and-flare

How to make a flaw into art. https://digital-photography-school.com/5-tips-for-achieving-artistic-lens-flare-how-to/

Quote from: derek on August 28, 2017, 08:16

Many many years ago a friend of a fiend asked me too shoot some covers for him. He had no money and it would have taken over a week actually. This was back in the film days.
However he said that I could have like a 25% partneship in some stupid computer game he was sort of going to sell for BIG money. Yeah right I thought sur!  I didnt actually have time and I was going broad.

Only the computer game was called "Packman" !!  I'm sure some of the older ones here remember it!...Today this guy is worth over 500 million bucks. Sigh!

With that kind of money you could have own Shutter! 

Only if you believe a word of that? Pacman was created by Japanese video game designer Toru Iwatani not some guy in Sweden, Denmark or the UK.

Quote from: YadaYadaYada on August 23, 2017, 16:15

Quote from: Brasilnut on August 23, 2017, 15:36

Microstock --->>  Pennystocks

In this case two penny stock photos? 

RPD: 0.75 average June 2017, but sales are 1/10th of SS and below FT for my image income. I count real income, it buys things. RPD isn't worth a penny.

RPD for someone with 5,000 images and 1,000 sales a month, is a fair measure. If it's 5,000 photos and 8 sales a month, RPD is useless. Same as RPI, what are your images, how many near duplicates or series shots? Remove the padding and see what you really earn. It could be a higher RPI figure.

0.02$    iStock Essentials    30-Apr-2017

-0.23$    iStock Essentials    27-Jan-2017
but the same image has a .30 sale, same month, I'll assume these negative numbers can be explained by adjustments, not negative commission. Trying to be fair about this.

And, I see far more payments over the previous .28c marker than I see below it. Subs popping up between $2-$3 are quite frequent. Carrying out a simple average of all sub sales confirms the current system is working in my favour compared to the previous one. YMMV.

I suppose it might be for some people. My RPD before the new improved, exciting ESP system that we will love, was over $1.50, if some people find this better, or think 75c RPD is good, best for you. Mine is half of what it was in 2016. I'm still watching as my FT RPD is less and keep in mind that 75c was for June 2017 only. I'd like to see the annual before I jump into cheering about IS/Getty anything.

My return RPD with the new system is half of what it was. Less than half in dollar income. That's plain and simple fact.

Quote from: Zero Talent on August 23, 2017, 21:43

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on August 23, 2017, 20:14

Seems like Civil War #2 has already begun. Congrats on squabbling over your own versions of the truth.

I wonder who's the divisive "leader" who started it... 
And I guess you realise that the same culprit is not far from starting serious international wars, not only civil  , just to prove that he doesn't have "small hands"

I'm no fan of Trump. I was also no fan of Obama. They equally catered to their own sides which based on the almost 50/50 split of the last election this nation is clearly divided. This last election also uncovered the lying cheating mess that is both parties. We are not each other's enemies. We are just being led to believe that by the barrage of biased news, echo chamber social media, and other sources of questionable information. Wikipedia? Snopes? News blogs? Liberal CNN or Conservative Fox News? It's all bull$hit. The more people argue, the better the ratings, and the more money there is to be made at our expense. Division is big business. Carry on.

Bravo ++++++++++

Microstock --->>  Pennystocks

In this case two penny stock photos? 

RPD: 0.75 average June 2017, but sales are 1/10th of SS and below FT for my image income. I count real income, it buys things. RPD isn't worth a penny.

RPD for someone with 5,000 images and 1,000 sales a month, is a fair measure. If it's 5,000 photos and 8 sales a month, RPD is useless. Same as RPI, what are your images, how many near duplicates or series shots? Remove the padding and see what you really earn. It could be a higher RPI figure.

0.02$    iStock Essentials    30-Apr-2017

-0.23$    iStock Essentials    27-Jan-2017
but the same image has a .30 sale, same month, I'll assume these negative numbers can be explained by adjustments, not negative commission. Trying to be fair about this.

You act as if this surprises you. Didn't you know 0.02 is their minimum? They made their new royalty plans known months ago.

True but IS double talked and promised this wasn't really the minimum, we were reading it wrong. Ha! Until we started getting ,04 commissions when ESP finally disclosed how we had been lied to. I feel stupid because I actually bought their lies and corporate line math promises. Their forum mods clearly explained why the .02 wasn't true. Getty is nothing but greedy liars.

Nice in theory....but my most 'liked' and also my most original pics don't get accepted for Marketplace - and even those accepted take MONTHS to wander through the system. Given how much it costs now, this is a crazy waste of non-selling time.



PS I've been in this line long enough to know the quality is ok!

I'd agree that like you, most here would. Didn't Canva do something like this which included removing entire accounts. I'm not sure this is something good ahead for some people.

I said "some" 60 years ago, please don't try to play the accuracy game here, when you know exactly what I'm talking about.
For those who don't, here is a summary:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

"In American politics, the southern strategy was a Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans. As the Civil Rights Movement and dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the 1950s and 1960s visibly deepened existing racial tensions in much of the Southern United States, Republican politicians such as presidential candidate Richard Nixon and Senator Barry Goldwater developed strategies that successfully contributed to the political realignment of many white, conservative voters in the South to the Republican Party that had traditionally supported the Democratic Party. It also helped push the Republican Party much more to the right."

http://russp.us/racism.htm

"Every political party has its racists, but the notion that Republicans are more racist than Democrats or any other party is based on nothing more than a constant drumbeat of unsubstantiated innuendo and assertions by Leftists, constantly echoed by the liberal media. It is a classic example of a Big Lie that becomes "true" simply by virtue of being repeated so many times.

In the 1960s the Democratic Party changed its strategy for dealing with African Americans. Thanks to earlier Republican initiatives on civil rights, blatant racial oppression was no longer a viable political option. Whereas before that time Southern Democrats had overtly and proudly segregated and terrorized blacks, the national Democratic Party decided instead to be more subtle and get them as dependent on government as possible. As LBJ so elegantly put it (in a famous moment of candor that was recorded for posterity), "I'll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years." At the same time, the Democrats started a persistent campaign of lies and innuendo, falsely equating any opposition to their welfare state with racism."

The Southern Democrats are hypocrites and still finding ways to oppress and control minority groups, especially the poor Blacks. Many of the conservatives want to embrace and educate to help people of color and minorities gain stature and become part of America, like other minority groups over our history. The Liberals want to control and manipulate people, for the power of their votes.

Free food, subsidized housing, grants that are based on race or other minority requirements, and basically a discriminatory policy against white males. The largest minority in the US now is Hispanics, and that pisses off some of my Black friends. Consider this, black businesses are booming, blacks have a long tradition of military service, with black veterans amounting to more than 2 million in 2010. Moreover, blacks graduate from high school at about the same rate as Americans do overall.

Blacks prefer the South and the former Confederate states as their homes. I have a feeling we can expect the black American's to take over leadership in the South to a greater extent in the future, which is a positive movement instead of pandering by white politicians to control. Latinos and Hispanic peoples will concentrate in the South West and have a favorably controlled representation in that area.

The melting pot will just have some realignments, and still be the United States.

White supremacists have no place in our country. We support freedom of speech for all, so unfortunately they are allowed to speak. I don't care to hear them, or their misguided racist claims. Spreading hate with lies shouldn't be encouraged.

Quote from: YadaYadaYada on August 22, 2017, 14:50

Quote from: Dumc on August 22, 2017, 14:09

Quote from: Shelma1 on August 22, 2017, 06:22

The southern USA attempted to break away and form their own country to retain slavery, and were defeated. The statues in question depict the losers of that war, traitors to the country they are still part of. In addition, they're cheapo statues mass-produced and hastily erected during periods of black uprising in the USA to remind black people that they live in a place that would still be enslaving them if it were only legal (instead, we incarcerate them in huge numbers, keeping them from influencing elections too much).

These are not glorious works of art...they're racist crapola that crumbles to nothing with the yank of a piece of tape.

You mean, democrats?

Yes the racist Southern Democrats who were against school integration, didn't what colored voters, and didn't want integration. Those lovely Democrats who now claim to be on the side of minorities, promising welfare and free support for votes. Great fakers. ps Lincoln was a Republican

Yeah! I hear this a lot of this sophism from racist republicans, who like to forget about the great switch-over that took place some 60 years ago, during Nixon's time (what is known as the "southern strategy"), when the republicans decided to do whatever it takes to attract the southern voters on their side.

Back then, the two major parties basically switched positions on the social liberty axis.

What matters is who supports and emboldens racism TODAY! And the answer is crystal clear!

60 years ago would be 1957. Why don't you try your revisionist history with the facts? The southern democrats went well into the decades after that and maybe still now, as despicable racists. Pretending to care isn't the same as actually standing up for diversity and individual rights.

The removal of Confederate monuments is an attempt to 'erase parts of our history just in the name of some contemporary political cause.' But you're a sucker for cause instead of thoughtful meaningful wisdom. Old wrongs can't be corrected by over correcting. There's no way to repair slavery, racist hate, or the misdeeds of the past.

Remember the Irish were once a shunned and abused minority. The Italians can after that. The blacks are no longer the largest minority in America, the Hispanics are. And believe it or not, the blacks are not happy with this change. Seems like having a cause and being a victim is more important than blending into the existing society.

Separate but equal is not a minor concept. It's the way that minority groups, or social pressure groups manipulate issues for more than equal status by handing guilt trips to the rest of us. If we are all equal, we don't need special treatment or extra rights beyond everyone else.

Those algorithms aren't off-the-shelf. It's good that someone legit is doing research on watermark vulnerabilities.

"As such, in our paper we also propose ways to make visible watermarks more robust to such manipulations."

Which is what this research does to stop thieves.