This post has been modified as I missed the point

OK the usual price structure is

small price� � � 2 E your cut 35% 0.7E
medium price 4 E your cut 45% 1.8 E
large price� � �6 E your cut 55% 3.3 E

Rosta's payment

small price      1.67 E your cut 35% 0.58 E
medium price 3.33 E your cut 45% 1.5 E

So I presume they had promotional offer  maybe 1 small and 1 medium photo for 5 euros or they just can't count

By the sounds of it I am a wise fellow investing 32p on a first class stamp and 20p on a piece of plastic to get my photos to them before the mad rush.

http://www.alamy.com/contributors/source/070806/news.asp#onlineuploads

We will be letting you know exactly how the new system works nearer the time, but we can tell you that it does not involve emailing us images, or FTP.

Yes folks no FTP obviously afraid of an avalanche of images, it will also be a gradual process

I have noticed it takes a month between posting and "review" I keyworded Wednesday morning so I think its another 48 hours before the photos actually appear online.

They are hiring reviewers or Digital Image Quality Controllers as they call them so maybe anticipating an increase

Does anyone contribute to any other macro sites?

I have a recent batch of photos and I have a few that have overexposed skies (should be shooting in RAW I know)

Has anyone has any success applying blue filters in photoshop and are they willing to share?

I know its a question of selecting the sky and filling with a blue gradient from white near the horizon to a shade of blue high up and setting a realistic opacity so it doesn't look like pop art,

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Remember iStock was founded in May 2000 when digital cameras weren't so good and they weren't so may micro stock photographers about so I suspect they weren't quitre so fussy about images to build up their imagebase.

Now they realize they have a lot of dodgy pictures so are trying to clear them out or sell 'em cheap

Full members get a mini gallery of their 10 favourite photos

Definately submit to StockXpert highest payout.

123rf personally I like them, their upload system is EZ (if the java loader works on your computer) at least 22c for subscription sales and 50% of the credit price for the other sales.

They payment system sucks $100 minimum and you have to wait a couple weeks as they calculate their subscription price at the end of the month.

At the moment I have earned more with 123 than istock though I have 4 times the number of photos with 123.

But iStock hate me and I hate them back -� but don't get me started.

I have heard it takes time to start earning with Istock not only the 30/week upload limit but the fact you have to wait for images to get rated added to lightboxes before they start earning that whoopping 20%

Clearly time for my medicine

None as far as I know but will still be looked down upon by the full members

I am joking - keep writing the posts

http://www2.warnerbros.com/happyfeet/

Did you have any involvement with this, a computer generated film about dancing penguins??

Its Monday morning in Europe so its time to count the number of images at the microstock sites - I think it may be time to rename this thread as there isn't really any competition anymore, well apart from when StockXpert catches up with CanStockPhoto. The figures in brackets are from last Monday so my original predition still looks valid FT to break the one million mark on the 31st of July.

1 Fotolia� � � � � � � �977,382� [944,904] increase 32,478
2 istock� � � � � � � � �940,763� [926,538] increase 14,225
3 Shutterstock� � � �906,228 [891,452] increase 14,776

4 Dreamstime� � � � �510,000 [490,000+] increase 20k
5 Big Stock Photo� �424,000 [417,000] increase 7k

6 123 rf� � � � � � � � 300,000+
7 Can Stock Photo� 240,520 [236,056] increase 4464

8 Stockxpert� � � � � 170,000?

9 Stockphotomedia� 67,325 [66,235]� incr 1090
10 Gimmestock� � � �45,835
10 Featurepics� � � � 43,962

Just goes to show why you should post your photos on all the sites where they can be purchased to stop people trying this and be wary of having free photos I must check my free photos on Fotolia, though I think they were submitted to all the paying sites. I wouldn't be happy if a site rejected it when I submitted and accepted it when someone else did.

I heard of someone downloading photos from Better Photos competition page and submitting to it may have been Big Stock. I doubt anyone would try this with iStock, knowing them they woulod seek prsison time.

I noticed snowlion had 136 shots at FT slightly fewer than 963 at Big Stock and they all seemed to be taken in China.

It will be interested to see what Big Stock and Snowlion have to say.

OK this is my method of dealing with evil noise adapted from something I once found in a microstock forum and copy and pasted from my guide

You will need Adobe Photoshop (or an image editor that allows you to work with layers)

A noise filter program such as Noiseware

Understanding of working with layers in an image editor.

1 - Filter your picture for noise using Noiseware

2 - Open both original and filtered versions of the photo in your image editor

3 - Drag original version on top of filtered version (ensure perfect alignment)

4 - Set view to 100%

5 - Using the eraser tool, erase any areas of the top layer that are showing noise revealing the filtered layer beneath..

I always filter the sky, other areas to look at are surfaces that should be shiny (glass, metal) or deep shadows.

Remembering excessive filtering removes detail from the photo so I tend to leave stone, concrete, grass, trees, snow and water alone.

If you decide to brighten the image remember to merge the layers otherwise you will just brighten the top layer though this can be a useful way of spotting areas of the sky that have been missed.

6 - Save image under a different file name.

Does anyone else just selectively filter noise or does everyone else just filter the whole darn photo?

After flunking the Shutterstock test for noise and having to wait three months I always filter the sky (the method is detailed in my guide) regardless of the ISO setting sometimes I get rejections over overfiltering but very seldomly

Though if it was a genuine noise issue I would have thought Istock and SS would have picked up with it. Maybe BigStock saw a very noisy one first and then assumed the rest were very noisy without looking. Did SS mention noise on the ones they rejected. As they delete the thumbnails of rejected photos after a month I tend to "print screen" and paste into powerpoint to keep track of what they didn't like and why.

I tend to find if only one agency picks up on a problem that can be fixed (but will take some time) I tend not to bother fixing it but then I have quite a few photos to play with.

Congrats on your first sale at FT always a good day I am sure after a few monhs you will be cursing them sending you an e-mail every time you sell a photo.

Travel related portfolio - not a great earner tell me about it.

I must admit it was wishful thinking looking at StockXpert's table of visits, signup, credits and earnings thinking I might actually see some cash from referrals.

I think Big Stock has one of the strangest if your referred photographer gets 75 photos acceped you get $5 even if they haven't sold any.