The strict answer is that you can't do that sort of editing. No removing power lines or anything else that is in the frame regardless of whether it's ugly, unimportant or in your opinion irrelevant. You are permitted to remove sensor spots, use minor noise reduction and do basic contrast enhancement, but that's it. There were some examples of cropping that's OK vs. cropping that isn't; one set is in here.

When I read this interview with Jonathan Klein, I wondered if he was talking about some company other than Getty, or some Getty from a parallel universe - this champion of values and social responsibility seems to me to bear no resemblance to the guiding hand squeezing the life out of iStock in pursuit of minimum costs and compliant contributors.

Thanks to StockPhotoTalk for the link

Once in a while there's a glitch - I just contacted support about some files still pending after a week. There was some sort of problem which was quickly sorted out. If things aren't through the queue on Monday, perhaps try a support ticket.

Other than releases, use of certain keywords can flag files for special handling. The Olympic Mountains in Western Washington got one of my files in trouble - Olympics is one of the "laywers look at it" keywords that can hold up a file. I'm not aware of any list of such keywords you can consult, however.

So the water out of the pipe photo is no longer on iStock, Goldmund has deleted all his posts and asked leaf to delete the thread. What's up? Did someone at iStock express displeasure with discussion of this issue and request that Goldmund remove his posts?

I don't see why the thread should be deleted as others had something to say on the issues - not sure I like the idea of being able to revise history where things can be "un happened".

Goldmund, could you shed some light on why you removed everything?

Your new proposal sounds much better. I also want to add that I appreciate the willingness to go back and revisit the issue.

The extended license solution is excellent.

About the only thing that concerns me is if it turns out that all the subscription sales are 25 cents in practice, having the higher theoretical maximum has no real value to us. Given that concern, what about keeping the opt out possibility rather than having it be just temporary for those of us who happened to be signed up prior to that October date? I'd be more than willing to give it a shot but if it wasn't working after 6-9 months I'd be stuck (unless I wanted to leave Veer altogether).

It may be part of the business book-reading legacy from Bruce.

There are books out there that give marketing staff all the best phrases to use to whip up enthusiasm (God I hate those books).  I sometimes think they've read those, employed the phrases, and neglected to include the actual point.  When I used to read KT's messages, they struck me exactly the same way.  So I don't think it's a language issue.  I think it's a legacy issue.

I love this characterization of the original announcement from the IS forums (alanphillips): I'm copying here as I think it may not survive on IS.

"Really, the OP is so full of jargon, mumbo-jumbo and meaningless verbo-pompostic phrases that the true message is totally obscure. Its almost as if we have gone right back to the dark and fuzzy days before Sir Ernest Gower did his magic to clarify incromprehensible pompous bureaucratic English."

I did a search on Ernest Gower and found this page full of fun quotes and ways of describing this type of writing.

I received that a couple of days ago too. I took a quick look at their site and couldn't right now see any reason I'd want to upload there.

That post is an amazing example of really poor communication - about any sort of details. Warm and fuzzy with hints of big changes but nothing specific. At this point I have no optimism about any change at iStock being good for contributors (real contributors, not Getty stooges that is).

Andrew does much better than JJRD at communication, but he won't be a policy maker, just someone to try and smooth over ruffled feathers. Even he can't defend the indefensible though. I'd wish him good luck via the iStock forums (if I could); my gut says he's going to need it

In addition to doing the general reading about the issue, it isn't clear to me whether or not you have a completely color managed environment.

What that means is that every device (printer, monitor, scanner) is calibrated so you have a profile for it that describes how it displays or reads color values. Every file has an embedded profile that says which color space the values in that file were recorded in - and that should ideally not be a device profile (like your monitor's profile) but Adobe RGB, ProPhoto, sRGB; one of the device independent color spaces.

Every piece of software that displays images should be set so that it reads color profiles and embeds them in files it saves (and Photoshop should be set to complain about missing profiles or mismatches with your default color space).

When you work this way, you'll know if you're opening something that has no embedded profile (which means you have to guess). What you should do, in your editor (PSP?) is assign (not convert) the Samsung profile to the images you got from the lab, and then convert them to the working space of sRGB.

Assigning a profile leaves the color values in the file alone and just tries interpreting them using the profile you assign. If you get that wrong - if you take an AdobeRGB image and open it as if it were sRGB, all the reds go dull and the flesh tones look awful - just try another profile until the image looks good.

Converting to a different profile (which you should only do once you've figured out which color space is closest to right) changes the color values in the file but the look on the screen shouldn't change at all. If you imagine a bright red color is displayed on the monitor, that might be 250 in sRGB and 254 in AdobeRGB (I'm just making up numbers). As long as the profile gets written into the image when you save it (which you must do after changing the color profile) the next person who opens it will see what you saw.

I'm assuming Irfanview was faithfully using the embedded Samsung profile, so the images looked good. I don't know anything about PSP, so I don't know how to make it honor the embedded profile on open and convert to sRGB after, but I'm sure you can find the help for that somewhere

If the 3 year old were asked why he wanted to learn about photography, what would the answer be?

Seems to me (my own kids are older now, but I do recall them dabbling in photography with a camera) that kids that age just want pictures of where they've been and friends/family. In other words the interest is in remembering the moment, not in the making of a photograph. As such a good smart phone or rugged point and shoot would do all they need.

I think it'd be the rare 3 year old that could learn about the technical issues of getting a shot or composition. Depending on his answer about why he wants to learn, perhaps that isn't really what he wants just yet. Not to mention the size of their hands around larger cameras - is yours a point and shoot or DSLR?

Perhaps you could do things as a team - he says what he wants to photograph, you set up the camera given the circumstances and let him take the shot. If he doesn't like something about what he takes, ask what he wanted instead and then talk about how to get that. You set the camera up again, he takes another shot and then he can compare. I'd suggest no flash at all at the beginning as it's just one more thing to learn about.

Ah - thanks for posting. Not sure it'd matter if they remove a largely content free post

I appreciate a Veer representative coming in to try and explain what's planned, but I just don't buy the view of how things will work that they're trying to sell.

It's not as if this is the first subscription plan, and it's not the first to try something other than a fixed download per sale. When Inmagine started up 123rf they briefly tried this 50% of the royalty pool approach, but the low amounts per download had contributors very unhappy and they ended up implementing a floor amount.

iStock's subscription plan has a pool notion, with a floor amount. Even if we ignored the EL issue (and I have no idea what comparable sites you can be looking at that you think what Veer is proposing fits what other sites offer - outside of Photodune, no one else is offering extra rights that cheap), experience says that your idea of 9 downloads a day just isn't how it will work and that contributors will see a lot of those "outlier" royalties.

What makes Veer think that their 9 downloads a day number is realistic? And if you sincerely believe it is, then gamble your money, not ours, on that being true and make the floor amount based on that average. The only way you'll lose on that is if you're wrong about the average number of downloads.  I don't see why you would expect contributors to bear the burden of you being wrong about that.