Bateleur,

Is that a new problem?

I don't know how new it is. I was disambiguating some of my files last night (yeah ... I know ... I still have a massive backlog to do from when the introduced this marvellous new 'feature') and at the same time I tried to add some new keywords that came to mind.

Every time I entered a new set in the box at the top and clicked on 'Add' they vanished and I just got the word 'Undefined' in my keyword list with a little warning symbol beside it. I tried other images and the same thing happened.

I went to iStock's forum (I usually try to stay away from there because the sycophancy of the posters makes me want to throw up) and there's a whole thread on this problem. Apparently support have been told about it, but nothing has been done. Probably because they're too busy inventing new games. Yay! iStock, you are soooooo cooooooool   

Anyway, that's how I found out that clearing the cache seems to solve the problem.

Ah well ... back to disambiguating. I just love it. So quick and easy to do ...

We may have misunderstood the concept. The whole idea with istock is possibly to create a full time hobby for the contributors. The more hours invested, the better. More time consuming features are just added steps towards fulfillment of that task, and for the creation of the ever happy, happy istock family who contributes with ecstatic enthusiasm to fill the coffers of the mother of all stock: Getty Images

epixx ... you shock me ... shock me to the core. Do I detect a the faintest hint of cynicism here? How could you entertain even the teensiest-weensiest doubt about the wonderful things iStock are doing for us photographers?

I mean ... you only have to read their forums to realise how wickedly awesome they are.   

... so we"re trying to be patient  It"s not our strong suit over here though so our toes are noisily tapping under our desks while we wait for your wicked awesomeness to hit the site.
      

Excuse me while I quietly creep away into a corner and vomit ...

... Also I am kind of sick of their customer service in general ...

We are not the customers. We are the suppliers.

It may seem like a small point, but it does put things in a different perspective (and maybe help keep blood pressure down     ).

If you think about it, it's 100% their prerogative to choose what they sell and what they don't sell, and we can't really argue against their choice.

If you bear that in mind, and just keep supplying, it makes does this business a bit easier to handle.

... but  um ...  I'm not that much of a cabbage head thanks.

Okay ... sorry ... just trying to be helpful.   

It's difficult to know how much people know on a forum like this. I guess you're probably a lot more expert than me.

the 1 px feather works for me too.

Funny thing is that a couple of my shots were refused as "poor isolation" when I was actually in a professional studio and didn't have to cut out anything! Hahaha! All my images had a perfect white BG. That was the funniest. 

I've had that, too. I did a series of shots of a guy making various hand signals. The BG was perfect white (blown out). They rejected about half of them for 'poor isolation' where I hadn't done any manual isolation at all. It would have been almost impossible, what with his hair and stuff.

I just took it on the chin     If they don't want 'em they don't want 'em.

No idea ... it seems perfectly well lit to me.

But then, as others have said, there are various other possibilities for a shot like this.

I think this just goes to show the rather arbitrary nature of the inspection process. It is, after all, highly subjective.

That's scary, Michael ... coming after you with the threat of lawyers. Pretty heavy-handed in fact. They could have e-mailed you first and politely asked you to 'cease and desist' (or whatever the term is).

They seem to be tramping down a bit on that recently - as you noticed when we were trying to post a link to this forum so people could discuss the software - they have blocked all such links to places that tell about other sites.

Hmmmm ... could a battle of the biggies be brewing?

Hope not. As an old African proverb says ... "When elephants fight the ants get trampled."

I've always taken it to mean, "We don't really want this picture, but we can't think of any other reason why we should reject it."

I've had it, on occasions, for items that I've isolated on white, that have been perfectly sharp, and it used to baffle me.

Now I don't take any notice. If they don't want something they don't want it ... full stop.

Interesting article. Thanks. But the author writes about flickr ...

Millions of photos. Some by professional, some by amateurish. Some terrible, some unforgettable. That description fits iStockPhoto ...

I disagree there. Strongly. Whatever you may think about IS, you've got to agree that the vast majority of their images are of a very high, professional standard.

Flickr, on the other hand, is stuffed to the gills with junk. There are good images there, but it's a tough job to find them.

So it won't just be a question of switching the whole collection to a stock agency. As the author recognises, they're going to have to create something separate, with inspectors and submissions procedures, etc., etc. and build up a workable collection of images. And IS ... and SS, and DT, and BS, et al ... have a major start on them there.

...  I feel Raw is just a waste of time for $0.25 a download. ...

Is that all you get?

Then I guess you're only with Shutterstock, and it probably is a waste of your time.

I get anything from 25c to several hundred dollars for a stock image, depending on the agency I submit to. When photographing I never know what's going to go where so I work in RAW all the time.

And I'm mystified why you think RAW so much work. I mean ... that technique of yours for correcting WB seems horribly ad hoc (to put it politely). How do you know how far to move the cyan/magenta slider at first? A random amount? All the way?

I suppose you can take a guess at it, but to correct WB really accurately in JPEG, you don't do it that way. And the proper way is a heck of a fiddle.

Yeah. Not worth 25c.

But ... hang on  ... cyan/magenta slider? What program are you using???   

... I can fix it in seconds with color balance-Cyan/magenta slider one way-.yellow/blue slider opposite direction,same amount-dead simple, works every time! much faster than Raw processing, regards, Ken

Sounds like you're not familiar with RAW processing. In my workflow it's a whole load quicker and more accurate than that.

I select the correct WB I want from the list and "pow!"

Then, if I really want to fine tune by a few degrees, there's a colour temperature slider.

... the most lucrative was $1000 for a wedding, where I merely hand over the RAW images to the groom ...

So some guy, before his wedding, waded through all the dross on Flickr ('cos there's a lot of that, diluting the few good images), found your work, and contacted you out of the blue with the offer of $1000 just for pushing the button.

Wow!