Ouch.  I mean, just call it rain.

The FAQ says: "Customers who want more options are offered additional paid content results."  So either that is incorrect, or somebody dropped the ball or something.

The FAQ also says: "Content for the free collection is sourced in collaboration with a small group of Adobe Stock contributors who have all been compensated for these assets."  That's not a selling point to me.  I don't really care that someone else got money to hurt my chances of sales (although hopefully it's more than the $16 per image in the Google deal).

eta: from Pickerell: "Contracts were negotiated with each artist individually and the amount paid per asset varied. However, Adobe management specified that the price for each asset should be �at least above the annual RPI� of that asset. The price paid is for one-year use in the Free collection. Assets will be returned to the Paid collection within the coming year and replaced with new content. In this way free assets will vary over time to help the collection stay relevant and attract new customers while minimizing negative impacts to the company�s paid collection."
https://www.selling-stock.com/ViewArticle.aspx?id=8cf3a8f9-8795-4bc4-8ef8-d699da5f165e

It seems like there's enough content to satisfy anyone.  10K business images is a pretty good pot to pull from and cycling stuff in and out will just increase the depth of what's available.

The point of a "free" collection is to put the dross there and entice with the good stuff.  But here, the good stuff is being given away.  Diverse model shoots in authentic locations produced by factories?  I mean we can't compete with that.  Unsplash can't compete with that.

It's disappointing.

Thanks for the feedback Sean. As always, I value your opinion very much. To your initial point which mirrors the sentiment Jo Ann shared, yes...visibility to the paid collection needs to improve and I've been told that it will. I have no reason to doubt this. It's an important factor for all parties involved. It's mutually beneficial between agency and contributor to drive the users of free content sites to the paid collection of Adobe Stock.

thanks again,

Mat

Pictures perhaps help show how completely invisible the paid content is when searching in the free section. I did some two and three word searches in the free section, and when nothing shows up, other searches in the free section, including "All" are shown rather than showing the content in the paid section that matches the search.

This really undercuts the message that the goal is to drive more business our way...

Click on the thumbnail to view a larger image:

I reached out to the team with your original comment/suggestion Jo Ann, better visibility of the paid collection in free searches is on the roadmap and I expect changes will be made in the future.

thanks again,

Mat

I was busy searching the free collection to see what the competition is for those of us who hope to continue licensing our work.

A couple of observations:

-Every agency which has started a free collection has said it would drive traffic to the agency and thus boost sales. I've never seen any evidence that it worked out like that.

-The Adobe Stock free collection - conveniently there's a drop-down so. you can search only that image type - is less helpful than the free agencies which Adobe Stock, Shutterstock & others have affiliate links with. At least there, there's a line of images top and bottom for the paid content with the free stuff in the middle. There is nothing directing users to paid content while searching the free content

- Connected to the above, the free section has content from Wavebreak media (~14,200 images in WavebreakMediaMicro and wavebreak3), Rawpixel.com (over 10,000), Wirestock (~5,300), Gstudio (~4,000), Jeremy Bishop (~4,000), Good Studio (~3,000), Artinspiring (~4,000), Caia Image (~4,000). This is all high quality content, largely indistinguishable from the paid content.

- When a search in the free section turns up one or two results, there's a blank page underneath. Wouldn't offering content from the paid section to fill up the page make sense? Isn't offering your paid license content a reasonable option when there is not much in the free section?

About the only good news from a purely personal point of view is that most of the type of content I offer isn't covered in the free section, but I can't see how contributors (other than those who got paid to create this collection) will benefit, short term or long.

These are all good observations Jo Ann, and I appreciate your insight and feedback (not to mention your lighting fast deep dive into the collection). I hope those of you reading this know that I will only say what I mean and that maintaining my integrity is extremely important. I won't share personal opinions pretending something will benefit contributors if I don't actually believe it. In this particular case, as mentioned, I asked hard questions  of those responsible for the decision and I was personally given answers that satisfied me. The contributor community at large was a part of this conversation from the beginning within the entire team and that's very important to me.

To your specific points....

"When a search in the free section turns up one or two results, there's a blank page underneath. Wouldn't offering content from the paid section to fill up the page make sense? Isn't offering your paid license content a reasonable option when there is not much in the free section?" 

Yes, I think there is opportunity to show more from the paid collection in an in-your-face manner and I'll share this feedback with the team. What comes to mind immediately is how the Premium content is displayed in searches for core collection content.

"This is all high quality content, largely indistinguishable from the paid content."
Yes, the content in the free collection is good, sellable content. That is intentional so that visitors are introduced to the quality of the overall Adobe Stock collection. It would not be doing anyone any good to showcase work with quality that doesn't meet our standards or the standards of the potential customers. If you look to sites that only offer free content, you'll see that the quality is typically quite high. It's reasonable to assume the expectations of the people that use those sites exclusively is equally as high.

"About the only good news from a purely personal point of view is that most of the type of content I offer isn't covered in the free section, but I can't see how contributors (other than those who got paid to create this collection) will benefit, short term or long."

With this point, I'm afraid we'll need to agree to disagree. Jo Ann, you've been submitting stock as long as I have and you are a talented photographer. My personal opinion is that you should be shooting as wide a variety of subjects as you possibly can as your knowledge of stock and your photography skill set is above-average. Having content in the paid collection of a similar nature to what is in the free collection can only benefit you as opposed to not having it online at all. I do expect to see expanded searches from people driven to the site by the free collection so if your content is displayed in those searches, you have the potential for sales you would have never seen otherwise.

Thanks again for the feedback.

-Mat

Hi Everyone,

Moments ago we launched a free collection on Adobe Stock. We'll be sending an email to contributors later today with this announcement but I wanted to give you a heads up in advance.

I expect you will have some (many?) questions and I'm happy to answer any that I can. We have put together a Learn & Support page with details and an anticipated list of FAQ for you here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/free-collection-contributor-information.html

You can view the collection here: https://stock.adobe.com/free

Let me know your questions, I'll be around all day.

Kind regards,

Mat Hayward

Hi everyone,

The contributor portal will be down for a bit. You can check this link for updates on when we will be back up and running.

https://status.adobe.com/

Thank you,

Mat Hayward

We aren't able to change the currency you are paid in. This default is set when you first created your account. All new accounts are paid in USD automatically now but accounts that pre-date that change are still paid based on the zone the account was created in.

-Mat

For people shooting a mix of photos and vidoes how do i find these seperately so i can use the weighted sum to get my download count?

5000 downloads is steep, guess I've got my work cut out

5,000 is definitely an achievable goal but will take effort for sure. Unfortunately, there is no way to filter by asset type in the statistics at this time.

-Mat

Hi Mat,
 I crossed the 5,000 mark yesterday. Any idea when I'll get the code?

Thanks

Codes for the 2020 bonus program will be distributed in February, 2021. If you have a gap between when your last subscription expired and the distribution of the new code, you will need to pay for the months in between.

Kind regards,

Mat Hayward

I have a problem uploading files today: the file seems to be correctly uploaded but then it doesn't appear in the "under revision" page, but it still remain in the "new files" page, ready to be submitted.
Anybody else with this problem?

Thank you

Yes, we are sorry for the inconvenience. There was a temporary issue with uploads last night, it was quickly identified and corrected so everything is functioning normally now. You will need to re-upload and re-submit the files that didn't go through originally.

Thanks for your patience,

Mat Hayward

Dear Mat, will it be possible for Adobe stock to consider accepting editorial images (with visible people) from contributors ? Around 80% of my port is editorial but I cannot upload anything here. Any updates regarding this issue would be helpful.

No updates on this to share at this time.

Thanks,

Mat

And just out of curiosity, Mat, any idea what the ratio of "pictures taken to pictures displayed" was? When I'm out cycling I usually come home with about 100 images taken. From there approximately 5 are submitted to agencies. It would also be interesting to learn what kind of gear you're using. Regardless, thanks for sharing!

I would estimate my average is between 5%-10% keepers on a consistent basis. I get a bit heavy handed with the shutter so there is a lot of culling involved. On this particular trip, I got a bit carried away and snapped an embarrassing number of photos.

My main body is a Canon 1DX Mark III. Traditionally, my go-to lens is the 24-70 but on this trip, that lens broke half way through so I pulled my old 16-35 out of the bag for the majority of the shots I took. I also use the 70-200 a fair amount along with the 100 macro.

-Mat

I had to double check this was 2020, I didn't realise people were taking international holidays. us Aussies aren't allowed to do this. We can't even cross the border into neighbouring states!

Glad you had a great time and your wife is such a good sport!

French Polynesia is one of the very few countries allowing international tourists right now. We got lucky as we had been planning the trip since long before the pandemic hit. It was to celebrate our 20 year anniversary though we had to postpone the trip once and gambled on the new dates before they announced the opening.

Their economy is very dependent on tourism and they had no reported cases of Covid-19 in months. Since they re-opened the country on July 15 however, they have more than 300 reported cases. They were very strict on protocols and tests were required before, and 4 days after entry. It sounds like those restrictions are tightening further now. It wasn't easy to make the trip but it was well worth the effort.

Thanks for checking out the pics!

-Mat

Very nice presentation, Mat. Did you create it in Adobe software?

Nice to see you and Lea somehow managed to get in a bit of R&R while you were busy "working" on those new additions to your portfolio.

Give a tough job to a tough man, I always say, and clearly, this was one helluva tough job. Thanks for proving my point.

Thanks Martha, yes...nothing but work on that trip...grueling.

I used Adobe Spark for the presentation. If you have a Creative Cloud subscription, it's included and does all sorts of fun stuff. Well worth checking out and giving it a try in my opinion.

-Mat