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Messages - cascoly

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676
december was the only month - next payment is in june. 

for those who had zero did they also have an active SS acct? 

677
Shutterstock.com / Re: SS continues to deteriorate
« on: January 22, 2023, 11:52 »


That's really good and it shows you learned what sells. Your total images in your portfolio on SS, 43% have at least one Download? Stunning and a good success rate.

How many total images now? And no that's not about how big is your collection. You could have 200 and make more than people who have been uploading. Not how many but what are they. (seems I'm repeating that a lot?  ;D )


Yes, 43% have at least one download.
I am not sure I understand the "how many total images. Not how many, but what are they?" question. I have 11.119 images in my port, but I am not sure I understand what you mean by "what" are they. Do you want to know which images specifically sold? That would be hard to explain with thousands of images.
 My port is not a secret, I use the same username: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Firn?sort=newest

you've found a lucrative niche  - that's the 'what are they' factor - as opposed to landscapes & travel images which need volume and have a smaller % sold at least once

678
Shutterstock.com / Re: SS continues to deteriorate
« on: January 21, 2023, 14:13 »
The poll results seem indicate a decline in SS and a rise in AS.

assuming the poll is accurate (LOL!), that's irrelevant for individual artists

679
Shutterstock.com / Re: SS continues to deteriorate
« on: January 21, 2023, 14:09 »
Portfolio Size of Shutterstock Q4 2013 - about 32 million assets.
Portfolio Size of Shutterstock Q3 2015 - about 64 million assets. - growth about 100%
Portfolio Size of Shutterstock Q1 2017 - about 132 million assets. - growth about 100%
Portfolio Size of Shutterstock Q2 2019 - about 260 million assets. - growth about 100%
This is an exponential trend.
Portfolio Size of Shutterstock has risen about 650% from Q4 2013 to Q4 2018
Downloads Shutterstock Q4 2013 - about 28 millions.
Downloads Shutterstock Q4 2018 - about 46,8 million,
There is an increase of portfolio Size at Shutterstock from about 650% - Q4 2013 to Q4 2018
There is an increase of downloads at Shutterstock from about 67,2% - Q4 2013 to Q4 2018
This is a clear stagnation of DL per assets online.
And things do not get better since then. The curve is slight flatten at a high level.

none of that matters - you were talking about individual artists, not SS financials - you've no proof (and several counter-facts) that revenues declined 40%

680
Artists behind a lawsuit against AI: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/ai-art-generators-lawsuit-stable-diffusion-midjourney

Interesting article explaining how AI works: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/ai-image-generator/

It will be of course a long legal battle, but the sad side is that nothing is really done to protect artist.
I mean, it's all about money: Getty sue for AI? They will find an agreement, Stable diffusion, Midjourney and Deviantart will pay some money to them. Original authors will receive a kind mail saying that they are the winner, and they will receive... 0,01 cent for every image used.

It's not really an artist war against AI. It's only an economic war to gain some money for agencies, and give cents to authors
True, I agree about agencies, except article I shared is about three artists hiring lawyer and suing AI companies. These artists might represent whole community and just maybe make some change.

they can't represent everyone unless they create a class action suit, which they haven't

681
Checked my billing history with Adobe. In 2021 I was paying about 30/ month for all apps. now it's 51.98! a 70+% increase. LOL I guess we're the frogs that just get dumped straight into the boiling water.

ignoring the urban legend about frogs,

 if you were paying that amt in 2021 you got a deal!  and w conversion rates you're still getting a better deal than US customers

682
Shutterstock.com / Re: Take Note SS
« on: January 21, 2023, 14:01 »
Interesting.  But SS is now paying contributors (in my case a whopping $40 per year) for inclusion in such datasets.  Is that enough?  I'd be surprised if the courts give an opinion on this.  No one asked me, but I'd like a bit more please.

given that hundreds of millions of images were used, that amount's not unreasonable - and it confirms what many of us having been saying in response to those who think they'll get a windfall for being in a training set - t's a minuscule amount. there are better battles to fight

With that argument downloading millions of images that don't belong to you and making a portfolio for yourself would be OK.

That's not how copywrite works. SS used the images and still are without permission. You can't opt out unless you delete your portfolio. So as long as I throw a few pennies in an artists hat I can use their work to make money for myself?

nope - you're specifically forbidden by SS license terms to make someone else's work into a compilation.

2nd nope - you gave permissionto SS - RYFM the TOS

683
Shutterstock.com / Re: SS continues to deteriorate
« on: January 21, 2023, 03:04 »

What i wanted to say is that that there is an exponential declining trend.
If you start microstock photography you will see an increase in DL. On average for about the first 40 +/- months.
The next 40 +/- months you probably will see your DL stagnate. Even if you still uploading the same amount of images every month. After another 40 +/- months you will see a decrease of DL with a much larger portfolio.
So there is an exponential function against you.
Your uploads are linear, your DL per image / month are declining exponential.
After your first 40 months at microstock your DL per image / Month  are X, after 80 months your DL per image/month are X/2, after 120 months your DL per image/month are X/4 - on average.
You can't win against an exponential declining trend.
first, $/image is useless - what's important is $ earned.


What is important is the earnings in relation to the time invested. That is something quite different from the dollars earned!
true, but still not what OP claimed and they didnt make any reference to time invested - i was just pointing out their error

684
... Original authors will receive a kind mail saying that they are the winner, and they will receive... 0,01 cent for every image used.

It's not really an artist war against AI. It's only an economic war to gain some money for agencies, and give cents to authors

that's pretty much true of most class action suits, like the visa credits, tmobile etc- awards were in the $5-20 range

what sort of payment would you like to see for use of your image in a training set with millions (billions now) of images used?    for image creation, there's no link to those training images, so payment would have t be linked to the entre dataset - if agencies are mostly rec'ing < $5 per image, what amount would be given to those millions of images?

685
on my blog the last part:
AI: friend or foe? (5 of 5)
A very brief history of art: where will it end?


https://luisafumi-digitalart.com/blog/2023/01/19/ai-friend-or-foe-5-of-5/



enjoy

interesting follow-up  on Turing test in today's NY Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/20/technology/chatbots-turing-test.html

686
Interesting article explaining how AI works: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/ai-image-generator/

That is a great explainer.

decent beginner's explanation, but it elides the actual link between dataset & image creation. HOW are individual data stored? HOW is the resulting dataset (w no images) accessed to create the image?

and some info is just wrong
"You have selected a dachshund. After ingesting the images and corresponding text, the AI model begins to connect the words a dachshund to the visual representation of a dachshund."

individual images are not used (if they were, there's no way an image could be formed from such disparate results. ) and the odds of having JFK in the image are infinitesimal! besidees which, JFK was not part of the prompt, and 3 of the 4 elements of the prompt were ignored (besides which DALL-E will not create images of actual people)

a better description is https://nanonets.com/blog/machine-learning-image-processing/#working-of-machine-learning-image-processing

687
Shutterstock.com / Re: SS continues to deteriorate
« on: January 20, 2023, 15:32 »
...

Of course if the agencies decide to pay us 50% less, our income will go down 50%.

no -  the 2 numbers aren't directly linked.  cuts in commission % dont automatically result in same % loss of income - other factors are involved - bigger portfolio, changing market needs, external economic factors (recession, covid)
 erosion of portfolio (stable subjects or rapidly outdated)

688
Shutterstock.com / Re: SS continues to deteriorate
« on: January 20, 2023, 15:26 »

What i wanted to say is that that there is an exponential declining trend.
If you start microstock photography you will see an increase in DL. On average for about the first 40 +/- months.
The next 40 +/- months you probably will see your DL stagnate. Even if you still uploading the same amount of images every month. After another 40 +/- months you will see a decrease of DL with a much larger portfolio.
So there is an exponential function against you.
Your uploads are linear, your DL per image / month are declining exponential.
After your first 40 months at microstock your DL per image / Month  are X, after 80 months your DL per image/month are X/2, after 120 months your DL per image/month are X/4 - on average.
You can't win against an exponential declining trend.
first, $/image is useless - what's important is $ earned. some strategies emphaszie volume, others  'quality', others different metrics so they can't be compared.

your data for an exponential decline? do you understand the meaning of exponential? the numbers you cite are linear - a 50% drop in each case (50% of 1/2 is 1/4!)   For such a long period, where have you observed such results?
. declines may be steep, linear or minimal, exponential is unwarranted.  if fact, in my case I had a 30% INCREASE in income during the second period, followed by a 20% decline from second to third trances.

689
This is good news and will settle some of the legal questions. Sites that use composites and pieces of found images, will likely be liable or need to pay for the images they use. The others that only use found images for training, will probably be able to continue. All AI creations aren't the same.

The source and copyrights will need to be clarified.

not sure how the UK system works (is it just for London?).  in the US a decision is usually just relevant, at most, to the circuit (of 13) in which it was decided. and these vary in their leanings.  worse, the supreme court has shown in Dobbs & voting rights cases, etc that it really doesnt value precedent / stare decisis at all!  (altho most  appointees have said they would abide by precedent)

so it will take more than a few cases in UK, EU and US. and we already have the example of very different laws in US & EU regarding moral rights, privacy rights, etc

690
Shutterstock.com / Re: Take Note SS
« on: January 20, 2023, 14:55 »
Interesting.  But SS is now paying contributors (in my case a whopping $40 per year) for inclusion in such datasets.  Is that enough?  I'd be surprised if the courts give an opinion on this.  No one asked me, but I'd like a bit more please.

given that hundreds of millions of images were used, that amount's not unreasonable - and it confirms what many of us having been saying in response to those who think they'll get a windfall for being in a training set - t's a minuscule amount. there are better battles to fight

691
... Also i have used a app called craiyon.com, but the image don't have size for microstock. Do you know some program that could be use for free for microstock image?

i use topaz gigaAI to upsize, which outperforms PS resizing

692
Adobe, over 500k AI images for sale, 99% will never be sold because there is little or no use for them. By the end of the year, following the actual trend of uploads, it will be 5 millions for sale. When do you think Adobe will start charging for uploading AI generated garbage into their portal?

your source for any of those claims?

guess i'm finally part of the 1% since my AI images have sold on AS, SS and DT

693
Shutterstock.com / Re: Race to level 2
« on: January 18, 2023, 14:19 »
Been to Germany a few weeks ago, there are recycling machines at the super market, you insert one empty plastic bottle and out comes 25 cents, euro 25 cents.

Yes, but it's a deposit system. When you buy a drink in a bottle you have to pay the 25 cents on top fo the price of the drink. So you are only getting back money you had to pay before.
Do You think it is different in US ?



it's the same

Oregon passed the first 'bottle bill' in 1971. you pay a deposit & get a refund on return. in Seattle we've had curbside recycling since the mid 80s and it's now mandatory for single family houses& many commercial.   we also have yardwaste (anything compostable) recycling. since 2015, you can no longer put food and compostable paper, including food-soiled pizza boxes, paper napkins, and paper towels, in the garbage. (there's a 10% sloppage before a $1 fine/incident is imposed - ie, basically none). but garbage rates go from$25/wk for 12 gallon bin to $80/wk for 64 gal.  with recycling my garbage fills only 1/2 the smallest bin, so recycling pays.

Recycling is free, (effectively those who don't recycle are still helping to pay for the system thru ), yardwaste  is $10-14/wk

https://www.ball.com/sustainability/real-circularity/50-states-of-recycling

694
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock "Contributor Fund"
« on: January 18, 2023, 13:58 »
...

For example, with the deal made with Meta. Meta pays SS $100,000 for the one-time right to use 406 million images for a training set. SS keeps 70% and uses $30,000 to pay contributors based on the amount of images they have in that 406 million.

Scenario 2) Or is it a fixed fee based on the amount of images . Whatever SS gets from a deal, contributor always gets paid same amount ( doesn't seem like it)

It would be interesting to know what is the value of an image when it is used for training and if it's more ( or less) than for a download.
whatever the scenario it's going to be tiny  - I did some quick calcs earlier ( $ rec'd/portfolio size), but no one else  posted their estimates, so no way to know if my theory was correct.

using your figures, payment from a Meta deal would be .00025 cents/image - slightly less than what we get for a download!

695
General Stock Discussion / Re: VECPHO - anyone heard of them?
« on: January 17, 2023, 14:13 »
Do a search for previous posts. Very shady with they way they market themselves. When they come up people show up out of the woodwork to defend them. These are always new users with connections to Freepik (last time it was couple of people who with a bit of research turned out to be Freepik "ambassadors").

yes - the 2 posters supporting them first joined around the same time vec-pro first appeared here in Nov '21 and haven't posted anything else since

696
the list of keywords only gives results for individual tags checked

eg
elephant 500K
tanzania 200K

what i really need is elephant + tanzania  = ??10k? 50K?


697
Shutterstock.com / Re: SS continues to deteriorate
« on: January 16, 2023, 15:37 »
Neither one of those ever made any sense to me. I was just pointing out that for people who do watch that, having 17,000 images isn't going to make them very happy and if they only had their best 1,700 images, the return income, could very possibly be the same. That's many hours of work for volume, but not much payback per hour or per image....
Bottom line? You're right.

agreed completely on uselessness of RPI/RPD except maybe to watch trends

processing 17000 images is not going to take 10x the effort/time to process 1700 images  - that's the economy of scale.
  • i rarely have single images to caption - more likely 1'll have 5-20+ from a shoot with basically the same meta, but not similars.  when i do have many individual captions, they'll usually have common info i can copy (animal name, location, tags, etc) , then just need to quickly modify each image.
  • upload time is same for 10 or 100 images - each is 1 command to filezilla
  • submission time a bit longer, but actual time compared to editing is small

    Biggest reason for volume is each agency takes sells different images. best sellers on one may have no sales on another

698
But requirements for 2021. were made in beginning of 2021. Requirements for 2022. were never made and 2022. has ended, so you know, it is not possible for AS to set rules for 2022. anymore and it is not possible for us to meet these rules because they don't exist.

Yes, AS people could theoretically be kind and give us codes because they like us  ;D (and not because they want us to upload, sell, earn money), but I don't think it is very likely.
of course it's still possible - all AS has to do is describe how they're going to select who gets the bonus. absolutely no reason they had to do it on 1/1/22

still waiting for any doom-prophets to make a $ bet on their 'knowledge'

Id put $20 down that its not coming back for this year, but what do I get if I win?
i'll take your bet - if AS doesnt give bonus codes this year i'll send you $20 by paypal

Wait a second, we gotta wait all year? I'll be hungry for some of the good ramen much sooner than 2024.

ok, we'll give AS until end of March? (which is when my current bonus ends)

{thanks for getting me my payment sooner!?! i'll tell you how tasty the ramen was!}

699
AI: friend or foe? (3 of 5) on my blog

A very brief history of art: today

https://luisafumi-digitalart.com/blog/2023/01/13/ai-friend-or-foe-3-of-5/



have fun  :D
keep 'em coming!  welcome balanced approach to luddite negativity!

700
..

I hadn't considered extending the render as a way to repair the first images. Thanks for the reminder.

i've had about 50% success doing that

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