... with a little stab of a statement to finish it off (see "we are undersigned" thread lock)

Yes, I saw that little flourish and thought that was totally uncalled for - sort of kicking someone when they're already on the ground just 'cause you can.

You should call it as you see it. I wasn't trying to talk you out of it, just put another point of view.

Especially in the "what have you done for me lately" culture that Getty/IS is morphing into, anything nice or helpful someone did a while back isn't worth anything anyway. Or at least it's worth the same as the promise that Vetta prices wouldn't go up this year, or canisters would be grandfathered, or...

I don't dispute that it's a fine ordinary stock image - I just dispute that it in any way merits the high prices of the Agency collection.  It's not exceptional in production values IMO.

As far as the ethics of posting someone else's work, I'm not sure how we have any sort of discussion about what Getty's doing in dumping its content on IS without having examples.

Well, of course their forums are wooing, they expunged the naysayers.  ... 

In addition to those they banned, there are those, like me, who won't participate but consider it either (a) beating a dead horse or (b) rude to continue saying in the forums how p#%sed off I am that they followed the cash grab with a cheap attempt to buy back the community they nuked.

That's our money they're spending on  this contest.

Even if you use Lightroom to enter the keywords, I think it is as important for the keywords to be in the PSD and the JPEG file you create (assuming you do any editing in Photoshop; for me, that's 100% of my images).

Lightroom won't be around for ever - or put another way, it may be that your images will outlive any particular piece of software. Having the keywords in the JPEG or PSD means that anything that can read the image data can read the keywords, so starting over again is a whole lot less hassle.

While the RAW file is very important to keep (a) it doesn't get modified by any Lightroom keywords (they end up in LR's database and in the other file formats you generate) and (b) it isn't what you upload.

I've been switching over to using Lightroom (had resisted until Lightroom 3 came out) but that won't alter my view of keeping the keywords where the image data is (and secondarily within LR).

Even though I use Deep Meta to upload to IS (because their site upload has been so broken so often I got fed up) I always put all the keywords into the IPTC data in the file. I did that as an independent because it really streamlined multi-site uploading, but I still do it as an IS exclusive.

You need to keep your investment of time in keywording where it belongs logically - with the image being keyworded. You can use those keywords in Lightroom, with any other tool that reads keywords, new stock sites you later choose to upload to...

Deep Meta does help with being able to do the disambiguation for IS offline which is nice.

There are so many broken things on the site at the moment - some broken by f5, some have been broken for a long time and didn't get fixed in f5 - that the my_uploads page is the tip of the iceberg.

I don't think it's an epic fail - not bad enough for that - but for an industry leader to do so poorly with the software and design of their site is a real puzzle. There are tons of successful e-commerce sites out there - this isn't even leading edge stuff any more.

If I had to guess, I'd say that spending money on the site is something Getty wants to avoid - they're busy trying to boost profits and this is only indirectly related and thus a low priority for them (regardless of what gets said in the IS forums).

oh.. and just if any besides me cares, - today is my last day as an iStock exclusive.  My 30 days are up today - so tomorrow my other ports start going live!  I'm going to document this new excursion in case anyone cares to see how this new journey/chapter from exclusive to independent is faring for me.   working on setting up a blog but for now just have it documented in a private journal.

Wishing you a smooth transition. It's been a couple of years (i.e. my experience is now a bit dated) but being independent has a ton of benefits and once you get through the learning curve for each of the sites it won't be half as much work as you might have worried it would be.

One of the really nice things is that even if one site rejects an image, most of the rest will accept it (and if all reject it then it was a stinker anyway). Takes most of the sting out of an occasional rejection

Quote from: pet_chia on October 17, 2010, 19:15

Quote from: pdx on October 17, 2010, 15:57

how does stuff like this make it through the queue?
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-14262833-businessman-sleeping-on-sofa.php

Whoops, that's just a little keyword/description glitch that occurred when the image was added to the database.

Should be titled, "Agency Collection contributor waiting for earnings to pile up"

LOL

Wow that image is complete with several publisher logos as well as author names etc, all clear to see.

"Every photograph in the Agency Collection will go through our regular inspection process."  Sure.  Just like: "In search and Best Match the images will be weighted fairly and will not have a heavier weight than any other file."  Utter rubbish.

They apparently are removing these images after the fact - in the IS agency forum last week I pointed out the logos, names, phone numbers and other content in this image:


No admin said anything in response the forum, but this morning I notice it's no longer available.

I'm sure all the examples will get fixed in the end, but it is galling to have to read this nonsense about going through the same inspection process when it's just not true.

There's a copy of Fotolia's press release on StockPhotoTalk.

At the end is a statement about the second phase which clearly says to me they plan to offer deviantART content as stock:

"The fully integrated product, expected next year, will provide members with seamless on-site access to microstock assets and create a unique deviantART collection from the community�s resources."

I guess when that part is live we'll have to watch very very closely to see that no RF licensed microstock work is included in any derivative deviantART works offered for sale.

I read some of the text on the site and in Fotolia's blog. While I can see why FT might like to sell images to deviantART members, it seems they're heading into a pile of complex issues if they start accepting uploads from the work created using modified stock images. I can't see how you can have clear copyright to sell a derivative work (of an RF licensed stock image) as RF stock. If that's where phase 2 might go, I can see a bunch of gnarly issues with copyright.

And this quote made me laugh "Fotolia, a leading microstock provider worldwide, is the perfect partner for this project as they're a company that is truly committed to using community involvement to change the traditional business of microstock offerings."

FT has an incredibly heavy hand in censoring just about anything even vaguely critical of them in their own forums and is one of the main reasons we have so many anonymous posters here - they have said they won't tolerate criticism of them by contributors even in off site forums. And now they're all about community involvement?

This isn't about the pricing of the Agency Collection on the existing Getty sites.

This is about existing (exclusive) content on istockphoto.com that cost one price yesterday and a very different price today and whether buyers have been notified about that. When buyers put files into a lightbox and later go to purchase and the price is 10X (or 5X higher), the Vetta experience tells us many of them get very upset.

Regardless of whether the files are worth the new price, the buyers IMO deserve to be notified about this rather than just find out when they get sticker shock.

It's been a little over 2 years since I went exclusive at IS after nearly 4 as an independent.

The bottom line is that there's something to like and the put-up-with-it stuff at all the agencies - specifics vary from one to another. Which agencies can deliver, consistently, monthly return on your portfolio is what drives people's decisions for the most part.

I must say that I think it's an odd time to be considering IS exclusivity even though I will likely continue mine come January assuming that they don't move the redeemed credit targets from what they announced in September (and I consider it entirely possible that they will raise them if too many people make their targets as they want to get an overall payout of 20% and will do what they need to to make that happen).

If you think you can create a consistent stream of Vetta and Agency Content (and you have to be exclusive to do that) you might find that exclusivity at IS is a good strategy for you. Otherwise I'm not sure it makes sense. To do well you'll need to be a high volume producer and keep doing that year after year - and if that's the case you'd do just as well or better being independent. Being independent would also reduce the risk of getting further hosed by Getty who will undoubtedly continue to squeeze contributor income whenever and wherever they can.

Exclusivity at IS means much less all the time - first it was some exclusive content on Thinkstock; then Vetta and Agency content on IS and Getty; the upcoming Japan iStockalypse content is going on all the Getty places, not just iStock (requirement of all uploads). Once Getty manages to reduce even high producing exclusives to a 20% royalty rate (which I'm near certain they will do over the next year or two) it's not clear why you'd stick with exclusivity unless you have bucket loads of Vetta/Agency stuff.

It was riveting to watch.

It's such a great story - how so many people have worked together to make this rescue happen. I'm hoping for a safe passage back up for the other 32 miners - and a smooth recovery from the trauma they've all been through.