Quote from: kacper on August 02, 2006, 10:49
This site's been a true miracle. I applied AGES ago, but got initially rejected and kind of... forgot about it. I reapplied last week, had my almost entire portfolio (300 images) accepted, and had 10 sales within 4 days (including a weekend). True, can't judge performance by first 4 days, but I'm impressed. They are EXTREMELY quick with approvals. I FTP'd over 300 images, so I was stuck in the StockXpert briefcase moving 50 images a day. Pretty much an hour after shoving the images over they'd be approved.

So my personal accolades to StockXpert. Nice customer service, fast approvals, high commission and (so far... knock on wood) decent sales.

Yeah, they're really quick now. lately, they've often be approved before I'm finished inserting keywords. Wonder if they pay reviewers per image they review.

What's legal and not depends on the country.
But I think the chance of getting sued because of grafitti is minimal - unless - it's paid for, something which is sometimes the case.

I have a few graffiti shots myself, but they're not identifiable:
http://www.heyheydecay.net/thumbs/concretetextures.htm

Well, I've been pumping up pictures at SS the last two weeks(I went to England and took 700 pics), and today at least it seems to go better. 19 dls today. I just got 35 pics accepted yesterday, and I also have 21 in the queue, so hopefully this level will last during the week.

Norway here!

I just took a look at my stats for December 2005.... Lots of days with 20+ sales, and only one with no sales. And at that time I probably had half as many pics as I do now.

Quote from: Striker77s on August 07, 2006, 15:11
They changed their default search order.  It is no longer the newest images first.  Therefore new images don't get a large amount of downloads right off.  I wish it wasn't so, but oh well.

Mark

Ah, that makes sense. I noticed that the default changed, but never imagined it would have such a negative impact.

Is it just me or is SS slow on sales these days? Earlier, when I uploaded a batch, there would be 10-15 downloads four days in a row afterwards, but now I'm lucky with four downloads a day. iStock on the other hand is very stable.

(I'm not one who has been haunted by rejections or anything)

Sorry to hear that! I'll have to backup quite soon, because it's been a while now.

A friend of mine recently got a virus on her computer that rendered all her JPGs to 0kb.

Quote from: Freezingpictures on July 27, 2006, 22:21
Hi Quevaal,

you might be able to see the penguin image, which I produced through isolation, look three posts before. I uploaded that, it was first accepeted at SS out of the better earning websites and it had the most dls I ever had for an image/day. 9dls. before that 5 was my most I think. Now it is at 13 within less than three days. So it really is worth the time I spend on it.
So in future I convinced myself to work rather more on quality then on quantity.

Well, I agree, but it all depends on how complicated the isolation is. After all, penguins have a nice smooth silhouette, whereas isolating a camel or a lion would be much more time consuming.
(I sometimes cut out frames, though.)

Quote from: leaf on July 27, 2006, 22:16

Quote from: Quevaal on July 27, 2006, 20:55
What I sometimes do in Photoshop is:

1. Duplicate the layer
2. Select whites in both colour slots.
3. Select gradient fill
4. In the gradient alternatives, select "white to invisible" and a linear flow.
5. Use it on the top layer, so that it goes from visible(top) to white(bottom.)
6. Set the layer to multiply.

This way, the blue in the sky (if there's any blue, mind you!) will become darker without affecting the ground.
(Notice that "self-multiplying" images may enhance artifacts, so take a good look at the picture)

could you go through that a little slower?
It sounds a bit different than what I do and I would be interested in trying it.

I'll show you some examples over the weekend when I have access to the computer.

I rarely bother to isolate, because it's often difficult to get it done properly without spending a lot of time. I'm not going to waste half an hour isolating some stupid object, only to get it rejected.

I am quite experienced in isolating as an illustrator, but my style allows a more cut and paste look, so I don't need to be so picky as I expect the approvers often will be.

What I sometimes do in Photoshop is:

1. Duplicate the layer
2. Select whites in both colour slots.
3. Select gradient fill
4. In the gradient alternatives, select "white to invisible" and a linear flow.
5. Use it on the top layer, so that it goes from visible(top) to white(bottom.)
6. Set the layer to multiply.

This way, the blue in the sky (if there's any blue, mind you!) will become darker without affecting the ground.
(Notice that "self-multiplying" images may enhance artifacts, so take a good look at the picture)

Quote from: leaf on July 20, 2006, 15:17
hey, i was the top submitter there once too

My glory days, however are long gone, and phildate and the gang have overtaken me.

*, that list changes a lot. I remember you were on top just a few weeks ago. Now Forgiss has over 2300 photos.
They've been extremely quick in the approval process that last two times I uploaded. Last time, pictures were approved before I had the chance to give them keywords and descriptions.

I might mention that Scanstock was in the news here in Norway recently. Typical old school photographers starting to nag about microstock, but Scanstock got interviewd on National radio (P2) and in the third biggest paper here (who also happens to buy photos from scanstock):
http://www.aftenposten.no/kul_und/article1366656.ece

An extremely long discussion unfolded at the Norwegian photo site foto.no because of it. (Strange how a group of people insists that cheap photo euqipment, computers, software and ease of processing should not somehow result in lower prices.)

It was very slow in the start(I was there from the beginning, and at one time I was the top submitter), but now the dollars are coming along. I'll probably get a payout within August.

(Now, I am niche oriented and generally focus on textures, which is not at all a big business, but to me it's better than asking friends to pose for nothing.)

Here's a thread about it:
http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=36670&page=2

Well, it's about time. I see a lot of the stock hot shots post their "sexy women" accompanied by a whole dictionary of keywords.

This is good news.
Now you can check off on people's keyword list, and remove the inappropriate ones (and also suggest new ones).

http://www.istockphoto.com/forum_messages.php?threadid=36313&page=1

Here's the dollar bin. These pics could certianly be removed.

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&clearanceBin=1

Yeah, we even exchanged some PMs at Shutterstock. I see you everywhere now!

Uploading to StockXpert is really easy. I love that aspect, batch uploading, batch renaming, batch keywording...

Unfortunately, for a while, I was more concerned with uploading than keywording/categorizing, and that affected my sales negatively. I have now fixed all the keywords, and noticed that a lot of pics that had zero views in half a year would get views in just a day or two.

Keywords & categorizing is King!

My best site is iStock. SS was good for a while, and naturally accepted more pics, but I think sales have dropped recently. I'd wish they did something to the layout so that it is possible to browse photographers' galleries by subject.

It's quite interesting to see how different reviewers will review pics differently
I just uploaded six metal textures from the same series to istock, shutterstock and Stockxpert with these results:

iStock accepted #1-6
Shutterstock accepted #1-4
Stockxpert  accepted #3-6

Both SS and StockXpert had "too many of the same series" reasons(which I expected), but interestingly enough iStock took them all. (I have to stress that all of the textures had their own characteristics)