Did you read the post from them?  Reply #28 in this thread, I don't think they want our fotolia photos.

Yap I read it, but it's not clear if they'd tolerate it or not. Maybe they can answer themselves here. It seems logical they would  welcome FT images since their commission would be higher if they sold the shots themselves. As to rejections, I wouldn't know myself. I only track what's rejected on DT, SS and iS out of curiosity, since their reviewers are very knowledgeable.

So for a local backup up to 1 TB or so you can get a mirrored RAID for less than $2,000.

I don't think AVAVA needs a RAID as a RAID is for online. Near-line will be enough for backup, still gives easy access, and is much cheaper.
Iomega Prestige Desktop Hard Drive 1 TB - USB 2.0 - 100 euro. 1000 GB, 7200rpm, 480Mb/s on USB 2. Buy 2 et voil�.

I would love to use an online backup service just because I believe that Amazon or Google can take better care of my data than I can do.

Correct if your provider doesn't enforce upload limits and your connection is fast. In that case, there is a free solution in emailing the pictures to yourself on unlimited gmail and yahoo mail.

I didn't understand your comment about dreamtime. From your message I understand that you changed the keywords of the image directly in Dreamstime... Is that possible ?

It's called keymentoring I guess. Everybody can suggest keywords for an image, but of course they have to be approved by a reviewer. The moment 10 or more are accepted, you get 2 cents. Sometimes I do it...

Could you give me the link or id of the concerned photo, and the modifications you recommend ?

I forgot the link but it was a vista of a small Normandy port. I added the generic terms vista,panorama,landscape and the two main items you didn't keyword: lighthouse,pharo,tower and pier,jetty,wooden,quay. Since it's obviously a tourist destination, I also added tourism,travel. In general shots like those don't sell a lot in microstock since they're only usable in specific travel brochures etc... if you covered that place entirely, you might try Alamy RM for those type of shots.

^ lose the racist, fairly offensive example....

Offensive and racist? Sorry buddy I live in Mindanao, Southern Phils. Want to see my shots of what the MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front) did on August 6 in the city of Kauswagan with the houses of my friends? Apart of being taken with a cellphone, they are unsuitable for stock. I will never be a dhimmi. Never.

How about the quality of the keywording at pixmac ? Anybody uploaded there and have some feedback on this ?

Don't be shocked, I keyworded an image of yours on Dreamtime. You missed 2 essential things. I came up with 20 more. Sometimes I act like Mother Theresa 
Just my 2 cents... literally. 

And I totally agree with you about the forum atmosphere. It's much different than it used to be. The minute iStock was purchased by Getty, things began to change. I do feel there is a much more adversarial atmosphere when you speak out against things. That's fine. It's their business. But the iStock forums do have a bad reputation. I've read it on more than one site.

I started in microstock August 2005. iStock was great then, they were my best earner. The athmosphere was cool and friendly. Sales were going up as my (crap then) port grew. It all changed half of 2006 when Getty bought them and they introduced their weird categories and disambiguation. I made some remarks on the forum about disambiguation and linguistic taxonomy, and guess what, all my post were removed without any notice or apology.

I never posted at their forums again, I never read them even since 2006. I had a look a while ago and all I read is "hail iStock", "iStocku akhbar", "thou shalt not worship any god than iStock". Made me puke. As in p-u-k-e. Wouldn't be surprised if an iStock suicide bomber walked into the offices of DT or SS one day and blew himself up believing he would get 72 extended virgin licenses in iStock heaven. i-Stock means like i-slam submission. 

No steelcages, blogs, badges, artistic network, profile info. I all removed that back in 2006. I just upload now and then and I limit our conversation to Paypal for the rest. They still pay my alimentary but the love is gone 

These guys really do their best. Unlike YAY for instance, their Alexa ratings are climbing and they are all over Google by simple SEO tricks, something free and simple YAY isn't able to do.

It's a clever move, IMHO, to sublicense FT's content, since they have a roaring start that way with over 1M images. Let's face it, sites with under 1M aren't going to make it, since buyers like a wide choice.
Me thinks they will prefer you upload the same images as on FT to their site since their return on commissions will be higher for the same effort and costs, except the re-approval.

The keywording is overkill since everybody, even with just a little experience in microstock, will be on other sites too, and will have his images keyworded already in the IPTC. Only absolute beginners would profit. I would even insist they don't re-keyword my shots, as my experience on SV showed the re-keyworders screw up things. Don't reinvent the wheel please.

So far so good, and I signed up. There are, however, two forbidding clauses in their contributor agreement.

First of all, if you want to cancel your account, you have to do so in writing. Yes, on dead trees stuff. You will have to go to the post office and send it by registered mail. Don't we all like to sit at our PC and do everything online? Yack.

Second, you will have to leave your images online 2 years after upload, and this is also true for images outside this special promo. This period is way too long. Sites like DT and BigStock require 3/6 months. The dreaded Albumo asked 400 days and everybody hated that. Two years is too long, period.

If the site is successful, almost everybody will leave his images online indefinitely. The only time you want to cancel your images is if the site shows no sales, like YAY. So why Pixmac wants to take contributors hostage?
A reason might be they are insecure, or they realize most small contributors will never reach payout before they go bankrupt, in 2 years minus 1 day. No way you'll get any money then, since all legal stuff has to be done in the Czech Republic, in Czech. Anybody remembers what happened with Galastock?

Another thing is that you are blocked to go exclusive somewhere else for 2 years. You might rule that out for the next 6 months, but what in 1 or 2 years? And finally, imagine you have a buyout of an image, for instance on DT. You can never allow a buyout since all your images are hostages for 2 years on Pixmac.

So for me, uploading under the current agreement is a big no. The sweepstakes and the 20 cents per image don't impress me. Sounds cheap, like on a fancy fair. The lock out period needs to be 3 or maximum 6 months but then with the possibility to deactivate a certain percentage like on DT.

Vladimir the Emperor, I still love my Commodore 64. What am I now? An amateur or a pro? 

The real reason the PC made it is that you can find hacked "free" software for it everywhere, and for Mac that's more difficult.

I'll submit my SNAPSHOT elsewhere ..."

Well there is a site for snapshots. It's called snapvillage 

[quote author=paulacobleigh link=topic=6969.msg82453#msg82453 * flying objects* Sadly, I have not been shooting RAW.  The program I use to edit my photos does not support it.  And frankly I don't even know how to edit RAW files. I don't have PS.  Don't know how to use it.  Yeah, I know....none of you will talk to me anymore after reading this.[/quote]

Hahaha  - well that's why a forum is for. I was totally against RAW till half 2007 when somebody (a great stock photographer) forced me to do it. Now I can't miss it any more. RAW is not always superior since the cam software often corrects the sensor flaws. But for gradients, like clouds, or other high dynamic subjects (for instance a businessman in a black suit with a white shirt) you would like the much higher dynamic range of raw, and you can do two developments. That sounds complicated but a raw developer is just a screen with sliders where you can adjust exposure, brightness, saturation, etc...

I always over expose 2/3rd a stop to try and reduce the sky or shadow noise. You can recover most or all of the blown highlights in Adobe Camera Raw.

I found that trick too. Overexpose slightly, and you can recover most that's blown out in the raw (second development till the right edge of the histogram is flat) since it has a larger pixel depth than the JPEG. For clouds it's not a disaster even if you blown out the sunny edges, since you can always clone over that area at 15% from an area that has structure.

I'm totally on manual lately, and I look at the histogram. Even if you have to do a couple of trials, it always takes less time than selectively de-noise a sky in Photoshop.

Another trick that works on other smooth gradients like on faces (under the chin and the eyebrows) or in the folds of black business suits -  is to paint over the noisy area with a smooth brush 15-20% and with a color that is slightly brigther (sampled in the neighborhood). I found out it's much better than de-noise since the crispness stays while de-noising, especially in skies, produces ugly blobs that are very conspicuous, plus you lose sharpness.

These two big micro sites will start major library culls within 2 years !

I guess you apply the same rule to a wine cellar. 
Let's cull out books older than 50 years too. Shakespeare? Old crap. Let's all starting to read Germaine Greer! 

Quote from: FlemishDreams on January 31, 2009, 07:33

...you need to inspect 100 images per hour, that's one per 40 sec.

More....much more in some agencies

  - I'm used to bargain at Asian markets. Which agencies and how much?