Why do we even bother replying to this nut job   

Quote from: maunger on April 16, 2008, 12:58

Quote from: Seren on April 16, 2008, 12:54
I like the fact that the site doesn't even have the common courtesy to tell it's contributors BEFORE it gets posted all over the message boards.  Jeez, what a way to find out!

It was posted first on the LO blog and on every page of the LO site - before it was posted "all over the message boards" - you just happened to log in elsewhere first.

At least they gave 1 month's notice - many other sites have just disappeared from the face of the earth with no notice and no chance for the customers to use their credits and for the contributors to possibly get their money.

Mitch

Were the photographers emailed about the closure BEFORE they posted it to other boards? I haven't received my Notice about this. I sure would like to get an official notice first delivered to me as an individual member rather than finding it on some board since my membership is a contract between me and LO. Bottomline, I didnt apply at LO by putting a post on their board.

Anyway, this is water under the bridge now... Good luck to Bryan and his team who sure made the stay @ LO worthwhile.

Hi Penny,

You may also try looking at the brand Wolverine...

http://www.wolverinedata.com/index.php/site/quicklinks/C13/

I haven't personally tried it, but this would be more versatile since it can also play videos, music, and redirects them to your TV (just in case you want to show off the photos immediately to your friends and there's no immediate access to a computer).

However, there is a difference between this wolverine and epson. If the major reason for your portable storage is for photo (and review), you might be better off with epson since its LCD is way better than this. If not, then the size and other features of wolverine might make up for the LCD's short comings.

Regards.

Quote from: leaf on September 19, 2006, 17:36
well i can't say that i think the people on this forum are particularily agressive or negative towards istock.  I think people are just frustrated that their hard work that has been put into keywording is now all mixed up (some images more than others).  I think if any other site did a similar thing they would get the exact same reaction.  I remember quite a few complaints when lucky oliver didn't accept iptc info, or when the fotolio upload page was 3 pages long, or when people don't get any sales at canstock.

And well, i am not as smooth with my words as cjphoto or bateleur, so I think i will just have to conclude by saying ... 'what they said'

I dont know if I should/could/am entitled to say this but nevertheless, I shall.

I think I read somewhere before that this forum is a site that was an unbiased and uncensored one. Basically, that's why I joined this forum. In my opinion, there are many negative/agressive comments on Istock here simply because these same comments cannot be posted within the IStock forum itself due to censorship. It is quite natural that everybody which has something to say/share to his fellow photographers to find a venue to say the exact words the wants to say it. It is a good thing Leaf provided us with that venue. (ra ra ra Microstock Group!!!)

Reversing the table, this forum DOES NOT BAN those who would patronize/praise IStock. I think the only reason for me to say that this site/forum is a biased to IStock is when this site starts censoring all POSITIVE POSTS for IStock and locking them, which I doubt will happen. It is only unfortunate that most of the members here have issues with Istock on some matters and that they happen to post it here because they cant post it there (lucky I have so few images at IStock otherwise I'll be ranting too. And yes, I know a little about software development and there could have been steps taken to avoid the IStock fiasco. I think IS is the very first microstock agency who actually gave photographers that have small portfolio a reason to be happy). As a matter of fact, I even think this forum encourages exclusives to post their comments here so that this forum will not anymore be seen as one sided or biased. So everybody can see the big picture even from the shoes of an exclusive. I think this forum got it's first attempt to have a full blown crew (exclusive and non) when amanda1863 joined. In my opinion, this site has welcomed her warmly since none (based on what I have read so far...there might be some stray bullets  ) of the posts was directed to attack her personally bur remained targetted to Istock issues. To me this showed that the members of this forum, be it negative to istock or not, treated amanda1863 with respect as a fellow phtographer and member.

I feel it's a waste to see her leave. Only in this forum can you see an uncensored exchange of ideas and conversation between an exclusive and a non exclusive.

Quote from: berryspun on September 18, 2006, 21:44
I'm wondering what the designers will think about this 'improvement' when they do their search...

Most probably they'll look for your portfolio on other sites .. 

Quote from: amanda1863 on September 18, 2006, 01:07
They also have a big announcment planned for Monday and one of the admins hinted it would help out with keeping the que down?  I hear they just hired 7 brand new inspectors that are currently in training too!

With the addtion of these new inspectors, I hope they also consider raising the limit even for non-exclusives.

Quote from: Bateleur on September 16, 2006, 16:06
Interestingly ...

IS have suspended all downloads for this weekend.   

Okay. I have no problem with that decision. It is their prerogative and I guess they've done it for a good reason. (Though I am a bit frustrated, what with having a load of images ready to go.)

However, read the IS forum posts on this issue and I guess about 2/3 of the members are saying something like, "Wooo! Yay! Cool decision. We're so happy."

Did they also suspended the downloads? I thought it was just the uploading part that was suspended. 

Quote from: StockManiac on September 16, 2006, 12:51
Doesn't sound like they had much of a disaster recovery plan.

Somehow I don't think that a disaster recovery plan would work. To me it sounds like a graceful way of saying goodbye and thank you. If it was a real disaster (hardware failure) and they still have the intention to go back online again, they wouldn;t have used the term "indefinitely" in their message. They could say "sorry we lost all your images, lessons learned, we will continue with the business, please upload again". Well, in my opinion that is.

For those uploading or have photos at AreaImage, I guess the site just bit the dust. I saw this a while ago when I visited the site.

http://www.areaimage.com/

---------------------------------------------------

Hi All,

Unfortunately this afternoon, at 17:00 BST 15th September we experienced critical server failures at our ISP's end, resulting in large data loss affecting all images online

Unfortunately this will effectively halt Areaimage for an indefinite amount of time, meaning no further images will be uploaded or downloaded.

All of our members are entitled to a full refund for all money deposited to Areaimage, also so are members with account balances over $35 at the time of the failure.

We are currently working on a solution to provide these refunds, please check back on the 22nd September for details regarding this.


Thank you all for your custom
Regards
The Areaimage Team

The site is currently down. From the main page, the pictures aren't available. When you click on a link, the URL seems to have an extra "www." It might be the one causing the problem. From the looks of things, Valerijs seems to be trying to address the bugs we have posted here.

Hi Valerijs. One more bug, I noticed that when you try to sort by downloads the images in the "online" tab, nothing happens. You might wanna look at it.

Regards.

Quote from: CJPhoto on September 13, 2006, 10:04

Quote from: IRCrockett on September 13, 2006, 09:59
Paypal would be a step backward for most people. If these sites could just do direct deposit then that would be a huge step forward.

  Setting up a direct deposit system with banks from ever country that they have photags at would be a nightmare.  Paypal is the 21st century as as long as you have a verified account, I dont see any problems with it.

I think MoneyBookers is the next best thing, if not better. There are many countries that does not support PayPal. Monebookers has wider coverage.

BTW, congrats Leaf 

Somebody must have uploaded bigtime at LO. I'm having this error when I upload at LO. I'm using WinXP ftp and FileZilla. The upload via http seems to be working fine. Anybody else having the same problem?? 

Quote from: hospitalera on September 10, 2006, 11:42
Same here...

Seems to be working fine now ... the correct upload date is now displayed.

Hope Valerijs can answer some of our questions though...  They must very busy out there at galastock with the sudden growth on submissions.

Quote from: madelaide on September 12, 2006, 04:05
I liked the suggestion of increasing contrast and I have just submitted them a new version, although I think their rejection may be more related to the shadowed are on the top, with the pots and cup.

My digital is a P&S, Canon A520. 

Regards,
Adelaide

If you're using Windows XP (not sure about other lower versions, but you could try), you could see the the colorspace from the file properties. Click on the file/properties, then go to the "summary" tab, then click on the "advance" button. It shows the EXIF data of the file. There is a field there named "Color Representation" which identifies if you're using sRGB or aRGB.

Moreso, I also have Canon G5 and P&S canon SD550. Just like what Prof said, the color space their using by default is sRGB.

Regards

Quote from: Professorgb on September 10, 2006, 15:15
One more thing.  Be sure that your monitor is profiled and calibrated.  If you can't see noise/artifacts in your images, you'll never know why they're being rejected.  SS is notorious in its intolerance for noise.  Even though designers don't typically worry about noise, SS seems to make it their highest priority in assessing file quality.

Many thanks. I'm currently using my Toshiba laptop to view/edit my photos. I read that LCDs like the one on my laptop tends to render the image differently than the actual. I guess that's why some of my images get rejected due to poor lighting. They tend to be very bright (even washedout sometimes) in my monitor but when viewed on a CRT, the photos seems to be ok. I read on one of the threads here about a certain Spyder calibration gadget but unfortunately, I'm not sure of its availability where I reside. I might have to import it from the US.

Noise ... yeah, I had my share of that. One of the images (I think one is good) got rejected due to noise. I shot it on ISO400 (forgot to go manual). The funny thing is that ALL other sites accepted it EXCEPT for SS.

Speaking of Canstock, they are currently looking for Inspectors.

http://www.canstockphoto.com/employment.php

Hope they find a new ones to improve their pending queue... 14 days is a very long wait.

Hi. On a technical side, has anybody noticed that the "added" field in the pending images section keeps changing to the current server date. For my case, the original upload date is not anymore displayed. Has anybody exprienced this?

Quote from: Professorgb on September 09, 2006, 15:59
I just saw a thread on SS about this issue.  The concensus was that you should submit an entirely new batch--don't take chances.  Take a look at the batch you submitted and then try to shoot something new, something better.

Quote from: Boylet on September 08, 2006, 10:58
I'm not sure if this has been answered already, but does anybody know if it's ok (or even worth it) to resubmit as part of the 1st 10 the previous photos that have been rejected but have no rejection reasons except "7 of 10 must be approved" ?

Thanks.. Maybe I'll review my "uncommented" rejections again. The more I read the posts and others' galleries, the more I see there's still some improvements I could make in my photos. Maybe if I do resubmit some, it would be the ones which I really can't find any defects.

Quote from: beisea on September 08, 2006, 23:48
if you were rejected first time due to not having 7 out of 10, then the rejection with no reasons are the approved ones, you can resubmit those, I just did that, the 5 resubmission got back in 4 out of 5.

Thanks for the reply ..

Quote from: berryspun on September 09, 2006, 04:23
I'll definitely continue, hoping that the sales will catch up 

Yeah me too... I think I heard some saying that each stock agency has its own market... maybe canstock has it's own small market that may be worth showing our portfolios. Besides, not all our photos are accepted on the major league sites. It wouldn't hurt if it got posted on a slow site such as canstock and even galastock. At least we know that canstock had made some payments to photographers giving us a confidence that, even though the site is slow, it is still legit. Although, I can't argue in the "waste of time" concept. Each to his own bandwidth and available time. Nobody can determine that other than ourselves.

Cheers.

Quote from: CJPhoto on September 09, 2006, 08:41
they are very slow to review at the moment - been waiting over a week.

It must be because they're processing payments for the cut-off. I noticed that after they computed the monthly royalties, the acceptance/review continued.

For me that is...

Quote from: Freezingpictures on September 08, 2006, 10:55
Leaf, can I try to reach galastock via e-mail and invite them to visit microstockgroup to join this discussion?

Have them bring some booze so we could celebrate our sales!!! 

I'm not sure if this has been answered already, but does anybody know if it's ok (or even worth it) to resubmit as part of the 1st 10 the previous photos that have been rejected but have no rejection reasons except "7 of 10 must be approved" ?

Quote from: Freezingpictures on September 08, 2006, 10:06
Why should they do constantly fake sales? If there is a steady income of fake sales I am happy They have pending files in the queue from me, so why should they take the time to fake dowenload my images instead of reviewing my pics? That makes no sense. But who knows.. I will take the risk on this new site..

If these were fake sales, then there is a possibility of constant fake sales up until to a few dollars before payout. From then on, no more sales. I don't know if there is anybody/any company auditing GS but there is a big risk here. Consequently, there is also no forum so there is no semblance of any support or presence from the owner/admin. I think somebody here in microstock group emailed their support and the email bounced back. Sad to say, this site is an "upload at your own risk" one. Like grp_photo said, a payout info from a reliable photographer would be comforting to hear.