I just saw RypeArts is no longer exclusive. Something to do with the rebellion?

I'd rather stay at 20%. Cancel all the battle royals and other BS like this.

Congrats, love your images!

This years Ig Nobel Prize winner:
Management: Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo of the University of Catania, Italy, for demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random.[121]

I'm at least twice as fast with a 6 button mouse as with any kind of trackpad. Especially when it comes to any kind of detail work or a lot of mouse movement.

My co-worker stopped using a mouse once he got a macbook pro. He was impressed with the fancy moves and gestures of his trackpad. Then I showed him my mouse and how I program it for different programs. He ordered it the next day.

For editing wacom is great though. It's very hard (or rather time consuming) to get very detailed masks with a mouse. If you don't need those then I think a mouse should be ok.

Glad I could help.

1. Click on the bw layer, go to the channels (window -> channels if it's not open), ctrl click on one of the channels (this will select the white parts of the image). Then click on the layer where you want to add the mask. Last step is to click on the mask icon in the layers panel.
2. #1 Almost the same as above: ctrl click the existing mask, select the layer where you want to add the mask, click the mask icon. #2 You can also alt drag the mask from one layer to another

PS: There might be a more efficient way to do the first one, this is the only one I know

Thanks for the info. I actually didn't know there were multiple sort options. I always used the default search - did this change from most downloaded to random?

At least one eye and a dslr with some sort of a lens. Maybe even an iphone is enough if you know how to use it:
http://fstoppers.com/iphone/

Quote from: oxman on September 30, 2010, 03:03
Have you ever heard of anyone buying their own images (or having a friend) in order to reach, more quickly, the 250 downloads required to become exclusive? Let's say you are 60 or so DLs away from 250 and want to get the benefits of iStock exclusive and not want to wait the few months it might take to reach that magic number.

Would IS frown on this? Is it not allowed. Would they find out if you have a friend do it?

Your thoughts.

Why would you spend money to become exclusive at an agency that just f..... you in the a... (and will further do it in the upcoming months)?

Just found this image in another topic and thought it's appropriate:

Quote from: Anglee on September 30, 2010, 04:35
The search positioning changed is due to we're having huge influx of submission everyday. Hence, the position of your images will change accordingly.

Positioning on the keywords I often checked changed, but it isn't new images that show in front (at least if I check the image numbers). Also I see my images positioned differently. Some of the ones that were on the first page went to page 15 or even further down, while some others stayed at page 4. Maybe the importance of faved images changed?

The result of this change is that I'm 60% down on earnings from last month and at least 50% down on any other month this or last year.

Also their search positioning changed considerably. Totally different images are selling for me when comparing to last month. I also track positions of my images and some are now nowhere to be found while others jumped to the front page.

Quote from: cthoman on September 29, 2010, 19:46

Quote from: 9lives on September 29, 2010, 19:40
That's lovely and all, but it does nothing to help vector artists with the fact that our targets are double that of photographers.  Good for people with split portfolios to have more options I suppose.

I was thinking about this the other day. By their logic of vectors selling for more so they have higher targets, shouldn't exclusives have higher targets too because of higher prices.  Uh, oh. Maybe, I shouldn't have said anything.

Try posting that on IS forums.

I'm just waiting for them to introduce another subcategory: renders/raster illustrations which will further split your RC and which will result in even more profit for them.

Quote from: Hawk_Eye on September 27, 2010, 16:29

Quote from: Eyedesign on September 27, 2010, 16:08

Quote from: cdwheatley on September 27, 2010, 16:04
I'd say between 200-300, the charts don't really tell us much. There could be a newer guy sitting at position 1200 selling like crazy, it would take him years to climb the chart, but he might still make the 40%. I'm at 318 and will make it.

Bingo!!

agreed....just went through all the numbers I have available to me and this number makes the most sense. not far off of what sharply_done said earlier...

Here's a post from slobo from IS:

Quoteok, lets make this visible. I have over 67,000 total downloads and I am currently ranked at #219 of all iStock contributors (according to the http://istockcharts.multimedia.de/ and I am pretty sure everyone ahead of me is accounted for) yet I will fall quite short of 150,000 RC required to maintain 40% commission.

I guess that all those diamonds that started at around the same time as he did (or before him) and have similar number of downloads will also fail to qualify. And there's many of those. Still, there are probably quite a few that are very active and managed to get to diamond since 2006 like sharply. So it's really hard to say how many will stay at 40%. I presume cdwheatley isn't far off though.

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on September 27, 2010, 21:15
I'm surprised that none of you guys seem to depend on flash for your shots, which gives an effective exposure time of perhaps 1/8000s. Not much chance of camera shake at those speeds and relying on a tripod to try to prevent it would be ridiculous.

The problem are sync speeds. They only go up to 250th or 200th. Even then you can sometimes see the shutter. I usually stay at 1/160th with my 5d II.

I'd like sync speed of 1/1000th, then I wouldn't have to use nd filters when shooting open wide.

Quote from: Perry on September 27, 2010, 21:42

Quote from: dirkr on September 27, 2010, 15:47
If you use a longer focal length, then the DOF reduces with the same distance to the object.

Wrong. DOF does NOT change if you change focal length and focus in the same distance. Only changing the shooting distance, focus distance or aperture changes DOF.

Wrong. Try it yourself or you can check this dof calculator:
http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

It's very easy to understand why this happens if you look at how the optics are built. The dof doesn't change when you change focal lengths only if the field of view is the same. That means you have to walk back with the longer focal lenght.

This is starting to look like a falling house of cards. Contributors, buyers and admins leaving.

Well if you thought this is a one time reduction here's something for you (quote from IS forums):

QuoteGross Margin and Real Profit
By Jim Pickerell 9/21/2010
iStockphoto COO Kelly Thompson says the company cannot keep growing profit at the old royalty rates, so they have to reduce what they are paying suppliers. The problem is not that the company does not have substantial profits. Rather, it is Getty Images' arbitrary standard for what the gross profit margin in the stock photo industry should be that causes the problem. "

How is this unsustainable? Just another lie.

So we can expect (yearly?) commission drops until we get to Gettys standards. When too many photographers will jump to a higher canister they will have to change it again. I also don't think that current change will get us to Gettys 20% standard. There is no way that the nonexclusives  can produce enough money to balance the commission of the exclusives so that the overall commission would be 20%.

Quote from: traveler1116 on September 22, 2010, 17:30
I'm still waiting for the pentax mf or that nifty new fuji x100, looks like a fun camera to have.  This would be nice if it was in a compact but a dslr has to have 21+ mps now or it's just not worth it for me.

Foji looks very promissing. The price range should be around 1000$ and if that's true I think I'll get one.

Quote from: hawk_eye on September 19, 2010, 23:13
I think at this point it's fairly clear it was just an error. I'm relieved by that personally, though I expect many contributors would actually prefer the conspiracy theories were true to justify their outrage.

Do you think that the exclusiveness of those contributors was also an error?

Quote from: MarkFGD on September 19, 2010, 01:02

Quote
Why are there links to download those portrait images?

Apparently, people like to print them out and wipe their arses with them.

I'm considering printing one of them (kelly probably) and using it for darts shooting.

Looks like Sean is trying to figure out what's going on. Don't know if it'll work.

I just wanted to discuss what you all think about how the IS management is handling this circus. They've completely isolated themselves from anything that has to do with the introduced changes. They simply ignore all the contributors and the site is running like nothing is happening. Are they trying to say "We don't care what you think, so we'll ignore you" or are they unable to come up with a reasonable response - as we've seen all of their attempts so far backfired at them, so maybe they got scared. Are the higher ups not allowing them to respond?

I really don't think what to make of it.

PS: Yeah I know we have a lot of IS topics. Tyler if you think this should go to some other topic please move it.