I can certainly vouch for Amos. He will be at MEXPO 2013. I have already seen that he has a room at Andel's and that the mini-bar has been specially filled for him I will be there, as well, as part of Amos' security team.

Microstocksolutions LLC www.microstocksolutions.com,  the leading provider of outsourced still and motion reviewing, traditional image editing, still and motion keywording, metadata translation, and digital asset management services (DAM) for the visual media industry, announces its Winter Madness Keywording Sale.

During our sale, MSS is offering the first 10 photographers who contact us free keywording on 200 images or illustrations, and great low prices on any amount of keywording beyond that.

Microstocksolutions serves a who's who list of movers and shakers in the worlds of microstock still and motion, editorial still and motion, RM and RF, iPhonevideography and iPhone still imagery.

Our aim is to make your keywording,  image reviewing and image or footage processing seamless. We are dedicated to adding value by generating savings and increasing your core process capabilities

Microstocksolutions puts the "M" in digital asset management.

Contact us today: [email protected]

We probably import and export metadata from about 3000 or more images each day of the week.

This means taking images which come without embedded metadata and then injecting them with keywords found on an .xls or .txt file, or extracting metadata from photos or illustrations on to either an .xls or .txt file.

This was one problem which troubled us for years until we decided to create a solution in house.

We went through every scenario you can imagine, and finally created our own "app" to import and export metadata from one platform to another, i.e., extract metadata from .jpg, .eps., .tif files made created on Lightroom - for example - and then export it to an .xls file and have the capability to import that .xls or .txt file into image residing on any number of DAM platforms like Fotostation.

It took about 5 weeks of development, but it works great.

Outside of such a proprietary solution, nothing exists as an off-the-shelf solution. The reasons are simple. Adobe is not going to make it easy to import or export metadata made on any other platform. The same goes for Fotoware or any other similar program.

Hi,

All depends on time, place, etc.

Please try to firm up the above details.

Thanks.

Mark

Hi,

Please let us all know as soon as possible if you are going to go forward with this shoot.

I am assuming that you are thinking of doing this by Plymouth and Washington streets?

What if it rains?

Thanks for filling in the blanks.

Best,

Mark Milstein
-------------------
Microstocksolutions

www.microstocksolutions.com

Twitter: stocksolutions

T: (201) 654-4507 (USA + Canada)
T: +36-20-967-34096 (Europe)

Hi,

I absolutely would love to be there. I will arrive in NYC on the 18th from Europe. How can we meet? Where and and what time  will you be on location?

Best,

Mark Milstein

Hi,

Our teams all work under the direct supervision of  lead editors back at the "agency's main office."

At this time, all of our teams act as the first set of eyes on the images as they arrive from the contributors.

Using a fixed, web-based interface, they assign a level of quality, note the availability or non availability of a model or property release, decide whether to keep or reject an image, etc.

Each agency has developed its own interface, and has refined the number of steps every reviewer has to take with any one image.

The work of any team is monitored by that lead editor and quality is continioully ensured. This scheme is not any different than any other photo agency, newspaper or magazine with a heirarchy of editors.

All said, the bottom line is cost.

Microstock agencies are being flooded day after day with thousands of photos. In order for any microstock agency to be profitable and to reward its contributors with monthly royalties, photos must be processed quickly, uploaded to their servers and be correctly keyworded so that paying users can actually find them.

Having enough reviewers with the skillset necessary to make the archive successful is costly.

This is where we come in.

Not all microstock agencies work with a business model which allows them to outsource their reviewing, still there are enough that do and that's why we exist.

Mark

Hi,

While the majority of this forum's readers are photographers, quite a few industry leaders come here to learn about your thoughts, gripes, trends, etc.

Believe it or not, your opinions count.

From Dreamstime to Fotolia, all of the major microstock agencies have someone on staff or on contract who regularly come here and to other similar sites.

Our interest in starting this thread had more to do with getting to know the photographers behind the pictures, then actually pushing our services.

On the other hand, not every microstock photographer is based in North America, and by talking about Microstocksolutions we get to know photographers with the kinds of skills who might want a job with us.

It's already happened once in the past few weeks.

Lastly, if you hadn't weighed in on this conversation you might not never have known that such companies like ours even exist.

The microstock industry is growing and maturing. Microstocksolutions is part of that.

Best,

Mark

Hi,

Microstocksolutions is my third venture.

I founded former Soviet Europe's first online agency, Red Dot www.rdfoto.com, and it's leading editorial and stock agency, Northfoto www.northfoto.com

Before that i was a photojournalist who covered more than 20 conflicts and worked in 60 countries for Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, and numerous other major news outlets. This is where my 25 years of industry experience comes from.

Microstocksolutions was founded not as a fishing expedition, but as a result of a well established microstock agency approaching us to do exactly what I have been describing.

To date, it's been a successful venture.

Microstocksolutions already provides the services I describe on behalf of a number of major agencies. Dreamstime has a similar center down the street from us in Bucharest, Romania. They too recognized what we already knew. Quite a few other agencies do exactly the same.

Other agencies are already in negotiations with us to do the same.

Hope to meet some of you at either UGCX or PhotoPlus.

Mark

Hi,

Yes, one or two major agencies have reviewers working from home.

Overseeing a vast number of reviewers spread out geographically can be a HR headache. Creating a team spirit, etc., is equally daunting.

Then there's the question of guaranteeing bandwidth, etc.,

However, the cost of doing business in Eastern and Central Europe is 70% cheaper than in Western Europe or North America.

This is with anl office, full onsite management, robust infrastructure, etc.

That's the savings.

Best,

Mark

Hi,

Our estimates are based not just on what the reviewer gets in his or her pocket at the end of each pay period, but on the entire cost, i.e., social security, medical, taxes, cost of actually having someone in an office, IT, PCs, equipment, administration, etc.

I've been in this business for 25 years, and the rest of our team comes with nearly the same amount of time as either photographers, editors or managers of agencies.

As I have written, a good reviewer can process between 600 and 1000 images per day. That translates into a low of 12,000 images per month and a high of 20,000 images per month.

I hope this clears things up.

Best,

Mark

Hi,

The editors who work with Microstocksolutions are -- in effect -- full-time staff for whatever agency contracts with us.

There is no difference.

They are "in house."

The difference exists in the "head count" at that agency.

Our service allows agencies with high overhead costs, i.e., employing people in the US or Germany (where an editor might cost about euro 5000 per month) to reduce that cost dramatically by employing editors through Microstocksolutions.

The editors of that team sit in an office in Central or Eastern Europe and, using a VNC, Skype, video conferencing and full access to that agency's servers, etc., do the same work as would any editor sitting in an office in New York, Hamburg or Seattle.

We are lucky that there are a large number of experienced, English speaking microstock professionals concentrated in this region.

Let me know if I can answer any more questions, and we would love to invite anyone from the microstock community to visit our offices and speak with the editors who might have actually reviewed your images.

Mark Milstein

Hi,

Yes, Microstocksolutions is more aimed at the agency level than at the individual photographer.

Microstocksolutions provides editors with a high level of microstock knowledge who add keywords, determine quality, verify model and property releases so that those images which can sell are put online as quickly as possible.

A good reviewer can go through between 600 and 1000 images per day.

Best,

Mark Milstein

Hi,

This is Mark Milstein, the founder of Microstocksolutions www.microstocksolutions.com , Northfoto www.northfoto.com and Red Dot www.rdfoto.com

I would like to say hi, and introduce myself and Microstocksolutions to the greater microstock community.

Microstocksolutions offers microstock agencies --- big and small -- a chance to lower their image reviewing and processing costs.

This means savings all around, and more importantly it means money for contributing photographers.

It also means greater efficiency and quicker turnaround times.

We all know what it's like to wait for days or weeks to see our images appear online and begin to earn money.

The team at Microstocksolutions are all photo industry veterans, and speak your language.

We will be at UGCX and PhotoPlus in New York from Sunday, October 18th, through Sunday October 25th.

We'd love a chance to say hi over a beer or a cup of coffee.

Contact us if you are going to be there:

[email protected]