For the first time for getting on for 20 years, I didn't even make payout this month.
Not even before the refunds.
Pretty sad what this has come down to now.

IIRC, there is a standard for the way the data in a jpeg is written.


PS (I believe) writes the data in reverse, which is why (or perhaps it is so that) you can attach a clipping path to a PS jpeg.


Any of the other data EXIF. XMP, IPTC, etc. can be altered or removed.
I'm not a PS user, but I'm pretty sure that the "save for web" option strips most of it out.
 

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on January 05, 2017, 06:56

So, to review, all sites' sorting algorithms are different.  Got it.

And within a site, the algorithm could change weekly, daily or hourly.

Move on, nothing to see here.

And even if we did know what a particular sort algorithm was, there's nothing we could do about it, and even if there was, most agencies take a very dim view of people who do try to play the system.

Lets try putting it another way. The problem which you originally said you had is due to the way light is reflected. Bright light will make brighter reflections. Coloured surfaces will give coloured reflections.  There is no easy "in camera" fix for the colour or amount of reflection apart from trying to take your videos at times and locations with more diffuse light.


Very bright sunlight is also difficult due to blown highlights, assuming the rest of the image is correctly exposed. Again, no easy "in camera" fix.


It can all be "fixed" to a greater or lesser extent in post, but while that is relatively easy for stills it is less so, or at least more time consuming, for video.


In other words, as has already been said, different cameras, lenses, and filters, assuming you already have reasonable gear, won't help with your problem.









 

Quote from: ColobusYeti on December 11, 2016, 07:49

Shutterstock replied, they insist on a property release for each individual image and my father-in-law decided he doesn't want to sign the form! 

From my perspective I'd much prefer to err on the side of caution. If Shutterstock or any other agency for that matter requests additional legal forms, then so be it. They know the business better than I do. And frankly, if your father-in-law doesn't want to sign the form then personally I would abandon the project.

In fact, if he won't sign a release, then he hasn't really given you the copyright. No one is going to accept that "he told you it was OK" or similar in place of a release.
It's one thing to be given, and so "own" a physical photograph in slide or print form, and quite another to hold copyright of that image.
Not having a release would leave any seller, and the OP, with the possibility of all sorts of legal problems in the future. As Asthebelltolls says, better to err on the side of caution.

There is a command line program called exiftool that will let you read and write IPTC and EXIF data.-
-exiftool is a command line wrapper for a set of code written in Perl.  It's free, but I'd recommend you find someone with command line experience to help you with it.

There is also this, a gui for Exiftool.
http://u88.n24.queensu.ca/~bogdan/
It will batch edit files, but you'll have to look at it to see if it'll do what you specifically want.


Irfanview as mentioned is only free for non commercial use.
It's right at the top here
http://www.irfanview.com/

All that said, unless you were certain who was the legitimate buyer, think carefully before approaching a user. A legitimate buyer could contact the agency, who might take a dim view.

I'd agree. Legit users are going to be offended if you ask them where they obtained the licence to use your images. You also need to find out what the rules are at the individual agencies you contribute to.
 
If you sell RF, you are always going to be able to find unlicensed use. That is unfortunately the name of the game.
I'd only bother with the most blatant, commercial abuses personally.
 

Don't use Skrill myself, but can't they tell you whether the email is legit if you email them?
Do they have a method for reporting suspected phishing attempts? Most financial type organisations seem to.

I reckon credit sales are about what I've come to regard as "normal" these days. Obviously way down from the peak, but regular.


The thing is that's there is no saying what will and won't sell. There never was. As I said in an earlier post. What worries me more is my lack of sub sales in July.


Whatever the case there is very little any of us can do about sales one way or the other. 

Quote from: Mantis on July 26, 2016, 07:28

Quote from: Pauws99 on July 26, 2016, 06:08

I'm certainly not "upset" and if anyone wants to share pics thats up to them. I'm merely saying its of limited use.

Right. I have images that don't see much anymore, but they were hotties. 700-1000 downloads, not I am lucky to see a few over a year. BUT.....that does not mean they won't come back with a algorithm change.  Hard, though, to compete with millions of new images which does affect the overall choice for buyers.  So to me it is competition and algorithm unless your image is very unique and hard for someone to duplicate its message.

Now let me tell you something i figured out in this microstock business. Let's say that you're shooting 10 pics of an apple. For me that's one potential client that has 10 options to choose. So you're client in this criterias is looking for an apple. But if you're shooting 10 pics of an apple, a banana, an orange, a lemon and a kiwi in the same picture, you have 6 potential clients. the 6th may want a multifruit shot. Considering that fruits are on white background. So you see my point here? you have 10 shot in both cases but in the second case the probability percentage will be higher.

I don't reckon it works quite like that. The buyer won't want that combination or arrangement. You could go on forever making endless combinations and arrangements, and you can see attempts to do this very thing by some contributors on some sites.
Far better to take the best isolated on white fruit images you can as individual fruits, and then leave the buyer to comp them, or most likely others, as they please.


I'm sure you already know this, but I really wouldn't bother shooting isolated fruit though these days!

Quote from: Difydave on July 20, 2016, 15:08

Until somebody comes up with a computer program that actually "understands" what it's looking at, all "automatic keywording systems" are doomed to failure.

That's what it is supposed to be doing.  It's AI that analyzes the image and returns a set of possible keywords you can then choose from to add to the submission.  I tried it yesterday, and it at least got the idea that it was looking at food in a restaurant.  It's pretty cool if it keeps improving.  I'd rather tap a keyword to add it then type in the whole word.

If it can just tell roughly what it's looking at then I'm impressed! If the suggestions are at least reasonably relevant, then as you say it saves typing.


I was thinking about it last night, and I thought that things must have moved on some to enable the use of autonomous vehicles, which must have some idea of what they are looking at to work.
 

Do people really buy images of words, or those psychidellic backgrounds? I don't do vector though.

I think the OP answers that in the first post.


These type of questions get asked here time and time again by suppliers of all sorts of content. 
The reality is that if the style or content of what they are uploading doesn't sell after a reasonable time, then it's no good keep on uploading similar stuff. This may be a numbers game, but it still has to be what people want to buy.


There's more to this business than being a technically able illustrator or photographer.

I watch 95% BBC1 / BBC2 with about 1% BBC4*. I can't stand adverts**. In fact, I can't get my head around e.g. Sky at all. You have to pay money and you still get adverts? Are people INSANE?
* and 1% Dave, until the adverts come on.
** and even on the Beeb, too much time repeatedly promoting their 'favourite' upcoming progs.

I didn't mind adverts so much, at least you had some apparent randomness to what you saw, but this (Insert annoying advert type voice over) "Complete rubbish, brought to you by You'll never buy it" at the start  of every program, and at the commercial breaks is so * annoying