After 1 min of extra thinking... So how many stock contributors will be banned? 100? 500? Shutterstock will be fine without them. This action is... Boring. I won't change my avatar or whatever. Nor publicly cry. Take it, or leave it. But you can fight I will be thankful for your activity.

The few people deactivating their portfolios now probably only has a slight symbolic value (an important one to send a signal nonetheless). Personally I'm not under the illusion that they will even take note of my action. I just don't want to support their success and I can easily afford it.

Many people however can't afford it. But they CAN afford to stop providing new quality content and focus on the other agencies instead. And this, I believe, will be the downfall of Shutterstock. This will have a MUCH bigger impact in the long run. Clients won't notice at first, but will have a harder and harder time finding relevant content that meets a certain standard and ultimately they'll stop renewing their subscriptions. Not as a protest or anything, simply because they'll want quality, and if it's not found on Shutterstock, they'll go elsewhere. No one wants to wade through tons of low quality content from hobbyists (which is now apparently being accepted all the time. What happened?!?). Photos will begin to look dated within a couple of years. For the clients it's all about quality, and if Shutterstock can't afford quality contributors anymore (or has made a decision not to), then it's the end. It won't happen in a day, and Stan will likely meet his bonus criteria. But it will have consequences and it won't be sustainable for the company in the long run.

I disabled my portfolio immediately when I saw the reality of this news which I hadn't given much thought. Two days of selling for 10c and I had it. My portfolio was a small one so won't be doing nothing to the numbers of their catalog but it was a good one with 130.000 sales since 2008, and supposedly hundreds of thousands of dollars of earnings for Shutterstock to line their pockets over the years. And now I'm making sure that at least I won't be contributing a penny to their continued success from here on. Actually they made it extremely easy for me by slashing my income by 60-70% I prefer not selling at all and focusing on my full time job instead. I won't even make a big fuzz about it, it's just a no-brainer, haha.

I'm surprised actually that they made such a big move at once. Wouldn't you want to introduce the paycuts gradually to get people used to it? From a corporate perspective it seems to be such a ridiculous move to do it all at once!

And it has me suspecting that they are planning to come up with a less bad revenue system in a short while, just so we can all be really relieved and cheer on them and say "Thank you for listening to us, Shutterstock! The best agency and always has been! Thanks for caring about your contributors" while now accepting the new and "improved" 20c commissions. Everybody seems to win some (but actually only the agency wins, as they planned for 20c commissions all along).

Either way, I'm not coming back unless everything goes back exactly the way it was before OR better. I'll also take better. But for sure won't be accepting even a 1% paycut. No bargaining.

SOOO now you'll have to buy Luigi, the world famous pizza chef, elsewhere 

Thanks jsnover and cathyslife

I went on a live chat with the Hostgator support and the guy worked for an entire hour to get it fixed, and was in fact at the point of giving up when suddenly he got it to work. Fantastic.

Looking so much forward to get to the network part, but before engaging in the network I need to set up the site, design it, write FAQs, upload images and do some sandbox testing.. I don't even know how the network works yet.. But will be interesting to see.

I'm feeling positive about this, because I only need to earn $15 for it to have been a worthwile investment - and it also seems logical to have an agency where you yourself are the boss and get to decide categories, pricing, discounts, which images should be featured and where to lead the customer. Even if it only generates $50/year I will consider it worthwile.

I bought ktools for something like $300-400 a couple years ago but never got the site up and running because I lost interest quickly, so it was a total waste of money for me.
I'm much more excited about this because of the opensource and network aspects, and also because it's so easy to change things in Wordpress.

Thanks again

I also get this error when uploading

Insufficient memory (case 4) `/tmp/magick-MlcOx49v' @ error/jpeg.c/JPEGErrorHandler/316
Using ImageMagick (exec enabled). � info: Image Processing.



I tried increasing the memory in wp-config, didn't work

Some files seem to go through, but most won't.

What could be the problem?

I'm not going to contribute with something useful here, I'm not a photographer so I can't give valuable advice.

Just wanted to say I love the choice of Peignot for your logotype

I love every peace of design that keeps alive the memory of Cassandre, my all time favourite graphic designer.. Nice!

Best regards
Thomas

Hi,

Yesterday I created some illustrations for microstock and everything went well except for the fact that I carelessly used CS6 functions throughout the entire illustrations (transparency on only one slider of the gradient panel, multiple artboards etc.). Yes I should have known better, but it's been a long time since I created microstock.

So, I saved the illustrations as EPS10 (fortunately also remembered to save a CS6 compatible version of each), and when I opened the EPS10 file again, what I noticed was that the shapes which I filled with gradients where only one slider was transparent, had however not been rasterized. Instead, apparently they had been automatically converted to "opacity masks" which is a function I have never used before.

My question is now, do the agencies accept these opacity masks or do I need to manually apply new EPS10 compatible gradients to all of them / redo the illustration?

I hope someone can help me. I know I can always try by submitting, but it's such a hassle if done in vain.

Best regards
Thomas

Hej Thomas

Mange tak for info, du skulle vel tilf�ldigvis ikke ligge inde med et link, har pr�vet at grave l�s hos Skat, men uden held.

Jeg har desv�rre ikke noget link, nej, og jeg er ikke selv h�rd til regnskab. Ring evt. til skat - de plejer at v�re hj�lpsomme
Ellers kan det st�rkt anbefales at betale for en time med en revisor, hvor du s�tter ham ind i din konkrete situation, s� du kan f� klarlagt tingene. Vis ham pr�cist hvordan det foreg�r fra salg til du har pengene p� din bankkonto.
Sidst jeg havde bes�g af en s�dan (et par uger siden), var han enig i, at det her er en k�mpe gr�zone i skattesystemet. Jeg lavede selv en tr�d om det p� Amino da jeg var gr�n, m�ske hj�lper den - m�ske ikke: http://www.amino.dk/forums/t/54100.aspx

Men jeg sidder ikke, som jeg skrev dengang i 2009, og taster al indkomst ind i dollars og laver efterf�lgende kurs-spekulation. Jeg opgiver simpelthen til skat den indt�gt, der ryger ind i kroner og �rer p� min danske bankkonto, og undlader at bruge af indt�gterne f�r de st�r d�r (dvs. ikke noget med lige at k�be ting via PayPal mens pengene st�r d�r - det g�r regnskabet un�digt besv�rligt).

Is that a wedding ring 'O' in the second logo? In that case, it's two different concepts in one logo - which is confusing. Generally I find the first one more appealling, otherwise I would suggest to implement the heart into the second option (in one of the frames), and ditch the wedding ring concept altogether. Or go with the wedding ring concept and emphasize the ring by making the O the same yellow as the top of the ring. Just two different concepts in one logo is too many

Has anyone thought of starting up  Facebook invitation about this date? It would be hard to get it out there, as non photographers will not join and pass it on but If it gets momentum it might help.

Can we get this invite up?

It would be a great way of keeping track of participants, because right now I have no clue how many we are

I would be glad to offer my help in creating the badges once the categories are settled on

Did you read my entire post (particularly the section that starts with "but...")? That was exactly my point. I'm not doing this for the sake of making an impact, but should the word happen to spread in the design community, I certainly wouldn't mind either - that would be an added bonus. That's why I plan on doing it on February 2 rather than right away, because nevertheless chances of that to happen are probably marginally higher than if I go ahead and deactivate my measly 82 files today. Maybe it will inspire others to take a stand as well. Trying to be a little strategic about the gift that I'm giving myself.

In fact this would be my advise to everyone participating in D-Day: Don't expect iStock to fall on their knees, do this for yourself. You deserve to be freed from the Getty corporation and focus your thoughts on positive stuff - the future is bright..

I hope this will make an impact, that the word will spread in the community and to various news channel etc.

But it's not the sole reason I'm pulling my portfolio on February 2. I'm doing this primarily for myself - as an investment in time and happiness. I'll never have to worry about iStock again, I won't spend anymore time reading threads of hundreds of pages about how Getty/IS managed to screw us once again. I won't be furious when they bring us more "exciting news" in the future.

That's how I see it and I think the fuel that powers Deactivation Day should be regaining freedom and getting new opportunities focusing on other more positive ways of selling stock content, rather than the impact itself.

Quote from: ankarb on December 27, 2012, 15:17

Do you believe that Shutterstock fairly closed my account or not?

I am almost %100 sure that they "fairly" closed your account..

Claims like yours require proper evidence.. You are wrong until you post the image here.. The reason you don't post it here is because you already know that shutterstock is right on this issue..

Using other people's works for "comparison"_{(! yeah I am that naive to believe it is for comparison)} is wrong..

I use reference images as well, don't you?
If I am to create an illustration of an apple I create a moodboard to see what an apple looks like - with 5 or 10 different photos from Google (always photos though, no illustrations due to the risk of subconsciously copying the styles of other illustrators). I always place them directly into my Illustrator file when starting a project, and obviously I don't trace them, not even basic shapes, I just use them to get the feel of an apple from different angles, with different lighting, color etc. Therefore I kind of feel bad for the OP if this is the case for him as well, and the end result of his illustration cannot in any way be identified with his reference image (in my opinion he should have used way more than one reference however).

But I guess you're right, since we haven't seen the illustration and the watermarked image side by side, we won't know if that is the case or he simply is ashamed to post it because we would see the similarities immediately. That would not be acceptable of course, and in that case it was a fair move by SS. My concern, however, is that SS reviewers just saw the watermark and that alone was enough to delete his port, because they don't have the time to investigate all cases and they would rather delete one too many than one too few. That makes it very vulnerable to be a contributor

I guess the only way to judge if SS made the right choice is for the OP to post his illustration along with his reference image. In 2 seconds we would know whether they handled this right