OK thanks, I will try that. And the error I attached? Error pops up right away, before I even touch captcha.

That's great, thank you for letting us know, I would've probably missed it for quite a while...

Also, it's not just using some API, we have to actually imitate the real browser and parse the raw pages of the websites to determine the statuses.

That sounds so backwards and an unnecessary waste of bandwidth and server resources, it's amazing that they don't provide the status info through a simple API call...

I will look into your other suggestion, although if it ever becomes possible to implement straight into the StockSubmitter, do keep this request in mind

Thank you.

Appreciate your reply! Do you plan on adding this functionality in the future? Automatically marking files as pending / accepted / rejected - It shouldn't be hard to fetch this info from the API and it would be really useful to know which files require further editing and which are 100% accepted (without the need to manually check and update the status), unless this is this intentional, so that your cloud program has more features? Thanks

These are perfectly acceptable keywords in my book. I think they're considered different keywords, although some agencies may have 'smarter' search engines that automatically take corresponding adjectives into account.

I know that Shutterstock considers 'laugh' and 'laughing' as the same (in other words, the second one would be redundant), but most agencies accept both versions.

So these "non-smart" vocabularies can seriously inflate my keyword count if I want to get it done properly

Quote from: Snow on July 21, 2020, 13:34

Another vote for different keywords.

If there is a person actually laughing in the image I would only use "laughing" and not laugh or laughter because those are more conceptual keywords.

I think a buyer searches for "woman laughing" and not "woman laugh" or "woman laughter"

....

we want to find all sorts of buyers, not a subset, even if it 'most' buyers


this has come up many times before - why wouldn't a buyer use a conceptual keyword? a person laughing does also is described by laugh & laughter


 better to anticipate all buyers (w/o spamming) by using general AND specific keywords

My thoughts yes, although I can see points in both. Somebody might prefer more "curated" search results, but at the same time might miss out on some great images if we are too strict with our keywording and overthink it...

I used to be an iStock exclusive, so I knew exactly how to keyword for them, now however I am not sure anymore as vocabularies are not controlled like on Getty. I am submitting to top 9 agencies.

I'm finding myself using synonyms and different forms of the same word a lot, which sometimes gets me over the allowed number of keywords. Is this necessary? I'll give you a few examples:

laugh, laughter, laughing
disinfection, disinfectant, disinfecting
happy, happiness
radiation, radioactive
virus, viral
joy, joyful
cut-out, cut out
protection, protective
emotion, emotional

Are these considered as different keywords, or does searching for one give you results for the other as well, whether you have it in your keywords or not?

Thanks!

if you drop exclusivity you instantly go down to 15% commission. if you think it is bad being exclusive wait till you see what happens afterward.
i would not even bother submitting any thing to getty, they in effect are nothing but a micro site these days. you really won't gain anything by submitting to getty.
the benefit of exclusivity is the so called extra bump in royalties but that is just smoke and mirrors. istock and getty are are not transparent at all. it's actually quite disgusting how they get away with it.

I know, having hard time trusting them tbh. They've proven in the past they did not even track the sales properly. I don't really care whether it's due to incompetence or intentional, it's bad either way, and the fact that they removed daily reporting of sales speaks volumes itself...

So you don't think Getty would account for a fair share of revenue % wise? For instance, if I distribute material over 5 sites (5 x 20%), Getty would not account for at least 20% of the revenue?

If you go to the exclusive forum on the iStock forums, you'll see on the first page there are two threads dealing with leaving excusivity. KelvinJay is a moderator there and his answers are as official as you'll get.

Thanks Sue, I will check it out!

I don't know answer to the most of your questions, but regarding Payoneer card, you will be able to use it even when you cancel exclusivity. Just be sure not to close your Istock account permanently since your card is linked to Istock. But, even than I think it would still work, or you could issue one via Shutterstock or Dreamstime or Depositphotos. Adobe only if your account is in dollars.
Like Sean said, it was big mistake to do keywording etc on site. Bridge, PhotoMechanic or any other software, meta stays forever and whereever you send your files.

Thanks for the info! Not a fan of Payoneer fees though (more expensive for Europeans), so I'll have to rethink it anyway. As far as keywords go, Ill see what DeepMeta can do for me, and make sure to do it better from now on.

"- What is the best way to scrape my own keywords off of iStock? Preferably non qdisambiguated ones if possible? That would save me a ton of time as I put a lot of thought and research into metadata..."

There is no way to get non-disambiguated keywords from iStock as far as I know - in fact, I doubt they would even have been stored there in the first place, why would they?  But if you are using DeepMeta you can export any or all of the fields from there into a CSV file, so you can get titles, descriptions and disambiguated keywords into Excel or whatever.

I suppose if you had coding skills you could code some sort of re-ambiguation (I just invented that word!) to convert common istock-dictionary words to something that works elsewhere but I doubt it would be worth the effort - I think you just have to bite the bullet and re-do them!

Indeed, I'll scrape what I can and update/add as I see fit. The problem is, disambiguation merges similar keywords into one, which wont work well on other sites, so I have no choice but to re-do them.

It's been a few years but if I remember correctly any premium type of mirrored collections get dropped to regular collections and removed from Getty.

I learned the hard way that all metadeta should be in your files through Lightroom or other program. Maybe check DeepMeta for an export tool.

Getty seems to have lowered the bar to getting in but the question is, should you bother? Do you have highly value exclusive content to submit there that will sell at higher amounts? If not, you'll be earning micro cents per download and in some cases even less than iStock.

I would never do anything exclusive again unless I was offered a fortune.

I have no love for Getty, they've ruined a great community and business for many small stock photographers that iStock used to be, but I'd be willing to give them a try and see how it goes. Non-exclusively of course. And I can always cancel in the future...

What happens to my iStock portfolio once I cancel photo exclusivity? I am about to do what I should've done years ago, but would like to understand everything that is about to change with it.

- What happens to my past signature+ files and files that are mirrored over to Getty? Do they get removed both from the + collection as well as from Getty?

- What happens to my Payoneer card and the way I receive payments?

- Is there a realistic way of getting your files onto the Getty site as RF once you are not exclusive any more?

- What is the best way to scrape my own keywords off of iStock? Preferably non qdisambiguated ones if possible? That would save me a ton of time as I put a lot of thought and research into metadata...

Anything else I need to know about canceling the exclusivity?

I've created accounts on AdobeStock, Shutterstock, Pond5, Dreamstime, 123RF, BigStock, DepositPhotis and Alamy so far and I will be using Stocksubmitter to submit both photos as well as videos to them. I will also continue submitting to iStock for another year or so at least, before evaluating based on my own data if my dignity is worth more than the scrapes I expect to receive from them.

Any other comments / suggestions more than welcome. Thank you!

So is anyone successful in using StockSubmitter to submit to iStock? Did you get the keys?

EDITED: Nevermind, will wait for DT response first.

Is it normal for DreamsTime FTP uploads to not show up on their website for 48+ hours? And hence, metadata for these files still hasn't been submitted by the StockSubmitter (as it can't see any of the files on DT), while 4 other agencies I currently submit to were marked as "meta submitted" in no more than 24 hours, some a lot sooner. Is there a problem with DreamsTime FTP maybe? Thanks!

You see DT "stuck" at "Uploaded" below, while all others have been "Submitted" long ago.

 Thank you for your reply Niakris. Maybe an idea for future development. Ability to select several versions under the same submission (like you have for releases) and have stocksubmitter (or even us, manually) chose which version gets sent to which agency. You could even add this extended functionality as an in-app purchase to warrant the development...