Quote from: RalfLiebhold on March 21, 2022, 02:54

Thanks for the examples Zeljkok, I find your images all very appealing. With the saturation you have held back but. And against a replacement of a boring sky speaks nothing.

Rightdx, the reality often looks boring and dreary. But I was referring more to the examples in my link, there I can not understand the bestsellers. The images are not only unrealistic, but in my opinion technically poorly implemented.

But sometimes I can't stop myself either:

Ralf - I am big sucker for skies & this looks great


Would need to see at 100% how good are the edges at horizon, specially at right side where highrises touch the sky, as that is the hardest part with sky replacement

But, as someone mentioned, does it help the sales? Not sure it does;  stock photography is not about pretty images, rather illustrating concepts where artistic appeal is usually secondary.

Thanks Zeljkok, now we are two suckers of sky exchange here.
I use Photoshop for this and the sky is perfectly swapped in seconds and there are no problems with the edges you mentioned. The images are also accepted everywhere without any problems.

In principle I agree with you that stock photography is more about themes and concepts. Usually I don't worry so much about the competition either and just do my thing.

In this case, however, I did a little research because I knew that hundreds of other photographers had photographed the same subject from exactly the same spot before me.

I wanted to present the topic a little differently and stumbled across the bestsellers, which I personally do not like at all 

Quote from: RalfLiebhold on March 20, 2022, 16:23

Quote from: Roscoe on March 20, 2022, 16:10

I'm guilty of doing split toning, dramatizing skies (sky replacement when I'm drunk), dodge and burn and using the saturation slider.
At least, for landscapes and travel related stuff, which is quite some part of my portfolio.
I try to not overdo it, but I definitely want to have a highly appealing image, yes. 
I found it out the hard way. Travel related buyers want to sell a dream, not reality.

My editorials are kept to basic editing. Maybe adding a slightly amount of punch with the contrast or saturation slider, and some highlight dimming (I tend to slightly overexpose rather than underexpose) but that's about it.

I don't spend hours of editing on removing brands or people, I feel like it isn't worth my time, as the image might not sell all.
So those shots get uploaded as editorial. But I do try to frame shots avoiding brands or people. Wherever realistically possible.

Edit: the shots of Dinant you showed are not far off of how I would do it by the way.
Maybe I would have warmed them up just a tiny bit while being a bit softer on the blue (seems a bit harsh?), but hey, that's just personal taste.
And if it sells... well, then you did the right thing!

Roscoe, you don't have to feel guilty, my sky is replaced too.
What I'm getting at is that I find the bestsellers on my subject for my taste horribly overworked. But they are selling.

Is that really better:

Yes, I have the same feeling regarding overprocessing.
Sometimes I think: Djeez, I took it too far. This won't even fly through the approval process.
But then it did, and then it sells. So there's that.

I have a sky replacement shot published in Lonely Planet.
Whooops.

You made me curious, do you want to post your picture - if not, just forget it.

Times a topic, which one moves me for a long time.
If you look at landscape pictures for example, the bestsellers are completely oversaturated by the colors and partly overworked beyond recognition - but they are bestsellers.

I noticed this particularly blatantly during my last shoot. I personally don't like the bestsellers, but they seem to sell.

How do you deal with it. Do you all turn your color saturation knob all the way up for better sales chances?

Ok, my shots and the competition bestsellers:

https://stock.adobe.com/de/search?load_type=search&is_recent_search=&search_type=usertyped&k=dinant+belgium&native_visual_search=&similar_content_id=&asset_id=217426858

Don't you love that? Here's an image that could be found all that time and someone did when it's at the right agency at the right time.

I hate to say this but one of the best (highest price license) licensed images at Alamy, was just rejected by Adobe for "exposure". I know that Adobe has people who look and I think they do a great job of doing more than just passing things. I mean seriously, careful evaluation.

While SS is just pretending much of the time, whether it's absurd rejections or sometimes passing things that others will reject.

Latest approved at SSTK have not appeared in my collection or the search, yet.

If it's nice and I'm in the right area, I might go hunt some more fossils. Not because they sell so much, hardly one download that I see, but because I'm working on macro images and using focus stacking. That gives me a good subject to learn more and get the process right.

Pete, I am always very careful with the term love.
But I agree with you. Such surprise sales are for someone like me, who does not have to live from it, the kick to continue with stock photography - despite the adverse conditions.

Macro and focus stacking is also still on my to do list.

Yes Pete, I received the same answer today in terms of content as beanstock. They do indeed have a problem and are trying to solve it.

How the review works, I do not know of course. About 2 years ago, it has actually partly only seconds or minutes until the images were sighted. That has now changed with a significant delay at the weekend. In this respect, I think that people again play a greater role in the review than artificial intelligence. But that's just speculation, of course.

I wish you good luck for your brachipods. I recently sold this image in the three-digit range at Alamy, which has been lying around unused at the agencies for years.

Pete, I don't think I'm special. 

The last time I contacted support was in January. I had complained that recently batches with 40-50 pictures (different cameras, subjects) were rejected several times completely with the same reason. They agreed with me that there was something wrong and that they would take care of it. Since then, the problem has no longer occurred.

Interestingly, I was also told that the review is done by real people who may have different views on the quality and that there is some leeway in the assessment.
 
So I found this contact helpful.

Regarding the disappeared images, I am still waiting for the final answer and will report then. For me, the images actually always appeared after approval within a few hours, 3 days I never had to wait.

Date approved: 03/12/2022

It may take up to 3 days for your approved content to be viewable elsewhere on the site.

Pete, thanks for pointing that out. But 7 days is clearly more than 3 days according to my calculation.

How low IQ a man get get...

hmm ... you probably confuse your own IQ with your blood pressure ... just a thought 

Quote from: BelieveInStock on March 02, 2022, 11:13

Dear Russian friends, I know there is a significant stock photographers community, so I have an appeal to you.

Please do not believe in your Russian media propaganda saying that terrible war is some kind of "special action". It is regular war against Ukrainian civils. Putin is cannon firing kindergartens, hospitals and civilian areas. Your Russian dictator is not better that Hitler or Kim Jong-un. He started the worst kind of war in the middle of Europe so no one can feel safe now.

I am asking you to inform and spread the true information wherever you can in your country. Putin already cut you off from most foreign media, so all ways to reach you are good.

Thanks!

BTW, I am not Ukrainian, but I have so much sympathy to their people that I had to post it, hope it won't be removed. If is reaches even one unaware Russian, my message makes sense. The only way to bring peace back to Europe is to make Russian aware and ready to avert from their ruler.

Dear users, do not believe this person and the lies he is spreading on this forum. He makes no sense, he has no proof, he is biased. The West is spreading lies, the same lies when they showing us pictures of dead bodies when coronavirus strike. Nobody is innocent in war. It's always two sides. But in this case, we can all see that West has gone too far.

When I read something like this, it really makes me sick.
There are no arguments for war. Period. No discussion.

Quote from: everest on March 02, 2022, 15:03

SS is falling and will fall everyday more. More and more people are not even uploading nothing to this suckers, which is good news because clients are migrating to Adobe. Bye bye SS You deserve it . Yur fall is accelerating faster than expected. Oringer is selling his shares on a daily basis y you follow the stock market and pages like stockwits. A stampede before the building crumbles.....

Their annula report tells a different story. The only thing that is falling is contributors' revenue per image. SS is doing just peachy.

Firn, like you, I'm not a Shutterstock hater.
But I also see a certain trend reversal here. My focus is on current editorial topics. If my image fits and arrives, I then had mass sales on the topic with Shutterstock and never with Adobe or other agencies. That has changed this year.

Quote from: Zero Talent on March 02, 2022, 09:22

A locked thread (see that icon) full of childish spamming replies rightfully belongs there too.

Don't start that again, Zero.

Because if you go back to belittling and mocking me as you have over the last week, I will hit you back just as mean and nasty.

And I don't think our friends here want any more of that.

Martha, I understand you and was affected myself.
You don't have to be constantly belittled as an adult, educated person. This is a very bad, disrespectful, impolite and not goal-directed discussion style, which is why I got out of it.

So if this flares up again, I would suggest a separate thread "Martha vs. Zerotalent".
Whoever feels like venting, join in then. 

Quote from: RalfLiebhold on February 25, 2022, 07:36

Sue, I am not a fan of long texts and I must have misunderstood.
As far as I know, Alamy is the only agency where you can see for which search terms images are seen. That�s the only reason, I mentioned Alamy. I find the function very instructive, because you can see how the buyers tick in the search. The choice of search terms by buyers does not always correspond to my logic as a contributor.
 
Back to the two words in one keyword question. As an example, if I list "Las Vegas" as a double word only in the keywords, my image will not show up when someone searches for "Vegas" only. With this knowledge it makes sense to list the terms individually in the keywords. Or do I have a knot in my head somewhere? 

I had to write a long post to give examples to show that your sweeping generalisation isn't accurate re Alamy.

I don't know why you think it wouldn't show up*.
I occasionally have searches for Margaret or William (etc) (yes I know, weird search unless they were writing a book about famous Margarets) where I do not have Margaret or William as single keywords, only as Margaret Surname or William Surname.

Of course it may be, as in the examples I have given, that Alamy's search picked up Margaret or William from the caption. Because as I showed in my example of Will Young, the search can be based totally on the caption, not from keywords at all.

In these cases, you'd presumably normally have Las Vegas in the caption, so your file would still be found on a search. Because in the case that Las Vegas and hotel weren't sufficiently significant in the file for you to write in the caption, it's not likely that it would be what a buyer was looking for on a search for "Vegas Hotel"

*if the search was working as they claim it works, your file keyworded "Las Vegas" and "hotel" would still show up under those returned for "Vegas Hotel", even if Las Vegas and hotel weren't in the caption.

But as I said, with a belt and braces approach, you could correctly tag "Las Vegas", "Hotel" and "Vegas Hotel".

Sue, the long text was not related to your post, but to my own laziness in writing 

I also thought I had contributed something intelligent to the topic. 
I have now tested the whole thing with a few of my pictures in your sense and you're right - it does not matter. Thank you, I have learned something again.