Canva always had pretty random (to me) rejections. I have given up with uploading there.

Quote from: SuperPhoto on October 12, 2023, 16:14

Topaz actually DOES inject metadata into the files. They seem to do it randomly, so some files might have it, others might not - a bit of a dishonest tactic. You need to select your files (under windows), right click 'properties', then remove the "title" (which they usually put a compression method directly linked to topaz), and I think it is 'program name' as well (two different fields).

yes, program name shows "topaz photo ai' which is not ai-gen but mis-informed reviews may think it is.

all that AI marketing BS coming back to hurt us

I think Adobe is fine with it, Pinterest might have a problem. 

For a while I tried to put a link to a stock site onto my pictures that other people had posted on Pinterest without my permission. I never could get it to stick. If you read the TOC on Pinterest you are basically saying that you own the rights to the image you are posting and that you are giving it to Pinterest to give away to anyone - or that is what it appeared when I looked at it a while ago. Obviously most of the pins are not of images that the pinners own the rights to, but as long as nobody sues they are fine with that - if someone does sue I am sure they will pass the liability buck along to the poster.

It seems the magic has already been trained off of our work and the opt out just means you won't get paid for it? 

How can you still opt out if the magic is already trained?

Quote from: KoKi on September 29, 2023, 13:10

Quote from: MatHayward on September 29, 2023, 11:16

You can confirm your rate for the Missions in the contributor portal by clicking the Missions tab at the top.

So we all have different "rate" for the same job? Based on what?

Differences in Mission offers may be due to the type of Mission, amount of content, or estimated cost of production. It may also be due to A/B testing during the limited beta rollout of our new Missions feature.  Missions are currently limited to only a select group of contributors.  This test aims to evaluate varying pricing structures to allow us to better understand what resonates most with our community, helping us scale Missions to the larger Contributor community in a sustainable way.

so if we all don't contribute they will offer more $.

They did make one change, as I recall you used to be able to see statistics for more than 1 year at a time. Now only 1 year.

I certainly wouldn't hold my breath waiting for any improvements.

I had some image sales between 20 and 50 usd,every month until July.
all terrible sales since August,I really can't stand to see these 10c anymore.

Please Shutterstock stop,I can't stand to see 10c anymore,I also spend hours of work for a single piece of content,I can't see all this content go away for 10c anymore.

Please Shutterstock do something,get rid of these 10c,enough!

For the moment I'm forced to suspend uploads,I'll see how it goes in the next few months,but I certainly won't add anything new in the meantime.

be careful what you wish for - 5 cents is pretty exciting in SS land

I think that what they are saying is that they will take their money pool (a mysterious amount based on something - trust us) and spread it out based on some cryptic formula based on how often your assets are used - probably not evenly - so a use of a template might count more than the use of an image - but they won't tell us how they decide.


What is different in this announcement is that they are using more usages to decide how to split up the pool - so this might be good for you if you had usages that weren't previously counted towards the $ you got, but if you don't, it will be bad for you because the total pool is not going up but it will be sliced thinner and more slices will go to someone else. It gives them more flexibility to pay more for content they want (and thus pay less for content they already have).

They didn't say it, but I suspect that the recent big drop in earnings is because they decided to reward template usages more - at the expense of image usages. Good for template designers, bad for image creators.  This new change will allow them even more ability to reward one type of content, and since the total pool will not go up that means they will take that money from some other type of content. It is not transparent in the least, and subject to change at their whim too (which seems to be the case for all of the sites to some extent).


If this means that they pay for applies and usages that could be good for us, if it means there are a bunch of other usages that aren't from our images that they are also paying for it could be bad. I suspect we will just get a payment from them every month just like before. It will continue to drop, and we won't have any idea how they really calculated it.

I think that like most trends demand will drop a bit for the images that look AI generated. Sort of like the overdone HDR images when they first came out - for a while they were everywhere, now not so much - but they are still out there and still sold. In a bit AI looking images won't be very popular, but they won't be what AI is churning out at that point.

AI generated images are just starting to get to the point where you can't really identify them, and things are moving fast. When you can't tell (and lets face it - when you can't tell, they will end up in nearly all the stock libraries whether they are allowed or not) then there will be no way to avoid them.

I think what will spell the end of stock sales will be when the AI programs that the people are using to create content just make the images to go along with that content. There will still be sales, but way less than now.

in the I don't really trust them category, I suspect at some point they will change the TOS to allow them to use the data from these files if you are opted in or not - or more likely say that the TOS has allowed them to do that all along. There really should be a way to see and delete these files.

It would be nice if we could edit the metadata to make them do weird things to training sets.

Can you only have a bare minimum of perhaps very generic keywords and then add the rest after the images are in your port? probably not worth the effort, but a pretty sleazy move by SS.

SS used to have a tool that told you how often search terms were used over time - for instance you could see when seasonal searches ramped up and compare 2 or three synonyms to see what was used most often in searches. It was incredibly useful, so of course they got rid of it.

DT shows what terms were used to find the images sold. It is often misleading because original search terms do not always reflect a search that clicks on similar images or images from the same port. Sometimes searches are very explicit, but more often they are just one or 2 words.

I do wish the sites did more to limit spam - either intentional or unintentional (for example DT pulls words out of the description and puts them in the keywords and also splits 2 or more word keywords into single words leading to unintentional spam.)

I think the advice to put what is in the image in the keywords starting with the most important words is basic and good advice. It would be useful for the sites to say what people search for when they want isolated or cutout (or whatever the search term is) images. Same for top down, or flat lay, or copyspace or negative space or whatever.