Quote from: ifongokea on April 23, 2010, 01:51

Hi all,
I'm not very new in microstock, but only active for 18 months or so.
I need some advice in this situation,
My image:
http://www.dreamstime.com/water-image2922941
and others image:
http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photo-water-image10005785

What do you think?
Thanks in advanced

Not even close to copy...
Only concept is the same!
It is just my humble 'dinosaur' opinion.

You should really look more carefully... the splashes are identical.

Ifongokea, you should contact the support.

Is there any word when last month's partner royalties will roll in?

Sorry if I'm sounding harsh, but my advice is to concentrate your efforts in producing better images instead of thinking about joining a lot of agencies.
Your images just don't "cut it" for me, and the same propably applies to Veer reviewers (and buyers)

I just had a couple of images rejected for the same reason, very annoying. The image has the same prop as in some of my earlier photos, but the concept and composition of the images are different. Can't they understand the concept of "similar"? It's not similar if the concept and the composition are different. And I'm not talking about moving the camera an inch, I'm talking about radically different compositions.

I already nagged earlier when they wouldn't accept a horizontal and vertical composition of the same subject, now they want me to shoot just one image per concept/prop. I can't afford to get me a new prop for every  picture. 1000 photos - that's 1000 props and 1000 new ideas!

I don't like the way DT is going. They lack the earlier relaxed atmosphere, they sell less than before and their pricing structure is so confusing that I don't even try to understand it anymore.

Yuri admitted he's shooting 80% RM and only his leftovers go in RF/micro, guess he has got very solid reasons for this U-turn...

Can Yuri's RM portfolio be seen somewhere? Where does he sell them?

How fast do they usually pay after a payment request?

If the image is exposed correctly and most of the adjustments are done in RAW converter (only some minor tweaks in PS afterwards) there is virtually no difference between 16bit and 8bit. If you are going to do strong adjustments in PS a 16bit file is preferable.

I usually convert to 16bit tiffs. It just feels more "safe" for me and the images can withold strong curve adjustments in Photoshop better. Often I'm not totally sure how the image files are going to be used, it's better to play safe with 16bit files.

And why not use 16 bit files? Storage and computing power is cheap nowdays and modern versions of Photoshop supports 16bit files well.

i have to deal with fringe and complex chromatic aberrations. Do you have good tutorials / books to recommend on this topic?

Like someone already said: Invest in some quality (prime?) glass. If you are at least half-serious about your stock photography it's much better to be shooting than sitting at computer pixel-peeping just because the glass is sub-par.

If you shoot with a Canon, buy only Canon's lenses and convert your raw files with DPP (Digital Photo Professional), you can remove much of the problems with a couple of mouse clicks because there are "profiles" for each lens (with a few expectations). I think at least my 5D mk II can also do the processing in-camera if I shot JPG (which I don't).

(The above may also apply in some way for other brands)

The amount of time I spend pixel-peeping have gone down drastically. My "secrets":
-I shoot raw. I also use grey cards for white balance whenever possible.
-Canon 5D mk II produces clean images. I almost usuallty shoot at 100 ISO
-I try to get the correct exposure with good contrast and look at my histograms (no clipping at any channel yet not too flat contrast)
-I use DPP for raw processing, it does the lens corrections and produces good results even if it's a bit cumbersome to use.
-I try to keep my sensor reasonably clean.
-I use quality glass. It doesn't even have to cost that much, there are some "bargains"
-I avoid extreme apertures, most of my images are shot between 4 and 11
-I calibrate my screen with a hardware calibrator
-I have set my sharpening in DPP on level 3, I usually don't sharpen my images after that (that would just boost the artefacts)
-If I'm doubtful for some image's sharpness or noise I may downsize the image as far as 50% (that's about 5mpix from a 5DmkII file, enough for most micros)

Dreamstime's royalty structure used to be very easy to understand. Nowdays it's just all confusing with different value of credits etc.  I gave up trying to understand why they are paying me the amounts they do.

As long as the sales rised I didn't care that much (now DT seems to have stuck on the fourth place).

now, you'll have to show the lucky photo. 

Nah, I'll keep my identity a secret here...
But I can tell you it's a pretty picture of a flower, nothing special, but it looks good and feels like summer...

Good to hear I'm not the only one. It's most likely just some glitch in the forum.

I think the infinite monkey theorem applies to microstock in some ways. For example in the way the agencies almost never care to communicate what specific images are needed. They just put 100,000 microstock monkeys shooting stuff and then a few of them shoots something a client needs.

(Why, my dear agencies, can't you tell what you need?)

I'd say that images that are have backgrounds close to pure white and images that contain both pure white (255,255,255) and light gray areas in the background may get rejected often.

Either go with pure white (255,255,255) or light gray that can't be mistaken for white under any circumstances. Try to avoid anything between.

Then there is always the question about natural shadows. I like natural shadows if they look reasonably good, so I often leave them in the image (they are very hard to duplicate in a convincing way afterwards)

If lit correctly there isn't very much post-processing needed to get the background pure white.

And last: It depends on the use of the image if the layout person wants pure white or not-quite-white background.