Here's also info from Carl, our developer:

I have put it live now, and removed the old java applet (we only use html5 / ftp now). Check out http://www.pond5.com/index.php?page=releases

We currently have these API partners: Depositphotos, Yaymicro, FeaturePics. Sales are reported on those sites.

Hey Toopy - the Delete functionality should be fixed now.

Well, it's not usual for more difficult bugs. But if it's simple, Jakub our (CSS/frontend) superhero can show himself off :-)

BTW Zager, I have pointed it out a number of times over the past 12 months or more, but there is still the problem on Pixmac's site of the vector previews chopping bits off

http://www.pixmac.com/picture/natural+colours+rubber+stamp/000090632378

See the link for example, bottom left corner of stamp is gone. Why is anyone going to buy it if it looks half chopped off!?

Hope you can get this fixed up.

I see, I'll hand it to devs right away. This is a CSS issue, because if you drag the file to desktop, it's complete. So there's just some strange mathematics causing the bug.

Hi everyone! Thank you for such an extensive re-assurance that what we're fixing now is the right thing. Even that some of you feel like Pond5 is the best, there's always a space for improvement. And as both Pond5 and Pixmac teams have several years of expereince, it greatly benefits everyone in the family (artists, customers, team).

Camera Model / Software used

Yes, this was a crazy required field. In the next release of Pond5 website, this would be using EXIF data and if that fails, you could enter it manually or simply keep it blank. In last few days I've tested the new upload, so this is now with developers to refine some last bugs I've found.

Also, the amount of input fields to bother with is lower. We agreed that the critical info is Title (3-200 letters), Decription (0-300 letters), Keywords (5-50 phrases)

Capital Letters to Lowercase

This is currently not fiexd, but already being worked on, so before we launch the next release, it would be fixed (or otherwise I'll slap my face).

Search Results Quality & Relevance

There's a lot to do on this front. Thank you for valuable feedback. One task is to finish the merger (in a meaningful way) of the metadata we have on both sites (Pond5 & Pixmac) and the other is really to use it better. We already use the same technology on both sites. And we've done significant improvements in recent months that were "approved" by higher sales.

As travelwitness mentions, there's tone of great work not being found. We'll find it and sell it. It's in ours as well as your interest.

Templates

Small note: You should be able to edit files without using a template.

Editing of existing template and saving it as new one was assigned to developers as well. Thank you KB & corepics & Carl for suggestions. This is something I should study more. Would you guys be willing to do a Skype call around this or a separate email discussion? My email: vita (at) pond5 (dot) com and the most important question is: "How you usually use it?"

The system should also remember your choices for previous file (for price, and elsewhere where it makes sense).

Also, I can see some potential in better navigation of CSV metadata imports. As Zeus mentioned. Such as if you provide a ist of files and metadata in CSV, it would simply ask you which column of that CSV goes to which field of the upload form. But that's not an easy task I believe. There's some CSV capability already, but I have to find out more how advanced it is. So if you have a lot of files to upload and also an Excel Sheet with all the data, a good system could help a lot.

I have to learn more about current capabilities of this for sure. It might be a hidden treasure of Pond5.

Vectors

Thank you cthoman for bringing this up. Vectors are working on Pixmac and I'm now in ping-pong game with developers to make it even better at Pond5. I've seen many systems - so I'll try to make Pond5 the best one. As for specification, it should take either EPS+JPG or ZIP with EPS+JPG+AI or whatever rich data you'll pack into the ZIP (SVG & PDF for example). We would stick to EPS v10 as the industry standard that gives artists enough creative options (transparency for example).

As for the timeline, right now the developers are actively working on it. Using the specification we finalized about 2 weeks ago. Hopefully we'll make you happy in reasonable timeframe.

No reply from support

Sorry to hear this a-b-foto, but if you have any issues with our support, please contact Kennon (head of support) directly at kennon (at) pond5 (dot) com. She's usually fast, but might have missed your email for some reason. If you'd be unable to reach her, ping me email to vita (at) pond5 (dot) com.

Files from Pixmac at Pond5

To be honest, as for your other questions a-b-foto, I'm also a bit unhappy that we're not yet perfectly displaying and selling all files on both sites. There are some technical and legal issues, that we need to fix. So for now, please use Pixmac and Pond5 as separate sites and we'll let you know when the time comes and the uploading/editing platform as well as "single database" will become fully integrated for P5 and PX. We have to do it right and it takes a bit more time than expected.

GL Stock Upload features

Thank you tab62 for suggestion. Can you briefly describe what you love there and what you miss at P5?

Hiding upload numbers

Thank you cobalt for this. We've not discussed this option before, but I'll keep this in mind for future discussions. Would you be ok with the iStock way, where big numbers are rounded? Because even if we hide the actual nubers or round them, you can always sort by downloads or even best match and get inspiration from the results.

More numbers for Artists

Also to cobalt: As for better numbers for artist, we're now working a lot in this area. Part of that would be better stats and more insight into what you should do to max your sales. I've also sent email to Luis and will try to meet with him at Microtock Expo in Berlin this September. It might not be an easy task to implement this, but I'll investigate it. I hope this answers jsnover's & ammentorp's question as well.

Clips automatically converted

As for your question morning.light, this would be possible. But was not yet discussed in terms of how much work it would require and if we have enough resources to do this soon. I've asked devs.

Sales

Thank you Ron & dbvirago for a nice suggestion ;-) I can say that there's noone at Pond5 who would not have the sentence "How we can increase sales quick?" question circulating in our minds. To Ron: The results I see are better and better every month, so consider at least watching our progress if you don't wanna upload now.

Who's in charge?

Thx JohnItalia for questions. The team at P5 and PX merged and it's more Pixmac being part of Pond5 than otherwise. So we basically kept each others responsibilities in the separate brands/products and we also work more closely together on overall improvements of our sites. With the main goal to become "The most artist friendly marketplace in the World". We're far from that in terms of User Experience and Design, so we are simplifying everyhing to make your life at Pond5 a pleasurable experience.

Right now we're US entity for all Pond5 contributors and Swiss entity for all Pixmac contributors. We're going to notify you in case there would be some changes or improvements on the tax front.

I hope this also answers PhotoGirl's question.

Model/Property releases

Thank you yuliang11, this is not perfect now and we'll keep it in mind for future improvements.

Original filename as identificator

You're exactly right icefront that this is crucial. I've already added as one of the requirements for the updated upload system. Not only Audio might get confusing, series of similar photos are sometimes also better to be identified exactly.

Sort my files depending on the file type

This should be part of the redesigned upload system. If not, please let me know ACS and I'll take care of it.

Thumbnail Quality

Thank you Microstock Man for your suggestions. Thumbnails need a lot of improvement overall. Sharpness is the main issue I have in this area. Also picture detail is far behind what it could be in terms of design and performance. It's in TODO screaming at us every day.

Each Size Price

This is also a nice suggestion as well as djpadavona's suggestion for scripts able to batch re-price content. I'll keep that in mind and if we work in that area, I'll use it to tune the system so it offers more flexibility.

FTP

As for your question pro_microstock - I believe FTP is working. Am I wrong? If it wasn't it was probably a temporary issue?

CO-OP

Although we're not going to get directly inspired by the idea Bruce introduced, we're definitely on the same side of the river and I personally like the CO-OP part of the business. In comparison to Symbiostock, where I have some doubts about its large scale success.

As for the content part of Stocksy, I'm not sure, but that's another discussion. Our long term strategy is to make you guys happy in the first place. Probably not overnigh, but we have some pretty surprising approaches to the calm waters of microstock in our heads. Thank you travelwitness for mentioning this.

Searching still images

To ShadySue: Unfortunatelly you're not able to search only for photos excluding JPG graphics. But we'll work on that so that raster graphics and vectors are under illustrations and therefor separate from photos. So you would be able to either pick photos, graphics or vectors.

DL numbers correct?

As for your question gillian, I'm now unable to get you accurate answer, but once we're done with the data merger between P5 and PX, we would definitely correct anything that seems consfusing or is not updated. It's not top priority, but it's good to have this fresh and constantly updated. Also, take in account, that most photos at Pond5 are there for just several months, so they need time to get to higher DL numbers. This is also realted to Wichita's comment so I hope we'll get the numbers right in reasonable time.


Thank you.

I've tried to adress all areas of questions here. In case you have further questions or I've missed answering the one you had, feel free to ask me again. In the meantime, I'll try to help our team to deliver the promises above.

Hi Microbius, yes those are subs or promo credits. We've set the lowest revenue for artists to $0.25 in any case.

Hi Sledge, please email Lucy at [email protected] with your username - Thx!

I'm liking this merger news, but reading through this thread has given me a slight headache.  I've never registered with either Pond 5 or Pixmac, but I have portfolios on both DP and 123rf  (according to an older thread, Pond 5 was, maybe still is, a partner with 123rf).  Anyway, how can I find out if I have any images on Pond 5 or Pixmac?  I did some searches for both my user name as well as some keyword searches for my images, but came up with nothing.  Any suggestions, or should I e-mail them directly?

I have images on Pixmac through the pp only. I would like to upload directly but I also want to choose my own pricing. When do you think this option will be available for vectors? Also if I start uploading now will I have the option to change the pricing when it does become available or will it only work for new uploads? Finally (since I'm not on Pond5) can I change the price on all of my images easily or will I need to do it one at a time.

Individual pricing at Pixmac should be available soon (guestimate 1-2 months). So the best option for vectors is to upload them to Pixmac and setup your own prices later. It makes sense to allow the prices to be set for existing files as well, in a comfortable way - thank you for suggestion.

may not be able to answer but once merged will pond / pixmac continue with the partner (fotolia from memory) or will its own collection be big enough to do without it?

We currently have 3 microstock partner agencies: FeaturePics, DepositPhotos & Yay Micro -  they are available at Pixmac already and later we will add them to Pond5 as well.

Hi jareso, it would be handled by Swiss (non-EU) company Pond5 GmbH.

Vita has been so active here lately perhaps we could hear from him

We've been discussing that shortly with Lucy a few moments ago and the fees are strange.

When I was reading the hidden pages about various PP fees within the PP universe I can remember there was some cross-border fee. Something that's applied for transfers between some territories like EU<>US or so. But honestly, I'm guessing. PayPal has several types of fees, applied in various situations.

I'm on both Pixmac and Pond5 but I don't remember being asked to sign the agreement (unless of course I signed it without even reading!). Is there a place to check if I'm opted in?

Please check with Lucy at [email protected] with your username in hand. She'll tell you the status.

I have most of my portfolio already on Pixmac, should I go ahead and upload everything to Pond5 as well, or is that not necessary? Thanks in advance.

Not necessary to do anything. Just the acceptance of new terms is needed.