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Messages - Colette
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101
« on: February 28, 2011, 08:37 »
You can add keywords direct to your images when importing them. And so you can easily search on subject. When you did not do this the first time, you can do it in the Library, adding keywords to one image or to a group of images by first selecting them. Selecting a group of images goes easy the same way you do this in Windows Explorer (click the first, press and hold Shift, click the last) I am afraid that this is the only way to find all your images with the same subject when they are in different folders or catalogs, but it is a lot of work when you have to do it afterwards. Best is to make it part of your workflow. This link can perhaps very helpful: http://www.lightroomqueen.com/index.php
102
« on: February 28, 2011, 02:24 »
I always try to keep in mind that reviewing is not an easy job too... Seeing thousands and thousands of images and always have to make the right choice...nearly impossible. No one is a computer. And for us, contributors? Well, a sense of humor helps... 
103
« on: February 27, 2011, 13:58 »
Mantis: Yes, you are right. I would not downsize all my images to 4 or 5 mp either. In fact I do not downsize at all, but I was thinking to do it with some agencies in the future. Some agencies drive me crazy with their rejections. What was accepted without any problem a year ago is now rejected for reasons I can't understand. Better images, better Photoshop skills, better keywording, better camera, better lenses, diversify portfolio.nothing seem to matter. Sometimes I feel like the donkey running after the carrot hanging before his nose, not able to ever reach it   In the past I asked a question about image sizes and downloads at Shutterstock, but it seems that no one knows for sure if uploading smaller sizes has a negative effect on your downloads. And no one knows if it has a negative effect on OD and Enhanced downloads. For me it is a strange thing that all images at Shutterstock from 5 to 20 mp are available at the same price To me it seems that we downsize only for the reviewers. Most buyers don't need the maximum available size and why shouldn't buyers downsize an image themselves for their own need? The quality of the images is high enough these days. Otherwise they will not be accepted at all. But when 18 mp images are accepted at 12 sites and then rejected at Bigstock for: the image is blurry when viewed at full size, there is no other solution left then downsizing. Perhaps, when running another year after the carrot and learning a lot more, I will see things different. Who knows. 
104
« on: February 25, 2011, 08:15 »
OK, sorry for my mistakes. English is not an easy language. (Perhaps no language is...) But I learn better every day.... So the conclusion is: there is no better way to downsize images. Perhaps I have to downsize more to see better results. 10 percent is propably not enough to see much difference.
105
« on: February 24, 2011, 16:03 »
that's like saying pour a 1 liter bottle of water into a 750ML jar and still have 1 liter No of course I am not that stupid... There is no lossles compression with jpg's. Is this a good example? Printing a 10 mp image at A5 is much sharper than printing the same image on A4. So this way you can put 1500 ml in a 750 ml jar When downsizing you do this kind of thing virtual. A smaller image looks sharper. (And you are loosing info.) But reviewers look at images at 100 percent or more and then the same problems pop up. Perhaps they let them pass, not for the image is really better, but the usability for buyers is (seems) better? the new smaller file should look just as good or possibly better, because you have smaller pixels You can have more pixels in an inch (dpi), but how can you have smaller pixels? I was only asking myself if there is possibly a better way to downsize, loosing not too much info (never said loosing no info at all!). Propably there is none. 
106
« on: February 23, 2011, 16:08 »
Thanks very much for the replies, but downsizing on itself is not my problem. I know several ways to do so. Sorry if I have been misunderstood by being not clear enough.
And I have Irfan view and Faststone viewer installed on my computer already.
(Faststone is great for a quick first selection of Raw files)
My problem is that I find the quality of the downsized image nearly as worse as the original (when viewed at 100 percent).
Scott Kelby gives a solution in his book too with the motto: Everything Looks Good When It Is Small.
But the price you pay: you are throwing lots of information from an image away by downsizing this way and I was asking myself if there is perhaps a better way to do it without losing so much info.
107
« on: February 22, 2011, 19:54 »
Presumed you are using Photoshop: How exactly do you downsize images? (Sorry if I translated some words wrong here, but I am not using an English version of Photoshop. Hope you understand what I mean.) I use: Image, then Imagesize and in Documentsize I choose Percent. Then 90 or 95 percent and Bicubic sharper for reduction. For I am not very impressed by the differences, I am asking myself if there are better ways to downsize. (Google is not my best friend here ) Perhaps someone here can help me out with a good suggestion?
108
« on: February 15, 2011, 03:23 »
Submission is timeconsuming. Recently I found out that reviewers cannot read the description from the metadata. So if there is information of any importance for the editors or for the buyers you do better to add that in the 'message to image editors' section. Information about how the image is made (long exposure, shallow dof...) helps also. Otherwise you often have to redo submissions from the red/green section.
109
« on: February 04, 2011, 19:55 »
Most people are friendly and helpful. So why not be a little more patient? These days you can find nearly everything you want to know on the internet. For example: Typing in Google: "resizing images in photoshop" answer: about 3.000.000 results(0,19 seconds) -Ad useful pages to a map in your Favorites. -Copy and paste what you find useful and save it in Word, pdf (or whatever you want) for later use and in no time you build up a workflow. -the "old fashioned way" is buying a book. I have a lot myself. Is useful too. -you can find also a lot of info on stocksites, forums and in blogs. No one can guarantee you that you will be accepted the next time. You are unlucky if the reviewer has a headache or a 'bad-hairday' or something. You can't take a rejection serious when it is accepted at 12 sites and the got a rejection at the 13th for 'your image is not in focus', for example... But you have to live with that and try again...no other way... Every agency has its own rules and people try to help you the best they can with this particular agency. You have the best chance with: no artistic look, colorful and bright, sharp, no noise and dustspots and a collection of different subjects that has not be cropped to much. Your super artistic images where you are (rightly) proud of, are propably not the bestsellers at stocksites! On the SS forum you can find indeed good help. They are experienced with the site. And by the way: when you are accepted as a contributor, you can try to submit what you want and find out by yourself what will be accepted or not and what sells or not. But for now you must have 7 of the 10 accepted. And so for now you have to be better safe than sorry. That is why people write what you obvious don't like to read!
110
« on: February 04, 2011, 18:49 »
Yesterday and today no problems with uploading and processing. Images are in pending now. Used: FTP upload.
111
« on: February 04, 2011, 04:14 »
By the way: Not all times a harddisk remain silent when it is defect. Sometimes you can hear by the strange sounds it makes, that there's a defect on a harddisk.
Then it is clear that it has to be replaced by a new one.
112
« on: February 04, 2011, 04:06 »
You are right about the freezing tip. It is only useful as 'last option'. And you have to buy a new harddisk, for it is only to recover some data. The harddisk itself has become useless.
My workflow should be:
First start the computer and go to the bios section (On the screen at the start you can mostly see which key, or combination of keys you have to press to get to the bios.) and see if all settings stay correct. Correct the settings if the harddisk is not correctly recognized.
No problems in the bios? Shut the computer down and then open the computer case.
Untie the connection cables from the harddisk one by one and connect them again. carefully and firmly.
Start the computer and see if it had helped. (I always start the computer with an open case, so I can see if the harddisk works or remain silent. Be careful when doing so and touch nothing!)
If the harddisk remain totally silent, it seem clearly be broken, but you can try the other tips also if you want to spent some more time on it.
pet_chia wrote that she only is missing the processed version of two shoots. Processing them again should propably be cheaper then data recovery. Which is very expensive.
So the question is how useful it is to spend time on a harddisk that has to be replaced by a new one for it works no longer well.
But if you want so: go further with the next options:
Take the harddisk from the computer and connect it via usb. (There are different options to do so: external case, special cables...)
Or start the computer first with a linux bootable dvd and see if it will be recognized. If this is so: copy the data you want to save.)
I've sometimes also seen that connecting a harddisk to another computer helps too. strange enough.
If this all not helps, try the freezing tip.
But very likely you will find out that the harddisk has died silently.
A data recovery centre can restore data even from burned harddisks and from broken harddisk plates. But it is very expensive and not all data can be restored that way of course.
113
« on: February 03, 2011, 17:44 »
Never heard of that freezer tip. Thanks! This can be useful sometimes!
And yes, spinrite is good, but only when your harddisk in recognized by the system.
114
« on: February 03, 2011, 17:26 »
Fred and Zeus: No, I was not being abusive. At least I didn't meant to be. Don't take things I wrote personal. By the way I am a 'she', not a 'he'... I understand your point of view. But when talking about a company, you have a contract to work for them, right? You don't bring anything in. They pay you for the work you do for them. But, like for example being a bank, stockagencies have a contract with us. We bring everything in! For the licenses they sell are our images. And we don't sell the rights. The copyright remains to stay with us. When all the contributors should decide to remove their portfolios from an agency there is no business at all anymore. Your reaction was also not about what I tried to say. This is not about Istock particularly or one of the other agencies. What I was saying that having the power to do things not makes automatically that you also have the right to do so. That should all injustice in the world makes just at once! And of course you cannot write what you want on a forum. I said that too. There are always two sides. There is also an agency side. They have to keep their business healthy. Of course I am not happy when commissions are lowered. But can I see, from my point of view, if this is necessary or not? Perhaps it is greed, perhaps it is necessary surgery to keep a business healthy. But if it should be really only greed. What can we do? Ranting and calling names will not help. And of course tehy will not allow you! So even if they would choose to go that way, we have no choice than to try to find another. At least the way all the bigger contributors are active to set up their own websites to sell their images from and the way they are organizing themselves are a sign at the wall. I am only a few years in this business and I don't know very much about it and I don't know either what will happen in the near future, but sometimes I have the feeling that agencies are sawing the branch they are sitting on. And sometimes, reading the discussions, I feel if we all are the blind people trying to describe how an elephant looks like. Doe it look like a snake, like a tree, like a... ?
115
« on: February 03, 2011, 13:55 »
pet_chia: if your harddisk isn't seen at all by the system it can be possibly broken.
Sometimes connecting this harddisk as an external harddisk to usb helps, if you are lucky. Otherwise I am afraid it is over...
When people call me having this kind of problems the first I ask is: are the cables connected well?
You have to open the computer to look at that, but you have to do this also to put the harddisk to an external case with usb connection.
This recovery software is no help when the harddisk is not seen by the system at all.
When considering making a new backup I would suggest to put it on an extra harddisk instead of DVD's. This is cheaper, safer and not so much work.
116
« on: February 03, 2011, 13:38 »
Of course they have the right. They pay the bills. So when I pay the bills, I have the right to do whatever I want? "Having the power" and "having the right" are not the same things!
117
« on: February 03, 2011, 09:06 »
I do not agree to RacePhotos comment.
"Freedom of speech is an elementary and essential human right.
Stockagencies do not have the Right to try to stop people from giving their opinion on what his happening.
Yes, they do it and they will continue to do it, but they don't have the right to do it!
It is misuse of power and although through the ages and also today everywhere in the world people are made silence: nobody has the right to do so!
We got Unions for people were threatened as slaves in the 19th and 20th century factories. Although they did so, the factory owners did not have the right to threaten their workers like they did!
On the other hand: contributors do not have the right to be rude, unpolite etc. either.
Sometimes people become angry and that is also understandable. But: think twice before you write!
Try to stay polite and reasonable, even if you are angry.
Remember: he who writes stays. That can be positive or negative. What do you think about your writings from a year or so ago? Wish you didn't write?
You say: they can do whatever they want. Yes, they can, but: they don't have the right to do whatever they want!
You say: it is their business. Yes it is, but: they build it on the contributors work and delivery of images! Just like it was (and is) in factories all over the world.
Sometimes decisions are made to hold the business sustainable, sometimes decisions seem to made by greed. Sometimes stockagencies and contributors seem to don't have the same interest. But I try to hold in mind that there's a crucial difference to drive a big stockagency business nowadays in a quick changing world and to drive my own small one!
Different: like between a captain of one of the biggest cruiseships in the world and me rowing my own small boat on the river.
118
« on: February 02, 2011, 17:23 »
Sorry to hear about that. I had email contact with Alex Bakulin for a while last year about some bugs and problems I had. He always answered my mails, so perhaps the suspending of support is indeed temporarily. I hope so. In the last contacts we had he wrote that he was very busy with the job he had and that he had not much time to work on Cushystock in that period. For I was very, very busy last year too the contact has stopped. My ideas about the software: The principal idea is fantastic. But there were some bugs. Most of them I have learned to work around them. I use still an older version of the software for I cannot import the database into the newer versions. Propably a bug or something wrong with the database itself. For I am not a software developer I never understood why Alex changed the way the database had to be imported in a new version. In the older versions I could simple copy the backup into the new installationmap and it all worked like before. (That's a thing I always see happen: newer versions of software always become more and more complicated. Why? The best (and bugfree) programs I use are simple and very small and mostly can even be used from an Usb-stick) Cushystock is the software I used from the start, but the database is now growing and growing and the software becomes slow. I wrote Alex about that problem and he was trying to solve that in newer versions. But this old version works still very well to me for keywording, ftp-uploading and having an oversight of accepted and rejected images for each agency. Everytime there's a topic at Mocrostockgroup with questions about this type of software I read it very carefully, but until now I did not find software that does all that Cushy does and better. And I am not familiar with spreadsheets too...  rvvelde: I will send AlexBakulin an email about this topic with the link. He has an account here. Perhaps he will answer you and send you a new key or send your money back...
119
« on: January 10, 2011, 20:13 »
Yes, would be nice! Don't ignore the comma's between the keywords anymore! And for the reason not everyone knows that "prairie dog" is written as two words (which is for example not the case in my language), I use "prairiedog" and "prairie dog" both, so perhaps that makes things clearer for buyers. But perhaps that is wrong too, for some reason I don't know....  For now: I am going to have some sleep! It is late!
120
« on: January 10, 2011, 19:48 »
Yes, IS accepts them and you can send an explanation to them about unknown names by e-mail and the next time you use them they are added to the list.
121
« on: January 10, 2011, 19:44 »
Keywording in my own language? And then see it translated into English? Oh no! When I sometimes take a look at my images and see the translation from English into my native language I spontaneously start weeping! I can't imagine that a buyer will find something he needs that way! For that reason I have set all and everything that is related to stock into English. The quickest way to learn. My thoughts are that a buyer can choose to try the English search when he is not according to the translation in his native language, but the opposite way works more difficult in my opinion. For I have an idea how difficult it must be for a foreigner talking to me in my own language to understand what I am saying to him (I use phrases and proverbs and so very often and use them in a funny way), I am sure I will feel the same when I should be in his shoes. So phrases? Only native English will understand I am afraid.... But it is possible that I do not really understand what you mean to say... The other side is: not only keywording, searching is also an 'art'!
122
« on: January 10, 2011, 18:36 »
rybyroo: to avoid misunderstandings: I was not answering to your comment, for your post was a few seconds before mine.... But you are right: it is not easy. in my feeling I only start to learn to do it a bit correctly. And then all the diffculties on the different agencies!!! Some split it all up to single words ignoring the marks, some split it all up using a captital for every word, some don't accept single and plural, etc. For I get emails asking me if the image contains really exactly "this" or "that", I always try to add the scientific names of plants, trees and animals in the keywords. Officially you ought to write the first name always with a capital and the second never. For example: "Aix galericulata", that is a "Mandarin duck". You end up with: Aix, Galericulata, Mandarin and Duck. So at last the only correct keyword is "duck" and there are hundreds species of ducks... If the other keywords are rejected, the buyer knows nothing. In this case is a Mandarin duck in an image clearly a Mandarin duck (when it is a male!), that helps! When at least the buyer knows how a mandarin duck looks like... Another funny example is: "prairy dog". It is a rodent, but you end up always with a "dog" in your keywords! Lately I was thinking to use the scientific names in the title or description, but buyers don't search using the scientific names (as far as I have seen), only sometimes to control if the image contains indeed the right species they need. And to make it even more complicated: some agencies only use the title and others only the description... Perhaps once the day will come I will learn how to do it...
123
« on: January 10, 2011, 17:53 »
A native English speaker would never search on 'woman boot' Yes, propably. But are most buyers native English speakers? In my own language I should indeed search for: Lady's boots (at least as first choice), but for I am not native English in this case I should search for: "boots" and "woman" or "lady". On DT you can see how many searches are like these. So in my opinion all these keywords can be added. In title and description it ought to be: "lady's boots" of course. Another point is that these quotation marks are often not accepted in keywords: ', like in lady's, double words between ", like indeed: "lady's boots" and so on. For example, a photo of a cat may contain the keyword "claws". Well, yes, a cat has claws - but that keyword would only be relevant if claws are prominent or central to the image. Yes, in this case I agree with Duncan_CSP. Claws ought to be only in the keywords when there are claws in the image. No one use foot or nails when the image is a portrait with only the head.
124
« on: December 20, 2010, 18:58 »
Most agencies are reading here and the links to his portfolios are under his posts. He is not trying to be anonymous. If you are intelligent (and I don't know FD, but he is for sure) should you cry out on a forum to all other agencies where he has a portfolio too: "Look: SS and BS found out that I'm cheating..."?
Sounds not very logical. No one is going to undermine his own bussiness.
I am sure there must be a misunderstanding.
But let's stop this!
It seems to me that this discussion 'behind his back' is not fair to someone who write on this forum for years.
Like someone earlier wrote: Innocent until proven guilty.
125
« on: November 25, 2010, 18:46 »
they even increased the minimum size to 8 mp to prevent you to upload an old 4 mp image which could have potentially earned you 12 cents, and then they reverted to 6 mp as soon as they knew you already got there anyway: it's clearly a conspiracy
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