I checked a couple of image numbers and except for the A in front of them, PantherMedia's match 123rf's

how can you give this kind of general advice? you have 17 files on iStock and not many more with other agencies. just saying

3,200 on SS; 2,300 on FT; 3,200 on CanStock - by what yardstick is 3,200 "not many more" than 17?

a1bercik,  note that the transfer of non-exclusive IS images to TS seems to be happening so slowly that it's not even an immediate concern.   So far I have exactly 1 image on TS.   Maybe it will never go beyond that before IS decides to to abandon that plan and do something different... or is sold again,  or folds up.   

In the last 2 weeks, I've gone from 0 to 13 images (from about 2500 images total) on Thinkstock/photos.com. I keep expecting things to speed up, but although they can dump 70K+ EdStock images from Getty to iStock, they apparently do not have the technology to move the independent content from iStock to the partner program sites.

So on your file_downloads page for a particular image you'll see "Small Regular $1.35" and have no idea how many credits Small sold for.

Was that image in Photo + then or not? Was there a sale on or not? In the case of price-in-credits changes for certain sizes such as we had a month or so ago, was that sale date before or after? And given site hiccups, you can't ever be sure exactly when the new prices were applied. At the end of 2010 there was a big Vetta sale - with double RC credits given. Again no way to track.

And for extended licenses at any time, without contacting CR for every single EL sale you will never know. We get a report of an extended license sale, with the number of credits for the EL, but not for the image itself which doesn't register as a download in the counts and the credits for which are never shown anywhere to a contributor.

As it stands right now, without contacting CR for every single EL sale, a contributor cannot calculate their RC total, only estimate it. Pretty shabby situation.

The "quality" of things such as ape family:


bear:

and  tiger with ice cream cone:


don't even come close to meriting inclusion in Vetta IMO. Forget that iStock wouldn't accept those at all from a regular contributor as they appear to be based on a vector original, but how does it help the site as a whole to charge $125 for one of these turkeys? Buyers see this and it devalues the rest of the work in Vetta, much of which is excellent.

This is all relatively new - from the end of last month. What a total travesty of any pretense of inspection standards. Getty/H&F is just milking whatever they can get from iStock's traffic with no regard for the site's future. They should hang their heads in shame.

ETA: I looked at the rest of CSA images' portfolio, not just the stuff that showed up in the zoo search, and they have some very nice work in amongst the standard, unremarkable (i.e. absolutely main collection) illustrations. My point about automatic Vetta for things that don't merit inclusion still stands, but I did want to note now nice some of their work is, even if it isn't really Vetta.

Firefox 7.0.1, google Chrome 15.0.874.121, Safari 5.1.2 (6534.52.7) all on mac 10.6.8

No weekly limit on any of them since the update

I looked at MicrostockSolutions' web site, but I have no idea which sites, specifically, would be "a who's who list of Big 6 microstock image agencies" to quote from their promo. I'm almost certain that would not include iStock, who for all their faults are still in the big 6 by anyone's measure.

Having an outsourced operation probably explains the rather inconsistent reviewing at PhotoDune.

I'm continuing to see sales at PhotoDune and so I'll upload regardless of the reviewer quality. However the site owners might want to consider what they're doing to the site by leaving themselves without content that other top tier sites have. Remember that forum post on PhotoDune where a buyer said "This site needs more images"?

My balance doesn't square at all with the overnight sales that are showing in my_downloads. It did jump up and down a bit yesterday PM so at this point I'm really confused and have no idea at all what the right number should be.

Two weeks is nothing - I have files that on Friday will have been sitting there for 4 weeks. I also can't see if or when I can submit any more images as the display has gone (and that was reported right after the site came back).

I think I'm going to give up on Veer for a few weeks and try again in the new year by which time I hope they'll have made things work again.

I'd love a feature that just let you have the files automatically deleted after a week or two. Optional of course. I am not going to make changes to files except in the rarest of cases - and all the current soft rejections I'm just deleting. So I just want the files to go away like hard rejections do without any action on my part.

The reality of life as a new site is that when you say in a soft rejection that, for example,  you want a series of four season views split up into individual images, that just isn't going to happen. Obviously each site has its own set of criteria, but the further you stray from the typical requirements, the less likely you are to get contributors making modifications.

In another case you soft rejected an isolated holiday garland shot straight down but on a diagonal suggesting it should be straightened like a crooked horizon (but somehow the others in that series, all shot the same way, were approved). All the shots should have been approved or rejected as there were only different colored baubles.

I guess the second suggestion here is that you need some sort of spot check on the reviewers as the current situation is highly inconsistent - all sites have a little of that, but yours seems to be more so than usual.  I'd expect that there be an audit of the review process to make sure it's working consistently. In the future, some sort of formal appeal (rather than contributors asking in the forums) might also make sense.

... You seem to think that just because something is made of pixels, it costs the same as the next.  Well, it doesn't.  Life is rough.  Use the filter like a big boy.

I'm not the person at whom the comment was directed, but I think the point you're missing is that this "take your medicine and don't complain" approach might work if a buyer had no choices, but when you have one (or several) working sites from which to choose, why would you stick with the site whose interface is confusing, or annoying or both?

iStock has not defined some wonderful new UI paradigm with the price slider; even the people who suggest it should be used don't generally praise it. It's a rather unfortunate compromise design that is based more on what iStock wanted to steer buyers to (after 6 months or more of just ignoring requests to be able to filter out Vetta and Agency images).

Those of you taking a "pro slider" position can argue all you like with buyers or other contributors about how good you think it is and how buyers should just stop fussing, but as long as Getty hasn't bought up all the competition, buyers can shop elsewhere if they don't like what iStock's offering. I just don't see how this wilful dismissal of buyer complaints can lead anywhere good.

Given the buyer had 500+ credits still to use, I find it hard to believe he closed his account - doesn't anyone wonder why it's gone away?

Mine comes and goes - at least in the last couple of days that's been the case. I haven't done anything either (unless Lobo has bought the site from Leaf in which case I'm doomed