In addition to doing the general reading about the issue, it isn't clear to me whether or not you have a completely color managed environment.

What that means is that every device (printer, monitor, scanner) is calibrated so you have a profile for it that describes how it displays or reads color values. Every file has an embedded profile that says which color space the values in that file were recorded in - and that should ideally not be a device profile (like your monitor's profile) but Adobe RGB, ProPhoto, sRGB; one of the device independent color spaces.

Every piece of software that displays images should be set so that it reads color profiles and embeds them in files it saves (and Photoshop should be set to complain about missing profiles or mismatches with your default color space).

When you work this way, you'll know if you're opening something that has no embedded profile (which means you have to guess). What you should do, in your editor (PSP?) is assign (not convert) the Samsung profile to the images you got from the lab, and then convert them to the working space of sRGB.

Assigning a profile leaves the color values in the file alone and just tries interpreting them using the profile you assign. If you get that wrong - if you take an AdobeRGB image and open it as if it were sRGB, all the reds go dull and the flesh tones look awful - just try another profile until the image looks good.

Converting to a different profile (which you should only do once you've figured out which color space is closest to right) changes the color values in the file but the look on the screen shouldn't change at all. If you imagine a bright red color is displayed on the monitor, that might be 250 in sRGB and 254 in AdobeRGB (I'm just making up numbers). As long as the profile gets written into the image when you save it (which you must do after changing the color profile) the next person who opens it will see what you saw.

I'm assuming Irfanview was faithfully using the embedded Samsung profile, so the images looked good. I don't know anything about PSP, so I don't know how to make it honor the embedded profile on open and convert to sRGB after, but I'm sure you can find the help for that somewhere

If the 3 year old were asked why he wanted to learn about photography, what would the answer be?

Seems to me (my own kids are older now, but I do recall them dabbling in photography with a camera) that kids that age just want pictures of where they've been and friends/family. In other words the interest is in remembering the moment, not in the making of a photograph. As such a good smart phone or rugged point and shoot would do all they need.

I think it'd be the rare 3 year old that could learn about the technical issues of getting a shot or composition. Depending on his answer about why he wants to learn, perhaps that isn't really what he wants just yet. Not to mention the size of their hands around larger cameras - is yours a point and shoot or DSLR?

Perhaps you could do things as a team - he says what he wants to photograph, you set up the camera given the circumstances and let him take the shot. If he doesn't like something about what he takes, ask what he wanted instead and then talk about how to get that. You set the camera up again, he takes another shot and then he can compare. I'd suggest no flash at all at the beginning as it's just one more thing to learn about.

Ah - thanks for posting. Not sure it'd matter if they remove a largely content free post

I appreciate a Veer representative coming in to try and explain what's planned, but I just don't buy the view of how things will work that they're trying to sell.

It's not as if this is the first subscription plan, and it's not the first to try something other than a fixed download per sale. When Inmagine started up 123rf they briefly tried this 50% of the royalty pool approach, but the low amounts per download had contributors very unhappy and they ended up implementing a floor amount.

iStock's subscription plan has a pool notion, with a floor amount. Even if we ignored the EL issue (and I have no idea what comparable sites you can be looking at that you think what Veer is proposing fits what other sites offer - outside of Photodune, no one else is offering extra rights that cheap), experience says that your idea of 9 downloads a day just isn't how it will work and that contributors will see a lot of those "outlier" royalties.

What makes Veer think that their 9 downloads a day number is realistic? And if you sincerely believe it is, then gamble your money, not ours, on that being true and make the floor amount based on that average. The only way you'll lose on that is if you're wrong about the average number of downloads.  I don't see why you would expect contributors to bear the burden of you being wrong about that.

Is this anything other than celebrity snaps? If not, it's competing with EdStock but very little else of what microstock sells. Seems largely irrelevant (beyond their wish to pay microstock back for ruining their lives - aren't they a bit late for that party?)

That e-mail's been around for a long time - standard for all deactivations, not something they implemented recently  as part of this descent into microstock hades

The number one best match for "South Carolina" the State is an image of someone named Carolina Bacardi who is in Los Angeles.  Surprise surprise it's an Edstock image and it is how the Best Match is supposed to be, not a good sign.

In addition to that, there's a raft of other incorrectly keyworded images up front. One of the Hooter's Air launch (the shot was in Georgia but got keyworded with SC because the flight was going there), and one of a group of people at a premier for a film (in California)  (one of the kids is Carolina).

It's horrible spam

I'm definitely opting out. I have only a small number of files on Veer (painful upload and glacial review process), so quitting altogether if they later drop the opt out will be easy.

If they are serious about having a subscription offering, they'll need to do something about reviewing so they can keep a stream of new content coming to subscribers. Perhaps they're really doing this to dump a bunch of wholly owned content into a subs plan and outside contributors just suffer the collateral damage of industry-worst compensation

I don't want to downplay your case John - it's a shame that you can't get either agency to act - but the butterfly head girl is not in any way shape or form something someone could claim was their own creation (I'm assuming the tree argument was that they might have had a similarly bent tree in their back garden as the reference for their illustration). Slapping hibiscus on top doesn't cut it.

Has someone contacted IS and SS or the IS artist(s)?

@atramos. I don't think any of the microstock sites would take images on that basis. And for anything to sell it needs to be keyworded. Dreamstime has a keywording service, but (a) you'd have to pay and (b) editorial images (what you'd have to do for the unreleased images) have to have a detailed description, date and place shot, and you have to enter that.

Unless you have some jaw-droppingly wonderful images in there, I can't imagine any agency doing the work it would take to sort out 30K images for you.

I submitted one, I wanted the icon bling. Lol!

But you didn't need to submit a logo - I got the icon bling automatically just by being a vector contributor

I saw Sean post the other day in the thread on PNGs - coming soon - saying that he was taking a "Logos" approach to PNG. When they actually do something, he'll start considering submitting content.

I didn't submit any logos, but I feel for those who did. And iStock can't even have the decency to just kill the project off so people can pull their content to use elsewhere and try and salvage some value from the hours they put in.

In a way, iStock is like one of those bad clients that strings you along with more promises than cash until you have the common sense to just walk away

... However, I know 3 people who have dropped exclusivity and they all had major drops in income that are yet to recover. Be warned, it's not any better ( and in some cases considerably worse) anywhere else....

I am not primarily an illustrator (I have a small portion of my portfolio that is illustrations) but I left iStock exclusivity in June. It is absolutely true that you'll see a temporary drop in income during the transition. I think the real issue is where you think things are heading. If you believe that over time, your situation will improve at other sites, versus continue to decline at iStock, perhaps it's better to take the hit now and get started building better search position.

You have more options with other sites (JPEGs of your vectors if you don't like a particular site's vector pricing). Over time, your SS income per download will rise as you earn more. You might want to unbundle some of your more complex illustrations to sell better on sites that have a one price for all vectors policy. If you do raster illustrations, or other derivations from your vector work, you can sell those (something iStock doesn't welcome).

It's too soon for me to say better/worse on returning to independence after my 3 year stint as an exclusive, but I'm pretty close to certain that if I had stayed exclusive at iStock, my 2011 income would have been less than 2010 anyway.