Ive looked at keywords from more of my images in my iStock port and I'm starting to notice a pretty serious issue. There are some important keywords (added by me in Deepmeta) that are not present. For example - names of buildings, street names etc. These really need to be included so that buyers can find the images. There is a tutorial video on Deepmeta that states that some keywords will not be recognised by iStock but will still be included if you manually select them. But that is not true at all. I did manually select these words in Deepmeta and they are not visible among the keywords under the photos when viewing them in my port.

If they're not in the CV, they don't show up on the file page.
However, they are 'usually' searchable.

Tell you what's even worse. Their 'enhanced' search function, which more or less shows you what you wanted to see first, then a whole load of semi-random stuff underneath. At least you can turn it off, but it took me a wee while to notice that: it seems to have been made 'on' by default. 

After two 'better' months, low rpd and no 'lottery wins' made it my worst July since 2007 despite an average number of sales. Interesting that most people on this thread are doing well (well done), that's not what I'm seeing on other sites I'm on (exclusives).

Quote from: ShadySue on August 04, 2023, 12:39

Quote from: cobalt on August 04, 2023, 12:07

midjourney doesn't have a collection of ready made images to download. you have to create your own by prompting. which takes time to learn.

and midjourney cannot give you legal protection, because as their own ceo explained himself how they scraped the entire internet without licensing anything.

Are the agencies offering legal protection?

Adobe Stock is, but  to its enterprise customers creating Firefly output only. Adobe Stock's current getAI content comes from all the current generative AI tools, none of which is on a secure legal footing. Theoretically Firefly will be - if and when it exits beta - because Adobe trained on its contributors' content + public domain stuff. Adobe's CYA for the content it is accepting is telling contributors they need to ensure they have the rights for commercial use of the content they upload. But Adobe knows as well as anyone that no contributor can know that with Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, etc.

Shutterstock is but only for enterprise customers and things created with their (DALL-E 2 based) tools, not for all the genAI stuff uploaded to their site in spite of the rules saying its not allowed. Their earning call this week said that very few customers are using any of the output from their own AI tool as the quality isn't there: "... lack of true photo realistic outputs are holding back widespread adoption for actual marketing campaigns"

No idea what DepositPhotos, CanStock or 123rf are offering.

Thanks, interesting!

No doubt I'm missing something, but why wouldn't someone buy e.g. Midjourney or whatever and generate their own AI images, rather than purchasing from an agency?

Well done, JoAnne!

Sorry, your search returned zero results for ��
Thanks for finding this, Stvagna

The photos took so much to edit as really i take them 1 by one and make them magazine style, turn a dark and ugly apartment into something bright and clear. Its my passion and want to do something different.

Depending on the country, you might have to be careful that you don't make the apartment more beautiful than it really is. Here in the UK for example, that could get you into legal trouble (e.g. when working for an estate agent). If you're just doing in post what you could have done in capture if you had the appropriate (expensive!) lighting gear, that's probably different (IANAL).

The other is that some buyers may not realize the content is erroneous and just assume the agency has their back and it's good to use. An example: a buyer has not been lucky enough to eat lobster or even know what it looks like, but has been told to download a picture of a lobster meal. GenAI content is included in search results by default - you have to turn it off if you don't want it, so the unlucky buyer downloads a mutant genAI image with extra claws without realizing it's pretty but wrong. Doesn't an agency have some responsibility to weed out this type of "mistaken" content?

Maybe no more than they have the responsibility to make sure captions and keywords are correct, for a similar reason (e.g. the junior has been tasked with finding images, and doesn't know any better)

This is no place for political discussions of any kind.

Well, true, not so much in the 'Top Sites' forum. There's an 'Off Topic' forum which would be a better place to start one. Or a counter-argument against one.

...
Not only that, it looks like someone pretty much downloaded every image in my collection on IS. I can't explain why, but, makes me wonder if someone listed as California is using them for AI training?

That's happened  for the last couple ofyears at least, and I strongly suspect AI training.
e.g.
https://petapixel.com/2022/03/22/getty-images-launches-first-model-release-that-covers-ai-and-biometrics
and
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2023/03/21/generative-ai-getty-images] [url]https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2023/03/21/generative-ai-getty-images[/url]
and even:
https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/api

Better than the two previous Febs, making it only my third worst Feb since 2007 (my third month on the site).

Quote from: cboswell on March 15, 2023, 13:17

Some on the keyword team have told me that even if they decline to add a word to the keyword system search term recognizable words it is still searchable in title and description. I was happy to hear that, but in my tests, it does not seem to be true.

I can confirm that keywords the system doesn't know and have a red border cannot be searched. I have heared people claim the contrary before, but it' s not working for me

It absolutely worked in the past; plus at some point some (or all?) files have had 'someone' in changing keywords and/or descriptions (the latter aren't searchable).
Another weirdness is that on a couple of occasions in the past when I've mentioned not being able to find a file of mine in a search, and posted search results to show what I mean, someone else on a thread has screendumped the identical search string where my photo shows up.

I don't see Cannelton, Indiana, BTW.
It gave me hits for Channel on Indiana.   
The search results can be really terrible. I used to blame people putting in wrong keywords, which happens, then I noticed that some files didn't have the keywords I was searching on. Then I discovered my own files sometimes showing up wrongly in a search when I didn't have the search term anywhere in any field. I've formulated various hypotheses about this - some have even reached 'theory' status, but none have proved consistent.

 

I did however get 109 pics of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, at least some of which seem to be of that town, though most are from a series which could have been taken anywhere (but are keyworded as Hopkinsville, Kentucky, so I assume that's accurate).
https://www.istockphoto.com/search/2/image?mediatype=photography&phrase=Hopkinsville%20Kentucky

Lowish sales, better RPD, best Jan since 2019, which I guess is something. 

Quote from: Souf10 on January 23, 2023, 10:33

Has anyone received their payment for this month yet ?

Yes. For....$1.47!

Ditto, exactly $1.47

I thought they didn't pay out until $100 was in my account.

Ditto

I've never had such a small amount paid. It says it is for 2 x "Pictoright Collective Licensing Payback 2022 ", which I don't think I've seen before either.

Pretty sure I haven't heard of that either.  Looks like it's the Dutch version of DACS
https://pictoright.nl/english/