You don't (unless you are uploading video). It isn't available.

I like the room I'm currently working in - It has the desk and computer at one end, stereo and TV at the other, large comfy sofa and rocking chair, two huge   bookcases (both double stacked with books). It's also got a nice domed plaster ceiling with interesting early twentieth century plaster work which are an inspiration to look up at! A South facing window under a verandah, which provides decent natural light all day for real drawing, and a pleasant outlook over my front garden and the park beyond. I could do with more desk space to give me room to do real media drawing - for that I tend to go into my family room and monopolise the dining table. Or the kitchen and use the kitchen table!
I currenty use a G5 imac and Wacom Intuos tablet. I'd really like a Cintique, but can't justify the expense

I'm down on istock in terms of number of downloads, but look like being up on dollars (A combination of upping a cannister level and having a quarter of my downloads this month being ten credit vectors). I've had a very mixed bag - some extraordinarily good days and some dreadful runs of zeros. One of the drawbacks of a small portfolio. If my vectors hadn't started to earn some $s May would have been sad - but no worse than the fall I saw last May.

It's always amused me how some people love stirring the pot on internet forums... They must have very boring real lives.

He must have quite a team there. His "examples of out commercial photography work" include one of istock's most popular best four downloads (the one with the woman with laptop hands raised), rzdeb's chairs (which look like a 3D render to me). The shopping trolley in a car is a 3D render done by Mark Evans who is an istock admin...

I'm only at istock so it's 100 per cent of my earnings! Best month for dollars since July 2007 (which was abnormally high as I had an image of the week). Downloads, best for this year.  Big increase in dollars per download, mainly as the ten credit vector sales are starting to kick in, and you don't need to get too many of those at silver exclusive pay rates to increase earnings very pleasantly.

Well this is broadly similar to what I was trying to point out in my 'not as good as I thought' thread, in that existing 26c credits get replaced by new 19c subscription credits.  In an absolute worst case scenario this would result in a drop in income of 26%.

Of course that worst case scenario will probably never occur.

Set against the 'risk' of the new scheme must be the positives: the possibility of iStock attracting many more customers, the possibility of existing customers buying more images (perhaps even a probability for larger portfolios and those containing 'sets') plus the 'free lottery ticket' of unused credits.

Given the strength of iStock's marketing, my gut feel is that over the longer term this plan will result in an increased income for larger portfolios due to the tendency for subscribers to make multiple purchases.  The risk is higher for small portfolios.

I should think its a given that a high percentage of existing customers will switch to subscriptions.

Actually I don't think it's a given that a high percentage of customers will switch at all. Surely the only buyers who are interested will be the heavy users who will already be buying credit bundles. Or whose bean counters insist on subscriptions so they are currently buying elsewhere.
The smallest subscription package indicated by the calculator is ten credits a day over six months, (1800 downloads) costing around 600$.  This is a decent outlay - and presumably any istock customer who is interested in that sort of outlay will currently be saving money by buying the 600$ credit bundle. Which gives a per credit price of 1$, not far short of the minimum. I can't see the buyers who are currently paying more per credit than this buying these very large subscriptions

I don't have a lot of isolations on istock (they are too much hassle to do, so I don't bother). but I've never had any rejected. I do them as much as possible with lighting, then use a combination of a channel mask and the pen tool to create a mask to isolate the object and use levels to whiten the background. I generally only isolate objects with a very deep depth of field, otherwise geting an edge of the degree of fuzziness consistent with the segree of focus is too hard - unless the isolation can entirely be done with lighting. And I usually leave shadows, so it's not really a real isolation anyway!

Quote from: dbajurin on April 20, 2008, 14:51

I personaly think that in this picture noise not a problem. There is a LOT Color aberration in your picture. Use Adobe Lihtroom to correct this

Yeah, I was wondering about that too. I wish they had VERY specific rejection reasons. If it's noise, say noise, if it's artifacts, say artifacts,....

Do you consider that a LOT of color aberration? What lenses do you use? This was taken with the Canon 17-40 f/4 L at f/8. Is there a better wide angle zoom for Canon? Maybe the 16-35 II?
Or all lenses have aberration and we just have to correct it in the photoshop?

Every wide angle zoom I've tried from Canon has sufficient chromatic aberration that I've had to clean it up using lens correction to get the edges acceptable to me at 100 per cent view. (that includes the 17-40 - although I've seen images from that lens that were better in that respect than the copy I tried). It's the main reason I haven't spent a lot of money upgrading from my good copy of the 17-85IS. Yes it's got horrid chromatic aberration wide open at the edges. But it's no harder and more time consuming to correct moderately large amounts of CA than it is to correct small but still noticeable CA. 
I'm really looking for a landscape lens (so it doesn't have to be super fast) that is sharp right out to the corners at f8 with no appreciable chromatic aberration. So far I haven't found it. (the 10-22 EFS seems to be the best bet, but I'm still thinking about full frame so don't want to spend that much on an EF-S lens)

Because .... Mine is a Canon G3 which actually cost as much as my DSLR when I bought it nearly five years ago. it's actually got more controls than my 20D (focus bracketing for example). And a really good quality f2 lens. It can take an external Canon flash; at ISO 50  the image quality is less noisy and more robust to post processing as far as artifacts showing up than my DSLR (but no use at higher ISOs). It's only got 4MP so I don't have too many stock shots with it, but the quality is well good enough. While it's not exactly tiny, I can keep it in my handbag and use it to take reference shots for illustrations whenever something shows up. Because the small sensor has a depth of field from here to eternity when stopped down to f8 or so, it's a fine macro or landscape lens for non-moving subjects in good light. It has a swivel screen so that I can get down low without breaking my back, or take shots over the heads of a crowd. And people don't realise that I'm taking photos as it's so discrete.

And my daughters can hold it  -  they are very petite and finds the 20D too much of a handful.

I only wish that any of its successors were as good as I'd like to upgrade- while it's replacements have more megapixels they have slower lenses, and no flip out screen.

So why use an SLR if I love my P&S so much?...because the P&S focus is slower, the viewfinder is non existent and I can't see the screen clearly without wearing reading glasses. And I shoot a lot (not for stock) with moving subjects at low light (kids theater and concerts, mainly) and the focus speed and high ISO capability of a DSLR is essential. But having an alternative that can do maybe 75 per cent of what I need, that is always in my bag whatever I'm doing, is a real useful trick. And I still upload the odd istock photo with it (it gives me a medium)

How much talent you need to have depends a bit on what you have in mind to submit, and where, as the sites have very different requirements. If you want to submit to istock, you really need to be able to draw a bit - I can draw a bit, but really don't go much further than using a brush and tablet with the occasional foray into the pen tool in Illustrator and I got through the istock acceptance process first time. On the other hand because I don't produce those glossy buttons and swirly backkgrounds my files get a lot of nice ratings from other illustrators, but don't sell very much!

Looking around at other sites, some allow you to submit jpegs of illustrations (which gets around the pretty complex requirements for getting files to meet the appropriate EPS criteria) and also take simpler files. It is possible, especially if you are a good photographer and thus have raw material to use as a source for traces, to produce some interesting things just by learning to use the pen tool. And if you are doing isolations in photoshop already, then the pen tool is probably familiar anyway. While traces aren't as easy to do as one might expect (I find them much more time consuming than original drawings and you need to have a good eye for light and shade to simplify things well enough to make an effective final product) - you can use them as the basis for finding a style and training your eye.

Illustrator is a complex and somewhat counter intuitive program to learn - but if you have a couple of weeks to immerse yourself into it and do nothing else it's possible to go a long way very quickly, as to produce stuff that's acceptable for microstock, only the basic illustrator functions are needed anyway. My eleven year old daughter spent a couple of weeks over the Christmas holidays doing nothing else, after watching me, and ended up decorating all her school books with home produced smilies and glossy icons, made several birthday cards and drew some manga figures...(but then she has been using photoshop since she was eight)


She wouldn't pass the istock inspection as her drawing isn't strong enough yet, although it's getting better, and she hasn't the patience to produce EPS8 compatible files. But I bet she'd have a chance at one of the sites which take jpegs of illustrations. Anyone know whether Shutterstock allow under eighteens to contribute? (istock do if a parent signs the contract)

The current increasing strength of the Australian dollar may have something to do with it too. Local camera retailers are hurting a lot as the temptation to import from the US becomes overwhelming at 95cents Aus to the US dollar! (there are a lot of products where even the lack of warranty makes little difference as the price is just so much cheaper in the US you could almost buy two of them and be ahed at the moment!)

The standard istock reply seems to be some words about wanting images rather than finished designs - as you can pull vector designs apart and reuse them you can get away with murder there (or at least I have - so far no "not suitable for stock" rejections).

While that green one is sort of pretty it's a bit obvious in a "gosh I've got the flood filter and I'm not afraid to use it" kind of way (but that's a personal opinion - art is all about personal opinions which is why I think it's harder to get past not suitable for stock rejections when you do it)

 If you look at the raster art that is accepted at istock it comes mainly in two forms - really high quality (often quirky or amusing) photo montages -  like the prize winning image of the year; or scans of conventionally produced artwork ( I presume that's what this week's image of the week is although I guess it could also be painter or photoshop generated) . Almost never photoshop based artwork with obvious use of filters. You do sometimes see the odd photoshop or painter produced original painting. (emphasis on "original - styles that are recycles of common stock themes don't seem to get through)

I've no firm views on whether it's a good idea or not for istock to choose  to reject this large category of images. But there's no doubt in my mind that that is their policy.