Hi,

I've been in the stock industry for a while now, but new to microstock. Although happy with my earnings from my other agencies, I'd like to diversify for a certain type of photography, which I believe might be best placed with microstock. I've also been with Alamy for a while � but haven't submitted anything for years, because I find them too labour-intense for keywording.

So, I'd like to at least submit to the "Big 4", i.e. Shutterstock, iStock, Fotolia, Dreamstime. (Possibly to some others as well). But it all depends on the amount of "manual work" I have to put in AFTER retouching and IPTC Keywording.

My workflow is as follows. (And I'd imagine other photographers to have a very similar workflow):

1) SHOOT
2) IMPORT images from camera card onto hard-drive & database (Lightroom in my case)
3) Creative EDIT on the images (i.e. throw out the crap / outtakes)
4) KEYWORD my 'Selects'
5) EXPORT selected/keyworded files as a tif (captions, keywords,... embedded in IPTC fields)
6) RETOUCH camera dirt, logos, noise, brightness, contrast,...
7) CONVERT retouched tif to jpg, ARCHIVE the tif
UPLOAD the jpg file
9) Back to 1)

Given the low sales price per image, I don't want to spend precious time for any cumbersome online-keywording / non-standard IPTC fields like I'd have to do with Alamy. (With Photoshelter, it used to be similar: very labour intense classification & clicking-through-keywords AFTER the upload... a real pain!)

Which of the Microstock agencies you're using would suit my above workflow? In other words: Where can I upload my files and then get on with shooting? And which ones of the micro-agencies have a similar workflow?

Thanks a lot!