Are we looking at another three months for photo reviews as well or was that just illustrations?

It's minimum 3 months for photos.  Vectors will be even longer for those who signed up relatively recently. 

Lee are you not worried you will end up with a backlog too big to overcome? If your waiting time is 6 months by now, how big will it be in 3 months from now?

It is a big concern as images not online are images not sold. On the other hand, a smaller database means more sales for me. But if you start to lose customer due to the backlog, you might have shot yourself in the foot.

I understand fundamentals need to be sorted, but you also need sales and growth. I think at this point it is almost a case of being too successful.

An idea, maybe established and/or experience stock shooters (Canva contribs) on this forum are willing to help out with the review queue until it is back to somewhat normal. If you pay 2 cents to every image reviewed, some people might be willing to help out.  CanStockPhoto also hires reviewers actively from their contributor base.

It could be well worth the investment. I am interested, if needed, to help out.

Just give it a thought.

We won't lose customers from the backlog.  First, they don't know there's a queue.  Second, there's well over 1 million files in the collection and a relatively small 'few-hundred-thousand' in the queue, so getting those files online isn't likely to make that much of a difference to customers.  However, what we can see making a HUGE difference to customers is the quality of the search results.  Since we've been doing this work on search, conversion has gone way up.  So for both the business as a whole and for our existing contributors, it's an obvious choice to do what we're doing. 

No, I'm not in the least bit worried the backlog will be too big to overcome.  Our review system is easily scalable, and we've just stopped accepting everyone who applied to become a contributor. 

We have sales and we have amazing growth.  Talk to a couple of our top contributors about how much their royalties are growing every month.  We paid over 50 people more than $100 last month, and the top guys are around $1000 per month now.  Royalty growth percentage is in mid double-digits every *month*. 

Thanks for your offer of reviewing too, but we're happy doing it in-house at this time. 

Thanks also for thinking so much about us and our strategy.  We're still chuffed every time we see people doing this.  It's great to feel important. 

Quote from: ana on November 22, 2014, 13:22

Lee my FTP don�t work!!!    can you take a look please!

Every weekend lately. Mine is down too!

I don't think it's the weekends, but our FTP server hasn't been the most reliable lately.  The new FTP system is approaching testing phase.  It's distributed and redundant, so will be much more stable than our current single-box solution.  It'll also use your Canva login credentials instead of the separate ones you use now.  It'll still be a few months at the current pace, but hopefully worth the wait.  We'll keep regularly rebooting the existing box until then, but please do continue to let us know when it's not working for you. 

Still looking forward to selling on this site, but I do hope the vector problems are being solved ASAP. I've uploaded my vectors in August, that's 3 months ago. I've not received any confirmation or follow-up about my files, so I'm wondering how much longer I'll have to wait.

Believe me that we're looking forward to selling your content for you, but there's some things we need to get right first.  We know we're asking for an extreme amount of patience, but we hope you can ride it out with us.  You can email me directly ([email protected]) any time and I'll tell you exactly how many files of yours we have.  In terms of how long you'll have to wait, I can't say with any great certainty, but I'd expect you'll be waiting at least another three months.  At least.  Sorry I don't have any better news for you at this time, but we do appreciate the fact that you've taken the time to upload to us. 

Or simply: https://www.canva.com/YourUserName

where (obviously) you have to replace YourUserName by your user name 

Thanks Dirkr! 

Christmas images sell right up to Christmas day.  Maybe the majority plan ahead but I always see sales in December and I have only a few Christmas images.

We were still very small last Christmas so we don't have much data on it, but I suspect that's true.  We're doing all we can to get images online as soon as possible, allowing for the aforementioned priorities.  So if we can get them online before Christmas, we will. 

Lee what is the prognosis on review times now?

We're still working on the new review system, retraining reviewers and doing some work to help improve search.  All of which means review is running at a crawl.  But in the long term, it'll pay off in faster review times and better sales. 

Hi Lee, I have images in review at the moment, do we get an email when they are reviewed?

No Wendy, there's no content notifications on Canva.  In future we may add them as optional communication preferences, but it's not very high on the priority list. 

Hi All, sorry about the FTP problems.  It's all working fine now. 

Quote from: PZF on October 13, 2014, 15:37

...
Or have I got it all wrong.....

Not all, but some

The only reason you'd offer a PNG to Canva is for a file with a transparent background - JPEG cannot have transparency. Not sure what subset of your portfolio would fall into that category, but it's a big win for the user to have objects with a transparent background ready to overlay on their design.

Thanks Jo Ann, you're spot on.  PNGs that don't have transparency are rejected.  Send JPGs for everything that isn't perfectly cut out over a transparent background. 

Note to 3D people, you're welcome to re-render your files on transparency in PNG format.  Some people have responded to that statement with shock and awe, so I realise it can mean decades of rendering time.  Others seem ok with it:  https://www.canva.com/lumaxart    https://www.canva.com/3dalia

Hi Lee!

Vector artist question. Due to vector files processing huge delay, is it acceptable way to convert collection of isolated vector objects in to png images with transparency and upload them to Canva to fast get in and get first sales as fast as possible?

I bgv, unfortunately not.  We don't accept rasterised vectors. 

Waiting patiently (sort of) for my review to go through ....

Our review queue is up at levels we haven't seen before.  I've been telling people to expect images to take a month to go through, but even that might be optimistic.  Growing pains! 

Lee, here's a thought that might relieve at least a part of the review backlog:

We know that clean PNG files are far and away the best sellers on the CANVA site.  Also that the initial computer review looks for solid, plain backgrounds, regardless of file type, before routing the files to either review or cut-out. Would it be possible to tweak the computer algorithm to check for both a plain background and a PNG file type?  When this combination is identified, the file would be routed to a special review group or be given some sort of special priority which could quickly confirm through the RGB BG check that the cut-out is clean and that the isolated subject is suitable.  If acceptable, the file would immediately be put up for sale.  This would have the effect of quickly moving high value files through the system and getting them before the buyers in an expeditious time frame, increasing the opportunity for increased revenue for both CANVA and the contributors, as well as reducing the normal review queue.

I don't know what would be involved in implementing this procedure, nor whether or not you receive enough good PNG files to warrant such a change.  But thought I'd pass it on just in case it could be of some value to you.

Thanks for the suggestion.  I love that you're thinking this deeply about us and our processes!  On behalf of the team, we're honoured. 

There's actually a slightly different implementation that achieves some of the same things you're suggesting already in place, and a lot of plans to improve it when the relevant resources are available.  But we don't get that many PNGs uploaded, aside from a few smart 3D guys who're re-rendering their portfolios with transparency, in which case we don't need to review the quality of the cutout.  We also still need to check PNGs for all the same issues that we check on JPGs, so they can't go through any quicker.

Also, just to clarify, I've stated that 'all other things being equal' a PNG will sell better than a JPG.  That doesn't mean that PNGs are our best selling files.  See the difference?  While PNGs are selling really well, and their ratio of sales is much higher (there's FAR fewer PNGs), all of our top selling images are JPGs.  And for this reason, we don't want to give them any special priority. 

Having spent so much time as a contributor looking at the black boxes that are microstock agency processes, it's very interesting to be seeing it from the inside.  Especially in a business that is so different to a typical microstock agency.  So I totally understand the frustration and the "why can't they just...." feeling. 

I'm curious about the Abort button. I used it on a file that I knew would not pass review. Nothing happened. The word "processing" appears, but the photo is still in my portfolio. I would have expected it to vanish immediately like most other sites.

Most of those buttons aren't hooked up yet.  We're more of a 'set and forget' kind of agency at the moment.  Give us your files and we'll submit them for you and do our best at selling licenses to them, but the tools to micromanage your portfolio haven't risen to the top of the priority list just yet.  If you need anything specific, email me and I'll do my best to get it resolved as soon as I can.  [email protected]

Hi guys.  We have all of this and much, much more on our list.  We know our contributor-facing systems are still quite raw and appreciate that this makes it difficult to work with us.  But we also hope you can appreciate that what we're building is significantly more than a typical microstock agency in terms of technology.  We're also in this for the long haul, which means we're focusing on building solid foundations first and leaving some of the details for a little bit later.  We'll get there eventually and hope you'll bear with us until then.

Any time you really need a status update, send me an email and I'll get back to you as soon as a can with a list.  I've just done so for the four of you now (Valo & oboy via PM). 

As a contributor, I find that some of my uploads have been rejected. Is there a way to find out the reason they were rejected? I don't want to waste your time, or mine, by making the same mistakes over and over.

Thanks for any help.

Hey Rimglow,

Yes, our apologies.  Adding more detail to the rejections is on our long list of improvements to make. 

I'll share the specifics here so others can benefit as none of the rejections were from any mistakes or quality issues on your part. 

You've had 3 soft rejections "Rejected(S)", ("soft" meaning you can correct the issue and re-submit) all of which were because the file was over 50 megabytes.  They were all PNGs, which doesn't compress like JPG, so no great surprise.  Try trimming the image to the nearest pixel on each edge (Photoshop has a function to do this automatically if you use it) and if that doesn't get it down enough (which is likely as you're only removing transparent pixels) you'll need to downsize it until the file size is under the 50mb limit. 

Your 8 "Hard" rejections were all "sets", meaning more than one object in the one photo.  Such images can't be used on Canva - we need the objects separated.  You're welcome to re-submit these as separate files if you like. 

Thanks for asking! 

Quote from: sdeva on October 02, 2014, 00:25

I have not uploaded any model releases yet, simply because couldn't find the way to do that.

Here's how I did it, and so far the folks in charge seem okay with it.  I create a folder for all the photos of a particular model from a particular shoot.  In that folder I also create a subfolder called Releases into which I place the release for that shoot.  I drop the whole folder into my FTP application and let it all transfer.  Like this:

Ann
---10101.jpg
---10102.jpg
---Releases
--- ---20140102-Ann.jpg

Betty
---10503.jpg
---Releases
--- ---20140410-Betty.jpg

Sdeva, disorderly is correct.  Any folder with the title "release" (format is *release* so "releases" works too) is understood to be releases.  Releases are re-categorised as releases by the reviewers if they go through without being detected anyway, but it's preferred to mark them as such in this manner. 

It's great to hear about positive experiences from contributors. But only makes me even more anxious waiting for my vectors to get ingested. Is there any time frame on that matter? Thanks!

Unfortunately there's not much good news I can give you at this time.  As I'm sure you've read earlier in this thread how vectors complicate the Canva business model significantly given they can't be watermarked in vector format.  We've decided to temporarily forgo the interactive nature of vectors (resizing, changing colours, etc) and just rasterize (and watermark) our vectors.  But that doesn't solve problems of sets, crop marks, plain backgrounds and others that inhibit use of the files in the Canva editor. 

So in addition to the regular review, we have to separate out vectors with those characteristics for later "processing".  This makes the review take quite a bit longer.  And given that we're only just starting to review vectors, we have our reviewer training and recruitment processes under way too, which will take a while to start showing results in terms of reviewing capacity. 

I don't know exactly how many vector files we have given the JPG previews boost the file count, but it's somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000.  So it's going to take a while.  Please adjust your expectations accordingly as we don't want you to become too frustrated or disappointed. 

If you're really keen to know, email me and I'll tell you where you are in the queue. 

has the website changed recently?  I can no longer get my portfolio or sales info when I log in -- it says the browser isn't supported -- IE used to work,  doesn't now;  firefox doesn't work either, tho finally got it w chrome

We've never supported IE.  Firefox, Safari and Chrome are all supported, but you need the latest versions or pretty close.