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Messages - alan b traehern
26
« on: September 07, 2024, 08:38 »
I don't think Adobe wants a huge shitstorm of angry graphic designers and photographers badmouthing Adobe all over the internet and recommending a switch to affinity photos. They are not stupid.
Keeping us happy is good for their business, Adobe is the only agency where we are also users and customers. Plus many of us have the client contacts to keep recommending Adobe to buyers.
Look at how Shutterstock lost clients after their disaster.
They even bought several agencies and client contracts for over 500 million dollars...and still the volume of customers and downloads has gone down.
How do you even do that???
And imagine if they had kept their royalty system and invested 500 million into marketing and a deeper connection with the buyer/client groups?
I am quite sure Adobe likes us happy. We are a great marketing tool and like to bring people to buy from our Adobe ports.
You are imagining that agencies or buyers care about you or your opinion. You are right that Adobe uses us as a marketing tool.
27
« on: April 24, 2024, 21:31 »
If you had 200.000 images in your Adobe port in November 2021 according to your old post and now had 50.000 images in January, you must have some kind of idea why your account was banned? Surely the 150.000 images didn't disappear for no reason?
the mentioned 200000 portfolio from 2021 belongs to my husband. since the registration here has been inactive for days, I used his login.
So we are talking about a different portfolio (50.000) here.
As I said, we have already been asked if it is normal to wait so long and we wanted only to know if others have had similar experiences
Do you both have your own AS account, use the same computer, internet and camera? That might be why. Good luck.
28
« on: April 24, 2024, 21:29 »
On 12.03.24 Adobe has blocked my account with a portfolio of over 50,000 images and over $2000 on it because of "terms violation".
I dont work with AI Generators, I have no idea why the account was deactivated and what I can do to reactivate it.
After using the contract form, I still haven't received a response (over a month). On Discord they just tell me to keep waiting.
I find it very unpleasant to keep someone in the dark for so long and to be at the mercy of it all
This is ridiculous. Adobe needs to do better.
You know the details and facts, could you explain how they could do better and why this is ridiculous?
29
« on: April 12, 2024, 08:00 »
Just can't wait for April 15th when this discussion will end.
30
« on: March 13, 2024, 19:56 »
No. I hired someone to make me an original character design...
Were they cheap?
No. I am seriously considering just dropping this stock industry crap and start drawing... I could boost sales of my artwork through my filming knowledge and make better money. Just thinking about making investments FOR making stock footage and then getting rejected makes me sick to my stomach. Meanwhile I had 95% approval rate with all AI generated images and had many sales already. Makes you think twice about what should be the logical course of action. There is a good saying: "The only way of making money in photography is by selling all your gear."
If you are offended by rejections, because you think you are better than the standards or the reviewers, you should do something else. We all have to work and live with the same situation.
31
« on: March 04, 2024, 11:09 »
Hi there!
Do you think it's worth starting your 123rf adventure in 2024? I'm a fairly successful contributor on Adobe Stock where my monthly revenue is between $2,000 and $3,000 and my portfolio is 35k images. I'm wondering if it's worth putting my entire portfolio on 123rf and to start uploading there on a regular basis?
I also noticed that they offer PREMIUM or PREMIUM+PLUS sales - which option is better according to your experience?
No
If you do not need additional $100-$200 than do not submit.
Is that every 5 years? Will 123 be in business in 5 years?
No, that is for every month and in accordance of the monthly income and portfolio mentioned above. Ofcourse not every portfolio can make such amounts.
If we believe the poll here that shows $15 a month, there must be many who don't come near $100-$200 a month to make the $15 average. You are the exception.
32
« on: February 17, 2024, 04:26 »
I find it hard to believe a major agency would so blatantly and obviously pocket royalties belong to the contributor. Because the legal consequences would be huge if this was found to be true. Would they risk it for a few cents per sale?
I wouldn't be surprised if either one of the following scenarios is true:
1) The claim is a lie
2) The 'control purchase' was not conducted properly or one of the buyers made a mistake
3) The sale was delayed due to a system error or some flagging and will show up sooner or later
You must have been very surprised to learn Enron was cooking the books. Giant companies cheat and lie all the time. They are seldom caught because there is negligible oversight. We have no access to sales data apart from what SS or other agencies tell us and they have a very good incentive to lie. The best we can do is conduct these risky unscientific experiments to try to get a little more data. I'm not saying OP's post proves anything but its one more data point than we had before and you're welcome to believe it or not. I'm tempted to try it myself but I earn so little from SS that it would cost nearly all my earnings to buy a single pack.
How can a claim on a forum be a data point, with no data. PokemonMaster is behind Stock Coalition and pushed the boycott Shutterstock protest. Giant companies or Enron have no connection in what SS does unless you want to believe guilt by generalization without facts. The answer is right above this. Screen shots, video of a buy, collect the data and if they are cheating us, take them to court. Everything you read on the internet is not true. Same goes for this forum.
33
« on: February 17, 2024, 03:43 »
look forward to using it
I do too.
34
« on: February 17, 2024, 03:40 »
I see this wrong logic from time to time in discussions. No, no one buyer will search for your image on other agency to buy it cheaper. Even if he want it's almost impossible to find it in the search straight away, as a whole this does not work. Selling in many agencies will only extend your income and competition between them and from there better commissions to the contributors. I'm in this business from 2007 and I'm full-time and I have experienced view on all this.
I agree that individual buyers will generally not search to find a specific image at the cheapest price. However, it does not follow that it's fine to supply free and all-you-can-eat low price agencies.
Over time, and in general (i.e. not for any particular contributor) Unsplash, pexels, the various free sections at agencies are all eroding anyone's ability to make a decent living licensing stock. It used to be that free images were of obviously lower quality than paid ones, but that's no longer true. In looking at uses of an image featured in another thread here there were many hundreds and all the credits I saw were for Unsplash and pexels, not iStock (where it originated).
I've been licensing stock images since 2004 and about the only constants have been agency drives to increase their share of the buyer's money and contributors ignoring long-term harms for short-term cash. Often the excuses of the form "it's all going to hades anyway, so might as well make a little money before it does" or "if I don't someone else will and then I'll lose out on both short and long term"
We are too diverse a group with too many divergent points of view (and many contributors who don't do the math often enough to see what's in their interest and what isn't) to balance out the agencies' power and self interest.
And Freepik's history is deeply unsavory. I wouldn't trust them further than I could throw them. And I'm not all that good at throwing 
Then this version isn't true? You can't opt out of video subs. You got to make a decision to just delete your videos one by one. I deleted like 7,000 videos last May when I got fed up with seeing most video sales going for $2.80 subs. You should definitely delete your 4k videos and re-upload HD version, or just delete video clips for good and also un-publish videos from Shutterstock. Customers aren't stupid. All they have to do is to google your contributor name with "Adobe Stock", "Shutterstock" or "Storyblocks" to find if you offer your clips dirt cheap rather than paying decent price you set on Pond5.
35
« on: February 14, 2024, 10:37 »
It's a third-party information, so probably I will not be able to provide further details. But it comes from a trusted contributor, experienced, with a pretty old portfolio.
At the end of October, we decided to make a control purchase on the Shutterstock, collaborated with colleagues and bought a package of 25 Standard one-time demands. Purchases were made of works that had never been sold, with the help of a real customer within a spread of 10 days.
Divided it like this: 5 purchases from my accounts, 11 purchases from colleagues accounts, 9 purchases randomly.
Of my five - 1 appeared on the first day, 1 - after a couple of days, and another one after 4 days
The result as of February 1 is the total number of sales for all interested parties - 7
So, 70% of the sales via one-time demands package are lost! What do you think about this?
If any of this is true, you need to take the evidence to the state attorney general of New York. Then get representation and file a class action suit on our behalf, all of us can collect back earnings after an audit.
Where is the stock coalition? They should be all over this and tracking data for a legal filing against SS. If this claim is false, we should be told that it's nothing but a sensational lie. The fact that 19 people gave a claim with no evidence a + tells me how weak education is and the lack of critical thinking. Do you believe everything that an anonymous person on a forum write is truth. Or is it just because you want bad things about SS to be true?
36
« on: February 12, 2024, 07:42 »
How's your video sales on SS compared to pre-video sub January 2020? Is it like 1/4 of January 2020?
January, 2020 was literally 10x higher than January, 2024.
184 sales in January, 2020 vs 95 last month, so I don't think the subscriptions was the ultimate culprit.
Wow. Thanks for the info. That pretty much cancels a possibility of me enabling video sales on Shutterstock. My video sale went down immediately after the video sub intro by 1/2 and now top producer like you're making 1/10? Not worth it and probably negatively affect my Pond5 sales.
You don't have any video on SS? Pond5 is owned by SS that's the end of them.
It's the genius type who hate SS, hate AS, hate all other except Pond 5, owned by SS. They remove all of their video and go Pond 5 exclusive to help make SS rich. Then come here every day to tell how terrible video sales are at the rest.
37
« on: February 12, 2024, 07:36 »
Mat, would it be possible to an official answer on this question?
"So, my question is: are you allowed to remove or blur people from a photo and then submit as illustrative editorial?"
Thanks!
Why no answer?
38
« on: February 07, 2024, 09:35 »
If you follow fb groups and discord, the 8 weeks seems to mostly affect newbie accounts.
Slowing them down to actually think before they upload is probably a good thing.
Slows down the spammers as well.
Illustration and photos are currently being inspected in my case in about a week, only pngs need 30 days.
That is a very fair review time.
Plusback to over 90% acceptance rate, which is even more important.
Main change - upsize with stability or midjourney directly, less gigapixel use and upload much smaller versions, often 3500*2000
I have a bunch of AI photos in review que for 3 weeks now. Maybe mass rejection affected my rating?
We have a rating? Where do I find that?
39
« on: February 02, 2024, 14:28 »
OK you hater HodagMedia on Shutterstock forum. You should work on your photo skill rather than wasting your time posting craps you stupid redneck MFer.
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portrait-girl-showing-middle-fingers-on-697911292
Just a reminder of the low class character of this person.
All those nobody stock contributors hate me. LOL!! Whatever.
They got nothing better than ridiculing people. Useless posters.
They've never started a meaningful thread/conversation. All they do is to come in and ridicule people. And then I strike back, they get upset like a little punk. LMAO!! Weak.
Just ignore him, he's always starting arguments and posting nonsense. Was banned from SS forums, so he came here to stir up crap. 
40
« on: January 17, 2024, 11:14 »
I want to share my custom keywords generator.
I've used it for thousands of stock images I've published in the last year with great results.
It's quick and easy to use,
generates a list of keywords and a breakdown for each keyword with amount of results.
it's free, try it here:
https://upstock.guru/keyword_checker
Very nice work, especially the tag breakdown by best results first to show us the most used words.
41
« on: January 08, 2024, 03:49 »
I have some friends making some big money on a company called Freepix. I submitted to them but failed their test. The take only the best of the best.
The test was easy to pass and after a year I made nothing. Did they pay you to write that Freepix is good? The name says what they are, and that's terrible.
42
« on: November 15, 2023, 09:25 »
Agency lawyers decide what they will take or not, they make their own rules.
43
« on: October 26, 2023, 09:25 »
No one called anyone a N**i though. It would be more accurate to coin a term for an "SJW" or "Woke" or "Neo-Marxist" Law. Far more likely someone's gonna get called that nowadays.
Anyway, I have nothing against Pete being an SJW or Neo-Marxist with politics of aggrievement for his racial group. Or that he is woke to the systemic policies of repression of the white man by the new world order. I make no judgement as to the validity of his aggrievement. I can't speak to the suffering he has suffered under the heel of whoever (though I can't remember anyone bringing up his race on this forum other than him? that could be a lapse in my memory?). But does it have to be forced down everyones throat? Can't we live our lives without these woke SJW people and their agendas?
I also dont care if someone else believes in chem trails, that covid and climate change are a lie. Whatever, its just that theres an off topic section especially for this stuff.
Self appointed moderator control freak has left the forum.
44
« on: October 11, 2023, 07:11 »
I am so sorry. It is terrible that they treat their CUSTOMERS like this. We are not just producers and suppliers, we are customers.
Dnde est Diego? This is terrible and they are slow.
45
« on: October 11, 2023, 07:06 »
Thank you for the warning.
Content for istock, deposit etc I still process all that with an old photoshop elements version.
Content worked on with modern photoshop only goes to Adobe.
I will share this thread in a few places, things have truly become more complicated.
Just briefly to clarify, that obviously didn't come across right. My concern at first was also that you are no longer allowed to use Topaz and Photoshop.
These tools may still be used for Shutterstock.
The problem in my case was that I had visibly used Sharpen AI for the reviewer, he probably didn't know this tool and put my image in the Gernerative AI box. At least that's how I interpreted their answer.
The image has now come through the review unchanged.
AI used to find AI is a bad decision. I wouldn't use the term AI in the file name in the future. Good that you brought this to our attention.
46
« on: June 09, 2023, 08:13 »
The problem seems to be, over the last few months, rejections are more and the reason to teach us why has been less. Quality tells me almost nothing. If Adobe wants to help and have less quality reasons to take review time, Adobe should teach us why we are getting quality rejections. We are just guessing at this point.
47
« on: June 09, 2023, 07:52 »
I think it is very difficult to separate the microstock business from political issues. Politics engages microstock contributors in the same way as landscape, architecture, wildlife or whatever topics.
The agencies' databases are full of politically influenced images.
Contributors present their opinion or their concepts in images. Or they photograph the reality shaped by politics. Or politicians themselves. Or their opinions on banners. Politics shapes our lives and their contents. If we produce images about it, why shouldn't we also verbalise our opinions about it?
Wouldn't the logical consequence of "stop about politics" in a microstock forum then also be "stop shooting politics" for a microstock agency?
If you want to argue politics you should go to a political forum. If you want to discuss microstock and photos come here. Do you go to a cooking forum to argue politics or national differences? Asking the people stay on topic is not censorship. The only people who will shout how they are being censored are the ones who want to argue politics everywhere they go all the time. Politics shapes our food and diet, many places by location, but that doesn't make a food forum a place to argue politics.
48
« on: May 11, 2023, 05:56 »
but clients who need lot of images don't have enough time and often knowledge to play with various prompts to get results they want.
Which is no different than using a stock agency. You enter what you want (just like with AI image generation sites) in the search field and then you get various results that are mostly useless, usually because of completely irrelevant keywords added by the contributor. With AI, at least if I tell it to create a dog sitting in grass I don't get 5000 cat photos like on most stock agencies.
And there really is no great knowledge or playing around needed. I am still not sure what some people here are talking about or what crazy AI image generation sites you are using that you make writing prompts sound like rocket science. Just describe what you want in a few words and in 90% cases you will get a usable result at once. Works for me.
But you said I'd like to point out that, at least with modjourney, that is not necessarily true. The more prompts I use, the more of them midjourney simply ignores, just like it keeps adding stuff I did not describe and even the --no command will be ignored. Some people (sometimes purposefully) misjudge midjourney's ability to really create images based on very detailed descriptions.
49
« on: April 12, 2023, 07:36 »
Here's to the US left wing.
ChatGPT and similar generative AI models have already been tied to sensitive data leaks and copyright violations and have prompted fears of automated disinformation and malware campaigns and thats in addition to basic concerns about accuracy and bias.
Now, the US government is trying to get a handle on things. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is asking for public comments on possible regulations to hold AI creators accountable. The measures will ideally help the Biden administration ensure these models work as promised "without causing harm,"
Next they will need to regulate and ban the internet for disinformation and bias. Your freedom is at risk.
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