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Messages - rene

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26
Software / Re: Xpiks - open source software for microstocker
« on: December 06, 2019, 04:31 »
Unfortunately it doesn't work anymore, at least on Windows10 x32. Have to use old version. :-\

Yes, 32-bit versions are not supported since Xpiks 1.5.3 (current version is 1.5.5). There's lots of work to create release for all these separate unpopular platforms (like old Windows versions, 32-bit Windows etc.) so in the end I gave up and only support type of systems that majority uses.
I fully understand and I am grateful for all your work.
But having clear information on download page about versions been supported (or not) could be useful and easy to do.

27
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock reviewers are idiots
« on: December 05, 2019, 05:07 »
It would be interessting to know how much reviewers are paid. If they touch flat rate for each image they can be tempted to rejecte simply because it is much faster than  review at 100% all details.
So maybe not so idiots, simply unprofessional and greedy like other SS staff...

28
Software / Re: Xpiks - open source software for microstocker
« on: December 05, 2019, 04:54 »
Unfortunately it doesn't work anymore, at least on Windows10 x32. Have to use old version. :-\

29
Pond5 / Re: Pond5 sales
« on: November 07, 2019, 03:56 »
I was Pond5 fan, but now I am disappinted.
They changed since April. And it is not only about lowering commission rate and exclusivity. I had good and regular sales. Some months P5 earning were better than SS. Now I have two accounts (old one and exclusive), both are almost dead.

30
Shutterstock.com / Re: Shutterstock reviewers are idiots
« on: November 07, 2019, 03:44 »
Yes, they are.

31
Adobe Stock / Re: Fotolia officially closed
« on: November 07, 2019, 03:40 »
I was hoping they would forget to close FT as I don't like using the AS site. It's the most frustrating site of them all, why under 'my statistics' does it default to top sellers!! A simple remember last settings would save me 9 clicks every time I refresh the page. Also, is there a way to see what files have sold on a particular day because I've given up searching for it!
Me too,I was using Fotolia site till last day.
AS is not intuitive at all, each time I am using it I have impression discovering for the first time and looking for options.

32
Many refunds too, all from Canva Australia. Some are comming from 2018 sales !
I sent a ticket.
Btw, sending tickets for a relevent reason is impossible, I had to use an aproximate category.

33
iStockPhoto.com / Re: I QUIT iSTOCK
« on: September 20, 2019, 05:15 »
Today, for the first time since I started microstock, I consider to quit Istock photo ( I stopped IS video few years before).  Slow sales, low percentage, fraction of cents deals and now this Australian refunds scandal. It's too much.

34
General Stock Discussion / Re: What's happening with Yuri Acrus?
« on: September 11, 2019, 03:29 »
If he were doing well he would share this info with the world, it's in his DNA.
Last time I have head from him his was talking:
- about a great Getty's project he was involved in
- mobile photo stock site he created
Both projets should change stock photography business. Still waiting...

35
Dreamstime.com / Re: Im sorry about Dreamstime
« on: September 11, 2019, 03:14 »
A very good site for Me and many Others. sales are so Bad Im in shock. I fear another One is gonna Bite the dust. I really Hope this Great Old site gets it back together.
I am not sorry about them.
Very unprofessional site. After revealing real contributor name, without any notice for artists, I deleted my account.

What? Real name is visible on the web?

 :o
It was during few days or weeks. They decided without prior notice to contributors that "confidencial info" accounts would not be confidencial anymore and they simply displayed real names of authors. After contributors protests they are going back on their decision, but the damage is done.

36
Dreamstime.com / Re: Im sorry about Dreamstime
« on: September 11, 2019, 03:01 »
A very good site for Me and many Others. sales are so Bad Im in shock. I fear another One is gonna Bite the dust. I really Hope this Great Old site gets it back together.
I am not sorry about them.
Very unprofessional site. After revealing real contributor name, without any notice for artists, I deleted my account.

37
Adobe Stock / Re: Sacre Coeur Paris trademark violation?
« on: September 11, 2019, 02:50 »
hem... see here :
https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/known-image-restrictions.html#historic (second line)
I think they are wrong, I have never heard about any restrictions. And the statement that Paul Abadie, who died in 1884, ist rights' holder seems confirm their mistake.

38
General Stock Discussion / Microstock vs. Unsplash
« on: June 02, 2019, 09:55 »
I have read here (https://www.microstockgroup.com/general-stock-discussion/december-earnings) a thread about earnings and bad influance of free photos stock sites.
As a phrase
"Those people who gave free photos in unsplash are probably the dumbest person ever appeared on the www. I cannot think of somebody more stupid"
 I took a look to Unsplash for the first time.
I found a lot of good images, relevent reserch results and curiously often better descriptions than at SS. For sure this kind of sites is serious competition for regular stock. My first thought was to agree with quotation above but after long reflexion, am I really smarter than they? I am selling for $0,38, it is not so far from free...
 With half day commissioned shooting I earn equivalent of 6 months of SS earnings. It seems easy for potential clients to contacts artists at unsplash so maybe with carefully selecting images it is not so bad idea to be there. I have seen a lot of profesionals there.
If microstock leaders continue to treat us as sh*t there is a risk that lot of contributors,earning close to nothing, turn to free sites to have pleasure to hurt microstock business , just for revenge.

39
As I wasn't sure if it was a good idea I kept my old account.
I uploaded few dozens of clips to tne new exclusive account to give them a try. So far, after one month no sales.
I have much more videos in non-exclusive account and haven't noticed changes in sale pattern.
Strange thing, excusive review time is much longer. Usually 2-3 days vs. few hours for non ex files.
Haven't seen any better placement in search.
Time will tell if there is any advantage to have excusive files. I will manage both accounts at least 6 months and see what happens.

40
Alamy.com / Re: Have sales plummeted for all or just me?
« on: May 15, 2019, 04:09 »
No sales this year, and I'd  like to close the account. Cleared balance is $48 and I'll be dead before it reaches $50.  If I close, will they pay me that balance?
I am in similar situation. My "cleared balance" slighty below $50 and doesn't move from weeks despite of sales! The "forwarded brought balance" is over 50 but the payment is "not due" .
I asked to close my account which they promised to close in 45 days. I will update here if or not they pay me, but I would not be surprised if they keep the money. All these sale which are not recorded directly and opaque "cleared" system doesn't inspire any confidence.

41
Shutterstock.com / Making money with stolen content
« on: April 28, 2019, 06:19 »
After read  the  wackamoles thread I realized how weak we are. Personally I think it is a huge issue, It can kill legitimate artists.
Shutterstock, probably others too, have contributors interest at the bottom of their to do list. Actually I dont think trying to help them, signing NDA and discreetly working for free is a good idea. They try to push problems under the carpet and as long as intellectual propriety problem is not public they will not seriously act.
If it get public and shareholders and clients are informed it will be a serious motivation.
But how to do it? I dont think a discussion on MSG is the solution.
If we, individually, contact people and groups concerned by digital business, copyrights, design, art etc.  the word could be spread. I am especially thinking about journalists specialized in digital, designers magazines. If important number of people point similar problem, with factual content, real experience and link it could work.

Some ideas to work on.
- Clients can purchase unsafe content. They are paying money without guaranty that the product is legitimate. If the content was stolen inside SS the contract protect them but what if not? The copyright holder can sue the final client, he doesnt need to handle with SS as he hasnt any relation with them.
- Today it is very easy to detect identical content. That means they can track potentially stolen work. Why not to do it?
- Lack of reactivity on DCMA. Apparently sometimes only files are taken down, not contributors accounts.
- At least a part of money which was not transferred to dishonest contributor (SS pays once a month) could be easily paid to original artist but they keep this dirty money.
- The way how they want to make it opaque, lack of transparency is not appreciated by potential investors.

Maybe we can share here contacts, web sites and others idea to touch an audience that could be interested?

42
General - Stock Video / Re: how upload to istock ?
« on: April 12, 2019, 08:59 »
I suggest you not to upload videos to iStock.
Personally I stopped 3-4 years ago. Why:
- They pay much less than others. Sometimes you get cents, yes literally cents!
- Uploading to them is complicated. Special resolution, specials codecs, fps.
- Disambiguating nonsense
Not worth at all.

43
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Latest DeepMeta 3
« on: April 06, 2019, 13:17 »
Franky, I have one suggestion.
When adding keywords to selected, multi, files it will be great to have 2 options:
- add keywords to all selected images - existing solution
- add keywords only images where the keyword was present - new option. For example if 'background' is present in all selected images this word will be added. But 'yellow' and 'red' which are in 2 individual images will be added only once.
Thanks.

I got a similar question/suggestion on a different forum.
It makes a lot of sense.
The current system is great if you're manually adding keywords. In that case, you likely expect the keywords you enter + disambiguate to be added to all selected images.

However, in workflows like you probably have, where keywords are already in the IPTC data, you just want to disambiguate.
It would really speed things up if you could select all files that you added, and go through the right hand list to "bulk" disambiguate, but respecting which files had the keyword and which did not.

I guess that's what you mean, right?

I won't/can't change the default behavior, but could add the functionality with e.g. Ctrl-click or similar.
Exactly.
I have IPTC data embedded but I have to ''disambiguate". When I have a large number of files that have many, but not all, similar keywords it makes sense to disambiguate common part only once but don't touch/add what is different (this will be disambiguated one by one).

44
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Latest DeepMeta 3
« on: April 06, 2019, 07:21 »
Franky, I have one suggestion.
When adding keywords to selected, multi, files it will be great to have 2 options:
- add keywords to all selected images - existing solution
- add keywords only images where the keyword was present - new option. For example if 'background' is present in all selected images this word will be added. But 'yellow' and 'red' which are in 2 individual images will be added only once.
Thanks.

45
Pond5 / Exclusive contributors - price strategy
« on: April 04, 2019, 17:04 »
I'm hesitating how to fix prices on my exclusive files. On one side I want to get as much as possible, on the other hand I would like to make P5 competitive and bring traffic from others sites.
Any suggestions?
Thanks.

46
Pond5 / Re: It's official, you are exclusive.
« on: April 04, 2019, 04:21 »
This duplicate account seems like a very dirty temporary fix.
Disagree.
In the beginning I was thinking like you, but I changed my mind.
There are advantages to have separate accounts.:
- separate ftp and upload streams. I'm sure to make errors if I have to check some files like exclusive, some not.
- stats. Immediatelly I can see exclusive and not-exclusive earnings. Combined earnings will be in the same Paypal account
- immediat and costless solution for Pond. That prove they are reactive, intelligent and listen to us - rather rare these days.
- if one day I change my mind I will only have to close one account without handling with separate files

47
Pond5 / Re: It's official, you are exclusive.
« on: April 04, 2019, 03:37 »
For those who don't know how to handle with 2 accounts, here is the official (very clear) response to my question:

"Thank you for reaching out. We will continue to look to our artist community for input on how we can best accomplish our mission to help you earn more.

If you enroll, Exclusivity will apply to all video content on your account without exception. While the best way for you to preserve the value of your work and receive the most benefit is to become a Pond5 Exclusive Video Artist, if you wish to have only selected content (especially new content) listed exclusively with Pond5, you can do so by creating a second account.

The new Exclusive account will benefit from the higher royalty rate (starting April 8).

Please note that once you create your new account, you will need to go through ID verification, enroll it in the Video Exclusivity Program by going to the Exclusive Program page, upload, and submit your own content, exactly as though you were creating a new Artist account. This way you can manage your accounts and keep one Exclusive, and one Non-Exclusive, with different policies and payouts in the Contributor agreement.

Please understand these accounts must be created and managed by you, as we do not have the tools and bandwidth to manage or transfer clips between your accounts. For more insight, every topic regarding our Artists can always be found in our Contributor Portal.

We hope this appropriately addresses your questions. Please continue to reach out to us with any additional feedback or questions about this program.

Kind regards",

48
Adobe Stock / Re: Adobe Terms
« on: April 04, 2019, 03:25 »
Below the page with new terms. The important part, the one we suppose read, is embeded in square window which use 10% of available space. Two possibilities:
1. Adobe's web designers are very bad.
2. They don't want us to read terms


49
iStockPhoto.com / Re: Latest DeepMeta 3
« on: April 01, 2019, 04:20 »
Yes, keywording is slow but still faster than me, when I am 'disambiguating' files one by one.
Thank you for good work Frank.
Maybe you could work for Adobe too? Their programmers need help.

50
General Stock Discussion / Re: Pond5 "Good News"!
« on: March 25, 2019, 16:01 »
Finally it was not so bad news.
They were very reactive and listened to us. The  possibility to have two accounts is nice.
I will keep my old account untouched and create new one, exclusive. All my new videos will be exclusives to Pond5.

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