MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Shutterstock.com => Topic started by: scottbraut on December 20, 2013, 09:13
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Hello,
We've added a new type of editorial image to our accepted content: "illustrative" editorial.
For a full explanation and examples, please see this blog post over at Shutterbuzz:
http://www.shutterstock.com/buzz/announcing-shutterstocks-new-editorial-guidelines (http://www.shutterstock.com/buzz/announcing-shutterstocks-new-editorial-guidelines)
Please note the keyword and other guidelines to ensure that your images get accepted.
Happy holidays. :)
Best,
Scott
VP of Content
Shutterstock
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Next steps:
1. Remove restriction on structured caption/description
2. Auto-transfer to editorial when image when image seems to fit criteria (like few other sites do)
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Melastmohican - thanks. Can you explain the 2nd bullet in more detail? Examples?
Thanks!
Scott
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For those who don't follow the link:
(http://s5.postimg.org/sax1g6hyf/ss_editorial_editing.jpg)
Something of value for everyone, any site. But thanks SS for making this policy adjustment.
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Question?
What about Isolated illustrative editorials?
Such as a product no longer available on the market that can be used to illustrate discontinued products due to environmental hazards or from discontinued production to introduce a new line to be produced?
And will this also apply to video?
Many questions can possibly come up.
Happy Holidays back atcha.
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I'm glad to see Shutterstock opening up this type of imagery. The market isn't perhaps as large as for creative, but it's definitely there.
When I switched back to independent after a stint as an iStock exclusive, I included a batch of some of my iStock editorial images and all were rejected with "this isn't editorial", and I think they all fit into the type that Shutterstock now considers "illustrative".
You did a good job with the examples in the article - it helps make things clear about what you will and won't accept. Couple of thoughts about other clarifications that might be helpful.
Are images of children OK - one area that I recall having quite a bit of discussion when iStock started editorial was editorial images of children and I think the guideline was that groups of kids were OK, a kid with an adult was OK but not a solo child
What about panoramas - a stitched image that is accurately depicting what was there but was obviously manipulated to get there
What about HDR - again, assuming it isn't the crunchy-crazy-vibrant kind but the kind that looks natural but wasn't a single exposure
Skin/blemish retouching - you mentioned removal of sensor spots, but a zit could be considered an element of the image as it's not a camera-introduced defect.
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Kids are OK from what I have heard from SS.
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Hello,
We should be able to answer some of these later in the day, but on first blush:
Isolated images: We would accept these, but we're encouraging contributors to add something unique to the image. In other words, it would deliver more value to customers to have some context or a concept applied to an image, instead of having contributors submit hundreds of isolated images of the same object.
I'll clarify these later, but in response to other questions:
Children: Let me check.
Panoramas: I'll also check, but the important thing is to be explicit and honest in the caption. Customers should never be misled.
HDR: Our bias would be to not allow them, since the vast majority of HDR shots have visible artifacts of the HDR process (oversaturated color, etc...). There are "natural" HDR shots, where the HDR effect is unnoticeable. The spirit of the guidelines is for images to be truthful and honest representations of the subject. The more the images are manipulated, the less they meet that goal. If the effect is completely indiscernible, then it would be considered similar to other lighting adjustments.
Blemish retouching: For documentary editorial images, no, because this begins to interfere with the truthfulness and faithfulness of the image to the subject.
These are a few quick answers...I'll clarify with more specifics later.
Thanks,
Scott
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But you cant have hundreds of isolated images of the same object if the people dont have the discontinued product unless they were to go out and buy something that used to cost $2 but now because it is discontinued people are selling what they have for well over $50.
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On few sites where you got option to upload as editorial sometimes editors when they believe that by mistake you submitted your image as commercial or think it would better be as editorial change type instead of rejecting it. It saves time because you do not have to re-upload it. You cannot do that on SS because of caption restriction. BTW I forgot to mention that you can extract date and location from EXIF/IPTC metadata. I would rather fill proper IPTC fields than creating special description. Am I right that sole purpose of this restriction is to get date and location indexed by search server?
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Just submitted a first “illustrative editorial” to see how it goes along with the following note to reviewer.
This is a new “illustrative editorial” as announced today by Scott please see below.
Hello,
We've officially added a new type of editorial image to our accepted content: "illustrative" editorial.
For a full explanation and examples, please see this blog post over at Shutterbuzz:
[url]http://www.shutterstock.com/buzz/announcing-shutterstocks-new-editorial-guidelines[/url] ([url]http://www.shutterstock.com/buzz/announcing-shutterstocks-new-editorial-guidelines[/url])
Please note the keyword and other guidelines to ensure that your images get accepted.
Happy holidays!
Best,
Scott
VP of Content
Shutterstock
EDITORIAL UPDATE 12/20/13
http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=133925 (http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=133925)
http://www.shutterstock.com/buzz/announcing-shutterstocks-new-editorial-guidelines (http://www.shutterstock.com/buzz/announcing-shutterstocks-new-editorial-guidelines)
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Good to see Shutterstock catching up with the competition in this area.
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Next steps:
1. Remove restriction on structured caption/description
2. Auto-transfer to editorial when image when image seems to fit criteria (like few other sites do)
Melastmohican - thanks. Can you explain the 2nd bullet in more detail? Examples?
Thanks!
Scott
Editorial caption is a lot of pain. There are sites like 123RF, Dreamstime, Lori.ru that move suitable images to editorial, when reviewing submitted content and do not require special caption for that. You could extract the date from metadata.
Try to implement sth like this: when submitting files make the checkbox "If submitted image fails approval to standard RF collection, I agree to review it for Editorial collection".
Simple? Would be a pain saver. If your editorial painful caption is a must you could propose an universal caption that would be accepted to both collections.
You could even go further and connect OFFSET with Shutterstock. Implement a distribution to both sites when making submission, for example making a checkbox "For your consideration to OFFSET, OFFSET Editorial, Shutterstock, Shutterstock Editorial Collections." Your editors would pick up the most suitable photos to each of these collections. It would be a nice thing to maximize the potential of each collection so that our revenue. In my opinion there are a lot of photos on Shutterstock that could go up to OFFSET and probably a lot of submissions to OFFSET that are rejected, but would be ideal for microstock.
Personally, I have many doubts whether to put my travel photos to standard RF or Editorial, so that I submit all photos to standard RF first and resubmit the ones that failed approval to Editorial. In that way most of my photos are accepted, but it takes time... I would be happy to have some of my photos distributed in higher prices. Automatic selection to OFFSET should be optional so that selection to Editorial(in case someone would like to place his photos only in microstock), but I would opt-in for sure!
Scott, please think about it ;)
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All good with the revised guidelines themselves. Just a tad unfourtunate that I chose yesterday to publish a blog article on how to style editorial captions for the various sites. Just had to add an edit with the revised information :(
Anyone wanting to read my out of date (in a day) post see here http://shootingstock.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/creating-captions-for-editorial-images.html (http://shootingstock.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/creating-captions-for-editorial-images.html)
Will have to do an updated version soonest. Regards, David.
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...
Personally, I have many doubts whether to put my travel photos to standard RF or Editorial, so that I submit all photos to standard RF first and resubmit the ones that failed approval to Editorial. In that way most of my photos are accepted, but it takes time... I would be happy to have some of my photos distributed in higher prices. Automatic selection to OFFSET should be optional so that selection to Editorial(in case someone would like to place his photos only in microstock), but I would opt-in for sure!
Scott, please think about it ;)
I think when a travel shot has no logos or copyrighted content, its obvious to submit as commercial. But now you can put images of streets and skylines on SS without hours of cloning. Like they do on Alamy.
My guess is that instead of 200,000 images accepted this week, we will start to see, 300,000 images accepted this week.
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Looks good - I've sold a fair number of regular editorial images on shutterstock - including some that still sell regularly after 4 years and which I've seen in books and on the web (on news sites) used for illustrative rather than straight editorial purposes about the event in question. It's a strong market on Alamy and am glad to see it on shutterstock. Just wish that Alamy would allow RF editorial since they license so many images cheaply to their newspaper clients and it would be nice to have them available on shutterstock too.
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Next steps:
1. Remove restriction on structured caption/description
2. Auto-transfer to editorial when image when image seems to fit criteria (like few other sites do)
SOLID yes to both these suggestions -- 123 has one of the best reviews - no need for us to have to guess whether an image is considered editorial or not -- let the individual agencies apply their rules themselves.
re captions, the new rules state:
We no longer require a reiteration of the date and location of the image in the description portion of the caption.
Here is how a caption should generally be structured:
CITY, STATE/COUNTRY – MONTH DAY YEAR: [Factual description
of the image content, including who and what the image portrays].
why not take the logical next step and allow location & date up front OR at the end?
this special captioning seems to be trying to mimic some printed uses, but many users of editorial images don't care ANYTHING about the formatting -- eg, I recently found one of my ski school pictures taken in the French alps being used to advertise a Czech ski school; I'm sure there are many more uses for a picture like this, and very few buyers who are looking for the specific date & location
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... many users of editorial images don't care ANYTHING about the formatting -- eg, I recently found one of my ski school pictures taken in the French alps being used to advertise a Czech ski school; I'm sure there are many more uses for a picture like this, and very few buyers who are looking for the specific date & location
Is "advertise a Czech ski school" a legitimate editorial use? (I wouldn't have thought so.)
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Another nail in the coffin for Alamy !
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Hello,
We've added a new type of editorial image to our accepted content: "illustrative" editorial.
For a full explanation and examples, please see this blog post over at Shutterbuzz:
[url]http://www.shutterstock.com/buzz/announcing-shutterstocks-new-editorial-guidelines[/url] ([url]http://www.shutterstock.com/buzz/announcing-shutterstocks-new-editorial-guidelines[/url])
Please note the keyword and other guidelines to ensure that your images get accepted.
Happy holidays. :)
Best,
Scott
VP of Content
Shutterstock
Obviosly you did not inform you reviewers !
Otherwise i cant explain why you did reject these clips because of "Clips are not newsworthy"
http://www.pond5.com/stock-footage/27411194/man-playing-bass-guitar-and-drummer-fogo.html (http://www.pond5.com/stock-footage/27411194/man-playing-bass-guitar-and-drummer-fogo.html) (rehearsal for a christian servica at palmsunday is not newswothy?)
But this is?
http://footage.shutterstock.com/clip-4766912-stock-footage-berlin-germany-september-steady-shot-of-kollhoff-tower-at-potsdamer-platz-with-plane-flying.html (http://footage.shutterstock.com/clip-4766912-stock-footage-berlin-germany-september-steady-shot-of-kollhoff-tower-at-potsdamer-platz-with-plane-flying.html)
Wow! Breaking News! The building is still there!!! Lets call Lettermann & CNN!!
Or musicians without any reasons accept fun are newsworthy??
http://footage.shutterstock.com/clip-4757195-stock-footage-boa-vista-cape-verde-march-a-man-with-sunglasses-smiles-while-he-plays-the-drums-on-march.html (http://footage.shutterstock.com/clip-4757195-stock-footage-boa-vista-cape-verde-march-a-man-with-sunglasses-smiles-while-he-plays-the-drums-on-march.html)
Why dont you delete 90% of our video-port then!
http://footage.shutterstock.com/gallery/Axel-Lauer-1309612/#/gallery/Axel-Lauer-1309612/?perpage=100&lang=&page=1&editorial=1 (http://footage.shutterstock.com/gallery/Axel-Lauer-1309612/#/gallery/Axel-Lauer-1309612/?perpage=100&lang=&page=1&editorial=1)
Cause most of them are less newsworthy than the ones you rejected!!
I got 9 employees and none of them has the faintest idea what kind of rules your reviewers follow.
Dices?
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overall the new policy is working well - I've been getting editorials accepted that were previously rejected as non-newsworthy, with just an occasional reviewer who hasn't read the latest memo
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Scott,
SS accept now Public Domain Illustrations that illustrating some historical events?
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SS does not accept PD images.
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SS does not accept PD images.
I really want to hear an official answer... No, or Yes under certain conditions.
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SS does not accept PD images.
I really want to hear an official answer... No, or Yes under certain conditions.
http://submit.shutterstock.com/faq.mhtml#Does%20Shutterstock%20accept%20Public%20Domain%20content? (http://submit.shutterstock.com/faq.mhtml#Does%20Shutterstock%20accept%20Public%20Domain%20content?)
No.
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SS does not accept PD images.
I really want to hear an official answer... No, or Yes under certain conditions.
[url]http://submit.shutterstock.com/faq.mhtml#Does%20Shutterstock%20accept%20Public%20Domain%20content?[/url] ([url]http://submit.shutterstock.com/faq.mhtml#Does%20Shutterstock%20accept%20Public%20Domain%20content?[/url])
No.
you are right in case of RF public domain images.... but editorial? under SS new editorial rule?
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Editorial is RF too. Did you read the explanation as to why they dont accept PD? Its about copyright, editorial status doesnt wave copyright.
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I just got my first rejection for not following editorial guidelines.
Can someone please tell me what is wrong with this caption:
BANGKOK, THAILAND – DECEMBER 19, 2013: Asian man walking up the stairs to Siam Square BTS station talking in mobile phone.
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I'm not sure if they want the comma after the date, although I haven't submitted any editorial under the new policies. It doesn't sound very newsworthy either but there probably is a separate rejection for that.
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Maybe they won't accept editorial of single people walking up steps because they think you could easily have got a model released version.
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I'm not sure if they want the comma after the date, although I haven't submitted any editorial under the new policies. It doesn't sound very newsworthy either but there probably is a separate rejection for that.
Illustrative editorial is not supposed to be newsworty...
I have loads of similar editorials on different topics with single people on SS where this was no issue.
Besides, the rejection was for not following the guidelines.....
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BANGKOK, THAILAND – December 19, 2013: Asian man walking up the stairs to Siam Square BTS station talking in mobile phone.
in stead of
BANGKOK, THAILAND – DECEMBER 19, 2013: Asian man walking up the stairs to Siam Square BTS station talking in mobile phone.
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BANGKOK, THAILAND – December 19, 2013: Asian man walking up the stairs to Siam Square BTS station talking in mobile phone.
in stead of
BANGKOK, THAILAND – DECEMBER 19, 2013: Asian man walking up the stairs to Siam Square BTS station talking in mobile phone.
So what you are saying is that the example from SS website is wrong?
"KIEV, UKRAINE – OCTOBER 06, 2011: Photo of a Apple iPad device, showing the apple.com homepage featuring the image of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer, who died at age 56. Processed in B&W."
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I dont know, Im just trying to help, and I got mine in with that sort of caption.
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Maybe its the grammar, are you talking in mobile phone or are you using a mobile phone
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then it would be:
Asian man walking up the stairs to Siam Square BTS station, while he is talking on his mobile phone.
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Wish they would be a bit more specific in their rejections, especially with new guidelines. Its all guesswork now. I have lots of editorials on SS and never had any rejected for any reason before.
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Can you show a thumbnail? Could be they need more detail. What does BTS stand for? Is the man actually talking on the mobile phone? With editorial you have to be specific and not speculate so "using" or "holding" a mobile phone might be better.
Also, I'm not sure if this is "illustrative editorial" since I read that as being for products and objects in isolation or as the main subject of an image. Anyway, to be on the safe side I would make it newsworthy eg. how many mobiles are in use in Thailand, or how many people use the Siam Square transport system
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If you submit as illustrative editorial, you cant have a newsworthy caption, it needs to describe the contents of the image. If its regular editorial, it can only be a newsworthy caption.
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SS does not accept PD images.
I really want to hear an official answer... No, or Yes under certain conditions.
[url]http://submit.shutterstock.com/faq.mhtml#Does%20Shutterstock%20accept%20Public%20Domain%20content?[/url] ([url]http://submit.shutterstock.com/faq.mhtml#Does%20Shutterstock%20accept%20Public%20Domain%20content?[/url])
No.
But at the same time NASA public domain pictures are ok
http://www.shutterstock.com/buzz/legal/stock-photo-restrictions (http://www.shutterstock.com/buzz/legal/stock-photo-restrictions)
"NASA (including Visible Earth)
•An online catalog of NASA images and animations.
•Submitted content that incorporates NASA elements/imagery must contain the following text in the title: “Elements of this image furnished by NASA”"
Yet in the same posting they put
"Public Domain Content
•We do not accept public domain content, including but not limited to scans of or head-on photographs of public domain artwork. We also do not accept public domain footage."
What makes NASA stuff ok but the rest of the PD content not? don't get me wrong I would like them to keep the ability to use NASA images just seems weird to me.
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If you submit as illustrative editorial, you cant have a newsworthy caption, it needs to describe the contents of the image. If its regular editorial, it can only be a newsworthy caption.
Guess ill have to look at whats accepted to get a clue...
SS support was very helpful:
Thank you for contacting us.
Shutterstock has a new editorial guidelines. You may find this link helpful.
http://www.shutterstock.com/buzz/announcing-shutterstocks-new-editorial-guidelines (http://www.shutterstock.com/buzz/announcing-shutterstocks-new-editorial-guidelines)
If you have any further questions please don't hesitate to contact us.
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SS does not accept PD images.
I really want to hear an official answer... No, or Yes under certain conditions.
[url]http://submit.shutterstock.com/faq.mhtml#Does%20Shutterstock%20accept%20Public%20Domain%20content?[/url] ([url]http://submit.shutterstock.com/faq.mhtml#Does%20Shutterstock%20accept%20Public%20Domain%20content?[/url])
No.
But at the same time NASA public domain pictures are ok
[url]http://www.shutterstock.com/buzz/legal/stock-photo-restrictions[/url] ([url]http://www.shutterstock.com/buzz/legal/stock-photo-restrictions[/url])
"NASA (including Visible Earth)
•An online catalog of NASA images and animations.
•Submitted content that incorporates NASA elements/imagery must contain the following text in the title: “Elements of this image furnished by NASA”"
Yet in the same posting they put
"Public Domain Content
•We do not accept public domain content, including but not limited to scans of or head-on photographs of public domain artwork. We also do not accept public domain footage."
What makes NASA stuff ok but the rest of the PD content not? don't get me wrong I would like them to keep the ability to use NASA images just seems weird to me.
As far as I know, they dont accept NASA images in full, it need to be incorporated in the image. Like so
(http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/952942/138494210/stock-photo-moon-and-the-american-flag-elements-of-this-image-are-furnished-by-nasa-138494210.jpg)
(http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/952942/130133435/stock-photo-silver-alien-landscape-with-mountain-in-a-far-away-galaxy-elements-of-this-image-are-furnished-by-130133435.jpg)