Fotolia introduces new XS and XXXL licenses

Fotolia has announced the introduction of two new size licenses to it's comission structure, the XSS (300*400px - 120 000 pixels) and XXXL (4800*6400 - 30,7 MegaPixels).

The XS will sell for 1 credit (the price of an S license until now) so the prices will be reajusted for the other licenses (S, M, L, XL and XXL) by 1 credit increases.

The XXXL is clearly targeted to the new Medium Format users and will sell for 7 credits.

Vectors were also repriced, costing now 7 credits instead of 5.

This is good news to contributors, as it's basically a price increase across the board for regular sizes.

After Dreamstime, iStockPhoto and now Fotolia, let's hope ShutterStock will follow the trend and announce new comissions soon. The subscription model is more limited in options than the credit structures, but something will have to be done soon.

New Keywording Service Website

It came to my attention today a new site that offers a keywording service. In this ingenious system, the suggestions are based on a primary search and cross reference with actual searches from at least 3 agencies.

How does it work?

1 - Type a few keywords that really describe your image.
2 - Select an agency as a reference (shutterstock and Dreamstime are the options)
3 - Make a search
4 - Select the images that are similar to yours
5 - Get the keyword list

Duplicates are removed and the keywords are sorted by relevancy.

Update: I have asked the creator and know now that it will be a free service.

You can try it at http://photokeywords.com http://arcurs.com/keywording/ .

Setting it straight

iStock published a second part to it's new Intellectual Property Policy.

You can read it on their website.

It seems clearer now what will come. At a first glance, it seems reasonable also.

Dreamstime Reveals Keywords used for Downloading

Dreamstime has announced today a new and welcome feature.

From now on, you'll be able to know which keywords were used by a buyer when one of your images is downloaded.

This feature, present in some macrostock agencies, is a complete novelty in the microstock world.

In their brief presentation of the new feature in their forums, they say information about this is being collected since Jan, 4th, 2008.

A note also about relevancy. The agency revealed that in visual search features (by browsing, I believe) no information is revealed. Also, and I quote from their announcement, "In some cases (below 1%) there might be a discrepancy between what shows there and what the buyer actually used for downloading."

To access the new information, all you have to do is check your earnings page in the management area. Next to each image downloaded are now presented the keywords used by the buyer to find your image.

Kudos to Dreamstime for this very useful feature.

The Microstock Revolution?

An interesting discussion has been started at the MicrostockGroup.com forums.

Some of the main sellers are claiming drops in sales, despite the constant upload of high quality, expensive production images.

Microstock is changing and the offer of new images as immensely increased in the last couple of years. When I first joined Shutterstock, they had about 500.000 images and about 59.000 sellers. Two years gone, and Shutterstock is reaching 3.000.000 (three million) images and have now 86.000 image creators.

My personal portfolio increase in percentage (about 100% a year) is much lower than the increase in total number of images (about 150% a year) and that means my portfolio is less representative and harder to find. Also, there are plenty of offers of images of, to name a few, high-tech objects, business concepts, lifestyle, seasonal concepts, etc. To succeed you have to set yourself apart from the croud, either finding a niche (that won't be a secret for too long) or being innovative and going for high end production.

Also, as the offer increases, quality has equally grown. At a time, microstock was seen as the market for low quality, amateur images. Today, there are big productions involved and quality wise, there's not much to differenciate microstock images from other more expensive markets.

The higher sellers claim drops in sales, while their portfolios have grown in quantity and quality. Agencies have now higher standards and contributors need better equipment and better/more expensive/time consuming productions. Cost of business rose up while earnings have not followed the same evolution curve.

Some voices are now pointing the finger to the subscription model and how unfair it is to image producers. But this is a numbers game and credit sales accross the board are far from the number of sales achieved by the successful subscription models. It's like saying "I don't like it, but can't live without it".

It's possible that agencies will increase prices in order to keep the best sellers to migrate to other venues. Midstock is the buzzword of the moment, where prices are placed somewhere between the actual microstock prices (dollars or cents per image) and tradicional agency prices (hundreds of dollars per image).

If the actual microstock agencies migrate to a midstock system (such as presented by Featurepics, Lucky Oliver and SnapVillage) where prices can be set higher than traditional microstock prices ($1 to $10) there will be a niche for lower priced images and story may repeat itself. Amateurs doing this in their spare time will be able to sell their images for a dollar while more productive, professional ones will have a midground to sell their images while the traditional agencies door doesn't open.

The good thing is authors seem to now understand their strength and ability to, as a whole, impose changes to this market.

What is proposed is:

1 - Opt-out any subscription program where credit sales are available. At the moment, only StockXpert and Snapvillage allow this, while sites like 123rf, Crestock or Dreamstime don't.

The question is we're probably going against the sites that really heard our wishes, like StockXpert whose subscription model was changed and turned optional by submitters request.

2 - Submit lower resolution images to subscription based sites, ie, Shutterstock.

The point here is that Shutterstock interpolates images to higher sizes. Ok, the quality is probably lower than a native high-rez file but will it matter?

3 - Give support to the sites that give better conditions to photographers and illustrators. Featurepics gives a 70% comission. It lacks the support of bigger sellers and doesn't have an advertising budget that competes with the most popular agencies.

Sure exclusive content (or at least newer content, not submitted to other sites before a 3 to 6 month period) would be an improvement, but can word of mouth effectively guarantee the loss made for not submitting to the more popular sites? Maybe in the long run...

4 - Delete portfolios or stop uploading to lower comissioned sites. iStockPhoto pays 20% to a non-exclusive seller.

The question is, how many of us can really afford cutting out a few sites from the top 6 list?

But, questions aside, the truth is the microstock community seems to be joining efforts and asking for what they think is right. That may be a very good thing by itself.

You can read the full thread here: Are things going well in microstock?

iStockPhoto tightens Intellectual Property Standars

iStockPhoto has announced in a new article that in 2008 they'll be tightening standards regarding intellectual property standards.

Basically, some images involving protected content will be no longer accepted. As an example, images taken from NASA will no longer be accepted. For what I can read, property protection will be strongly enforced as well as imaging containing well known products. There's also a mention to "abusive inspiration" referring probably to copies of other submitters ideas.

The rules are not yet completely defined, so there are not many conclusions to take from this brief presentation. I'll get back on this as soon as there's more on the subject.

One thing is clear. The microstock world is getting more rules by the day and as image creators, we have to plan more carefully than ever, in order to cope with those rules.

It can be a good thing (I never understood why people could upload images from NASA?!) but there will also be a lot of gray areas, namely in images involving some kind of property (houses, boats, cars, etc).

Before this announcement, StockXpert was already applying new rules to image approval:

- Any photo from any kind of bulding, part of a building or an object now needs a property release.
- Any person on a photo (even if not recognizable) needs to have a signed model release for the photo to be accepted.
- Any illustration/vector submitted can have no text in it (even if outlined).

Some of these measures are being taken to ridiculous proportions, where you have to get a signed property release for an image containing part of a window or a door or you can't write the word "STOP" in a stop sign illustration.

We'll see what the future holds.

123rf Implements new watermarking tool

123RF implemented a new watermarking tool. With the new tool you can basically reposition the watermark wherever you want on the image.

This is a great and welcome improvement as sometimes, the default watermark position can hide important aspects of your image. Here's an example of a repositioned watermark that, while still protecting the image, really improves visibility:



Some sites have weak watermarks, making image theft easy. 123RF's new solution is now the most flexible in the market allowing full control to the image creator.

Kudos to 123RF for a leading solution regarding watermarking on microstock sites. If you join this to previous improvements reported here in November, I think it's safe to say 123RF is making serious efforts to be among the best.