Microstock
iStockphoto has launched a simple and intuitive
plugin for several programs in the new Adobe® Creative Suite® 6 (CS6). The FREE plugin enables designers to search and directly download images within the programs without interrupting their workflow. A one-click comp replace feature automatically exchanges comp images with purchased images, perfectly resized and positioned within the working page layout or design.
RM photographers Take Note!! With the launch of
PeopleImages.com Yuri Arcurs has taken away your last best argument for why professional art directors and graphic designers should go to traditional RM sites to license the images they need.
Four non-disclosed sources have told Reuters that
Shutterstock is looking for underwriters for an initial public offering (IPO). A Shutterstock spokesperson refused to comment on the report or to supply financial details about the company.
Bigstock has announced a partnership with the Freelancers Union, a non-profit membership organization for independent workers. The partnership will provide the union's nearly 200,000 members with creative assets and inspiration.
The Associated Press and Fotolia have announced a collaboration giving customers access to millions of royalty-free images. AP Images customers will be able to buy editorial, rights-managed and royalty-free images, including millions from Fotolia, on
APImages.com.
Non-exclusive microstock photographers whose images sell frequently on the current microstock sites may want to take a hard look at
PicturEngine’s new portal and marketing strategy.
Photographers set the price for the use of their images and receive 100% of the fee customers pay.
Everywhere Brazilian photographer Ferando Martins, head of Brazil’s Câmera Clara Photography Studio, looked he kept seeing the same face. Jesper Bruun, a native of Denmark, was everywhere. He was a tourist in Australia, a rockstar in France, a family man in Bolivia. He and a young woman were customers for Banco do Brasil and he is also pictured as a call center worker for Deutsche Bank. Martins’ customers seemed to prefer using images of Bruun rather than images Martins could produce.
A new search engine called
PicturEngine is getting a lot of attention in the blogosphere. It has recently been released in Beta after four years in development. The founder, Justin Brinson, also owns two agencies: Corner House Stock Photos and Picturesque.
Back in 2008, in an effort to try to compete with microstock, Alamy introduced its
Novel Use licensing model. This strategy allowed the company to license RM and traditional RF images for very limited small uses without risking loss of revenue when these same customers wanted to make larger uses of the images.
ShutterstockImages LLC has announced the addition of four new members to its board
of directors. Steven Berns, Executive Vice President and Chief
Financial Officer of Revlon, Jeff Epstein, former Executive Vice
President and Chief Financial Officer of Oracle, Thomas Evans, President
and Chief Executive Officer of Bankrate, and Jonathan Miller, Chairman
and Chief Executive Officer of News Corp.'s Digital Media Group,
bringing the total number of board members to six. The new appointees
bring diverse experience to Shutterstock's board, managing complex,
multi-market businesses across internet, media and technology sectors.
Since the beginning of 2012 there has been an explosion of interest by
Venture Capitalists in investing in microstock companies. This article examines the implications.
If your goal is to earn a full-time living from photography -- and
particularly stock photography -- you need to read this series of 14
articles. They were originally written in the summer of 2010. Since then
the general state of the photographic industry has continued to go
downhill. These articles discuss key aspects of the business and issues
that those who want to earn their living taking pictures must consider.
Online stock photography agency
Fotolia has acquired
Wilogo.com, a thriving community for design crowdsourcing. The community, founded in 2006, has been connecting companies in need of design work with a community of people willing to take on the job. Wilogo positions itself as a full service crowdsourced design community able to accommodate most marketing and branding requirements of client companies. Designers who participate have expertise in both print and web design.
Dreamstime has launched
Stockfreeimages.com a database of almost 400,000 royalty free image that they have culled from their primary collection. They are giving these images away for free. One of the interesting things about the image selection for this Free service is that Dreamstime has chosen to include some of its best selling images from its primary collection.
I received a marketing email from Pixmac today encouraging people to look at their
Easter Egg pictures in preparation for Easter. They have 29,723 images to choose from.
iStockphoto has announced a partnership with iGoogle to provide users a new selection of beautiful and immersive full-page themes. Initially, there are more than 30 themes in the
iGoogle Themes library.
Shutterstock has announced a yearlong partnership with
TED, the non-profit dedicated to ideas worth spreading. This partnership is designed to encourage more dynamic, visual presentations from the world's most inspired thinkers. As part of this partnership, Shutterstock is providing complimentary subscriptions to speakers at TED2012 and TEDGlobal2012. Contributors whose images are downloaded as part of these subscriptions will receive their normal royalties.
Microstock Group has published the preliminary results of its 2011 survey of microstock contributors. So far more that 700 people have responded, but there is still time for anyone involved in microstock to
add additional information before the final results are tallied.
One thing that has intrigued me about the microstock business is the
role designers and illustrators play as content creators and how their
participation on the seller side of the market influences imagery supply
and demand. Shutterstock recently reported that in 2011 32% of the
company’s total downloads were vector illustrations and that in the last
5 years customers have trended to move away from using photographs to
illustrate certain concepts and toward the use of very graphic
illustrations.
This article provides a selection of stories that will help the reader
better understand microstock photography and the state of the market for
images at microstock prices at the beginning of 2012. Some of the
stories in this list were written as much as two years ago, but provide
background on the subject.
iStockphoto has announced a new app that lets anyone create fast, fun
and free e-cards for use on Facebook. Customer surveys have revealed
that e-cards have become more acceptable and often preferred to
traditional cards.
Crestock has launched a collection of celebrity photos at microstock prices at
http://www.crestock.com/celebrities/. The collection contains real time coverage of popular stars from coast to coast supplied by top entertainment photographers, supplemented with an archive of past celebrity events – all from ImageCollect/Los Angeles.
Shutterstock (
www.shutterstock.com) has delivered more than 200 million licensed image downloads to its customers since its founding in 2004. This number far exceeds that of any other company licensing rights to stock photography. The company’s closest competitor in the microstock arena is iStockphoto. According to the latest figures from
istockcharts.multimedia.de iStock has licensed 116,134,740+ downloads. (The + probably represents a few thousands above this number.)
Fotolia has added 3128 fine art
images from the deviantArt (dA) collection to its offering. (
Click here to see the images.) The images are available exclusively at Fotolia.com.
After reading "
Licensing Images in Today's Market" a reader asked, “What are the right photos to shoot? What subject matter sells best in today’s market?&rdquo. This story will help you decide what to shoot if your goal is to make money selling your pictures.