by admin on December 9, 2009
General Information
Shutterstock is one of the “Big Four” microstock agencies. It was founded in 2003 and currently has over 9 million pictures online. With this, it is the microstock site with the largest number of pictures. Shutterstock has invented the subscription pricing system that most other agences now have adopted as well.
Submitting Pictures
If you want to sell your pictures at Shutterstock, you will have to send 10 of them for application. If at least 7 of those are accepted, you can upload as many pictures as you like. If you fail the application review, you can send 10 more pictures after 30 days.
For uploading pictures, Shutterstock offers FTP, a Java applet and a HTML form. They have a small set of basic categories of which you can chose two. But for any kind of graphics, the use of the “Illustration/Graphics” category is mandatory, so you have just a single category left.
Shutterstock has a very useful feature which is the reason why I upload my pictures first on this site: It checks the spelling of your keywords. If you have a spelling error in the keywords, you have the chance to correct it before you upload them to other sites.
Picture Review
The review for your initial batch of ten application pictures is fairly tough, and it might well be that you have to repeat the process. But once you have been accepted, the inspectors are noticeably less picky. The tough application is supposed to make sure that you are really capable of producing high quality content.
For my computer graphics images, Shutterstock has the highest acceptance ratio of all the microstock sites I upload to. Your mileage may vary of course.
Pricing
For a long time, Shutterstock has only been selling pictures via their subscription models that allow customers to download up to 25 picturers a day. Recently they also added pay on demand and extendend licenses, but the vast majority of sales still comes from subscriptions.
When you start out you get $0.25 for each subscription sale and $.81 or $1.08 for on-demand sales. After your lifetime earnings have surpassed $500, $3000 and $3000 these amounts are increased. A full overview of the Shutterstock earnings possibilities can be found here.
Payout
Payouts are made automatically after the month your balance reaches a set limit ($75 minimum, $100 is the default). Supported are Paypal, Moneybookers and check. You will receive the money in the second half of the following month. There have been no problems with Shuttestock payouts so far.
Community
Shutterstock have their own forum system where livley discussions are going on. It is one of the few microstock sites where the forums are not merely a question and answer place but also a place for gossip and in-depth discussion. Furthermore it is my impression that Shutterstock staff are following their forums closer than in any other microstock agency. So if you have something to say, chances are good it will be noticed.
Earnings Potential
Shutterstock has the reputation of being the fastest paced microstock site. New pictures are given a strong preference while older ones fall farther and farther back in the searches. Because of this experience the term “feeding the beast” was coined, meaning that you have to upload continuosly in order to maintain a good position in picture searches. Recently, the search algoirithm was changed, so this effect may not be as strong anymore as it used to be.
My personal experiences with Shutterstock are a bit mixed. When I started I was lucky enough to be featured for over a month on the “New Artists” section which gave a big initial boost to my sales. But after that, my earnings from subscription sales have not been overwhelmingly good. I got a few extended license sales though, and every once in a while there are on-demand downloads. But because uploading is hassle-free, I see no reason not to upload at Shutterstock.
by admin on December 6, 2009
A nice feature of Vue is the possibility to add dispersion effects for materials with a non-zero refraction index. Dispersion is the result of the fact that the refraction index of a material is dependent on the wavelength of the light.
We all know this effect from a prism where white light is dispersed into rainbow colors, but also the sparkling of diamonds is caused by dispersion.
In real life, what is usually called white light is a continuos spectrum of all wavelengths depending on the properties of the emitter. This is called black body radiation in physics. The perceived color varies with the temperature of the radiation and the properties of the sensor. Bright sunlight appears white to us and corresponds to a temperature of about 5500 K.
Now you might think that the “spectral” atmosphere settings of Vue will reflect the physical properties of sunlight. But if you create a scen with a prism, you will notice that white light (and all other colors) in Vue is treated as a mixture of red, green and blue light, as represented by the RGB values you can set in the options dialog for the light source. So in a way, the “spectral” name for atmosheric effects is a bit misleading.
The type of the light source does not matter for this effect. A spotlight acts the same as the sun or a point light. Thes types only differ in the way shadows are created. The special feature of the sunlight only is that it influences the sky and cloud colors, but the calculations for these effects also rely on the RGB values instead of a black body spectrum.
For most purposes, this “fake dispersion” does not really do any harm, as the spectrum usually is squeezed together so much that the RGB nature of the light can’t be detected. But if you want to do closeup renders of optical effects, you will hit the limit of realism that can be achieved with Vue.
by admin on December 3, 2009
When you want to offer your works on microstock sites, you have to attract potential buyers and convince them to purchase your pictures instead of those of other contributors. An essential first step is of course good keywording because you want your pictures to be found instead of to be collecting virtual dust.
But a typical picture search will usually give hundreds or even thousands of results. So it is also important that they attract the attention of the buyer.
It is important to understand that a good microstok picture will have the same effect on the buyer as it has on the buyer’s audience. You try to sell the picture to the buyer, and the buyer tries to sell something with the use of your picture. The mechanisms behind this are the same.
You only have few seconds to convince your customers to klick on your pictures. Keep in mind that search results are always in thumbnail view. Pictures overloaded with details and with many different colors look to “messy” most of the times. The best eye catchers are simple shapes and clear solid colors. White backgrunds help, but also black has it merits as it can enhance the effect of bright colors.
With the big microstock sites about to reach the 10 million picture mark, it is more important than ever for your images to stand out from the crowd.
by admin on November 30, 2009
To put first things first: This is not so much a review as a warning. At the time of writing this, I can not recommend to anyone to join this agency.
General Information
Crestock was founded in 2005 in Norway. It is one of the smaller microstock sites, although they don’t publish the actual number of pictures to the public. The company started with the ambitious concept to offer the highest quality pictures of all microstock sites while maintaining attractive prices for buyers.
Submitting Pictures
You can upload via FTP or a HTML form with 10 slots. Crestock has a very efficient bulk editing system can save you a lot of time, if you have filled out the IPTC data for title, description and keywords. It is one of the sites that refrain from using categories for pictures, so this will save even more time.
Picture Review
Crestock has the reputation of having the pickiest reviewers of all microstock agencies. This is of course due to their intention to offer only the finest pictures to their clients. Especially for technical issues, the review standard is extremely tough. Some accepted pictures will be downsized to a smaller resolution without asking. But there are also many complaints that rejections are inconsistent and sometimes plainly imcomprehensible. And also in my own experience, I had to scratch my head very often about the reasons that were given for some rejections.
The review process used to be very fast. In fact a bit too fast for my taste, as I can remember a few times when pictures were accepted or rejected within minutes after submittal. It really made you wonder how a picture could be properly judged in such a short time.
But now, things have changed to the exact opposite. Some submitters complain that their pictures haven’t be reviewed for two monts.
Pricing
Crestock pushes the marketing of subscription plans, but it is also possible to buy single images at a higher price. For each subscription sale the contributor will get $0.25. Regular sales will give you $1.
Payout
Payout can be requested, if your accout is over $50. Supported are Paypal and Moneybookers.
Currently, Crestock is extremely slow with payouts. Many contributors complain about waiting for months to get their money.
Forum
There are a few forums on the site, but there is not much going on. Common topics are “When will my pictures be reviewed?, “Why did you reject this picture?”, “Where is my money?” or “Please close my account!”. Response from Crestock staff is almost non-existent.
Earnings Potential
My earnings at Crestock are minimal. After almost a year of membership, my account has not yet reached a two-digit value.
Conclusion
At the present time, Crestock seem to have serious difficulties in keeping up their business. Finances seem to be extremely tight. Payouts are still made, but only after very long waiting periods. There have also been reports about staff members leaving the company which might explain the current lag in reviews.
One can only speculate about the reasons, but I would think that the “high quality for bargain prices” concept backfired. Less and less contributors are willing to give away their pictures for a quarter. Such low prices can only be justified by high download volumes. But Crestock did not manage to attract enough buyers to warrant the loyality of contribtors. This loyality has been undermined even more by the high rejection rate. Right now, Crestock seems to have been trapped in a vicious circle: Contributors are fed up and stay away, and buyers can’t find interesting new pictures and stay away too.
I suspect one of two things to happen within the next few months: Either the site will be closed for good or it will be bought by a competitor. The concentration process on the microstock market will continue.
Until then, I can only recommend to avoid Crestock.
by admin on November 28, 2009
If you look at the top selling 3D pictures of a microstock site, you will notice that some of them are just plain Earth globe pictures. This is a relic from the early days of microstock, where agencies had to build up their stocks and were eager to accept just about any picture that met a minimum quality standard.
Today, none of the major agencies will accept such pictures anymore. As most of the imagery is based on NASA pictures, they don’t want you to make money just by copying a plain picture. And they are right, in my opinion.
But with some creativity you still can create pictures that will get accepted and will be sold. Projecting the picture onto unusual objects is always a good place to start. Or try to put Earth into unusual situations or an everyday scene where it can replace something round. And if you can give it a symbolic meaning as well, even better.
Earth is a timeless subject. The things you can do with it in microstock graphics are only limited by your own imagination.
by admin on November 26, 2009
This is a followup to my comparison of Vue lighting models for an outdoor scene. Because lighting for indoor scenes is much different from outdoors, I am covering this topic in a dedicated post.
I set up a simple indoor scene, just an empty box with a few geometric primitives in one corner. Walls and floor are flat white, the ceiling is blue. Just as in the outdoor series, I made two variations of the scene. Again, all renders were made at a 640 x 480 resoulution on “Final” render level
1. Closed Box With a Single Point Light
Closed Box - Standard Model
Closed Box - Radiosity Without Boost
Closed Box - Radiosity boost 4.0
For a closed box, Global Ambience, Ambient Occlusion and Global Illumination models are useless because they involve the influence of the sky on the objects.
You can easily see that Global Radiosity is a must for indoor renders. It is also advisable to make use of the boost slider as the results will look even more convincing.
2. Box with Indirect Sunlight Through a Window
Indirect Sunlight - Standard Model
Indirect Sunlight - Global Ambience
Indirect Sunlight - Ambient Occlusion
Indirect Sunlight - Global Illumination
Indirect Sunlight - Radiosity Without Boost
Indirect Sunlight - Radiosity Boost 4.0
The first noteworthy result is that Global Illumination works far worse here than Ambient Occlusion although it is supposed to be superior. And it beomes very obvious that even with Global Radiosity Vue has significant problems handling tricky light situations like this one. Even with a 4.0 boost setting there are obvious light leaks around some edges. I also played around a bit with the advanced indirect lighting and photon map settings within the render options dialog, but was not able to get much better results.
For lighting situations like this one, Vue is significantly inferior to unbiased renderers like LuxRender or Yafaray.
If you want to test render settings for this scene, here is the scene file as download:
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download: Indoor Test Scene (318.34KB)
added: 28/11/2009
clicks: 63
description: Indoor scene for testing lighting models
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But beware, the user settings are set to extreme values, so the render time will be long, if you don’t change the settings.
by admin on November 25, 2009
I already touched this topic in my first post on this blog, but I think it deserves its own article. It does not matter if you are a graphics person or a photographer, the basic principles are the same. Making pictures is a creative process, no doubt about that. And many photographers and graphic deisgners see themselves at least partly as artists. But when it comes to selling your pictures in the microstock business, can you really call your works “art”?
The definition of what is art and what is not has always been a topic for lively discussions and will certainly continue to be. So I can only give my personal view on that matter here. In my opinion there are two things where the concepts of art and microstock are fundamentally different:
1. Personality vs. Anonymity
All works of art have a creator. Usually artists are proud of their work and will publish it under their name and may even sign it. There is always a direct connection between artist and work.
In Microstock, pictures are usually used anonymously. Buyers are able to see the identity of the creator, but when the pictures are published, his or her name will rareley be disclosed, and then only hidden away somwhere in the small print.
2. Uniqueness vs. Mass Market
For me, a work of art has to have an aspect of uniqueness. This does not mean it should not be reproduced and distributed, but it has to be in a context where it is given the importance that it deserves.
Microstock pictures are made to be sold by the dozen, and most of the times their use is only illustrative. They might show up in situations the creator would never have thought of.
3. Inspiration vs. Purpose
Art is made because the artist wants to create it. Period. If people like it, even better. Sometimes artists want to deliver a message, sometimes they only want to create something that is pleasing to the eye. Of course, artists need money to survive just as everybody else. So if they see that their art is not very popular, they might try to change their style. Creating something in order to sell it is nothing to be ashamed of. But the inspiration of true artists will always be their imagination and not the taste of the crowd.
Evidently, microstock pictures are created to be sold as well, but there is an important difference to art which I believe to be the most fundamental. In microstock, pictures are bought not for enjoyment but to serve a purpose.
Good microstock creators will try to make their pictures according to the needs of those who are supposed to buy them. Thier target markets are advertising agencies and publishers. But this does not imply that they should deny their own personal style and just clone successful competitors. To stand out from the crowd, they have to maintain their personality without losing appeal for potential buyers. This is the most important aspect of microstock in my opinion. Getting this balance right is the master key to success in microstock.
by admin on November 23, 2009
Luminous materials are a great addition to Vue. With these you not only can create interesting night time scenes but also useful microstock-worthy pictures.
I just told you that white is the favorite microstock color. But black has its uses as well. Bright colors just look bettter on a blackground, and by using luminosity you can further enhance this effect.
While white backround pictures appeal more to the general mainstream media, the combination of luminous colors with black leans more toward technological and youthful topics.
Creating luminous materials in Vue is so easy that you don’t really need a screenshot. Just open the advanced material editor and select the effects tab on the far right. Setting the “Luminosity slider to a non-zero value turns on the effect. Just play around to see what looks good. Also the combination of luminosity and glow can give interesting results.
As an example I included the green glass material from the first picture as a free download.
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download: Luminous Green Glass (7.89KB)
added: 23/11/2009
clicks: 51
description: Transparent green material with luminosity turned on
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by admin on November 22, 2009
In the atmosphere editor of Vue you can choose among five different lighting models. They differ in how the effects of indirect lighting is calculated. I will compare the effects of these models on a sample scene. But first here is what each mode does:
- Standard Model
A uniform ambient light of pre-defined color is adde to the scene. You can choose how much will come from the sky and how much will come from all directions. Horizontal surfaces will be brightened more by light from the sky
- Global Ambience
This takes into account the color variations of the sky. A surface facing a blue part of the sky will receive a little blue light, surfaces facing clouds will receive white or grey light.
- Ambient Occlusion
Every point in the sky acts like a tiny light source. An point on an object receives a bit of shadow if another object is occluding the path to the sky. Only objects within a pre-defined range will cast these shadows. If the path is free, the point receives light from the sky.
- Global Illumination
This is basically the same as ambient occlusion, but there is no range limit. So all objects influence each other.
- Global Radiosity
Instead of calculating shadows as in the AO and GI models, the radiosity models asumes that any obect that recieves light will reemit a bit of it according to its physical properties. This light affects the surrounding objects. This is done recursively. Vue includes an option to “optimize for outdoor rendering”. This effectively cuts down the number of indirect contributions because usually in outdoor scenes this effect is less relevant.
Comparision of the Lighting Models
To compare the different lighting models I used a simple nature scene with a basic grassland terrain and an ecosytem of red maple trees. I used two different atmospheres for the test: “Default” for a clear sky and “Glasgow” for bad weather. No other settings were changed. The images are 640×480 renders on “Final” setting with Vue 8 Complete.
Default Atmosphere – Clear Sky
Standard Model
Global Ambience
Ambient Occlusion
Global Illumination
Global Radiosity with outdoor optimization
Global Radiosity without outdoor optimization
The standard model is easily recognised by its uniformly bright coloration. In GA the shadows within the leaves of the background trees are very dark. They lighten up with AO and even more with GI which is unusal according to the manual. GR is almost as bright as the standard model, but the coloring of the leaves is much better differentiated. Optimized GR is a bit darker than standard GR
“Glasgow” Atmosphere – Bad Weather
Standard Model
Global Ambience
Ambient Occlusion
Global Illumination
Global Radiosity with outdoor optimization
Global Radiosity without outdoor optimization
The results here are slightly different than with the default atmosphere. Global Illumination is now noticeably darker than Ambient Occlusion and outdoor optimization for radiosity results in a significantly brighter picture.
Conclusion
The standard model should only be used if render times would get too long otherwise. All other models give significantly better results. Where there is no sunlight, Global Illumination will darken the picture as compared to Ambient Occlusion, with much sunlight it seems to brighten the shadows more than AO. Global Ambience is a good and reasonably fast alternative for scenes without much direct light. Global Radiosity works best in all atmospheres, but I would recommend it only for detailled scenes where objects are close to each other. I don’t think that vast open landscapes will profit much from radiosity. Regarding the difference beween the two radiosity variants, I think it is up to personal taste which version looks nicer. I couldn’t honesttly say that I would prefer one over the other.
For a comparison of lighting models for indoor scenes look here.
by admin on November 20, 2009
I just installed the upgrade from Vue 7 to Vue 8. One of the first things I had a a look at is the new planet feature. Now it is possible to have true planets with spherical terrains and their own atmosphere. In the previous versions there was only the workaround to simulate a planet by using a sphere primitve.
The feature is hidden in the main options dialog. Here you can select if your scene should be spherical or not. If you don’t select “planetary terrains” though, the spherical view will only be simulated. Otherwise you can zoom out and see your planet in its full glory.
The above render is the result of my first quick go. As always in Vue, tweaking parameters will result in even better pictures. But as this is a new feature, it takes some time to fully master it, so I decided to let you know about my first impressions right now.
I have noticed two things that could have been solved in a better way:
- You are forced to use a spectral atmosphere. I fully understand that a realistic rendering of a planet can only be done with a spectral atmosphere. But I was also hoping for the possibility to create unrealstic toon-like planets. It would have been better that artists could choose the degree of realism that they wish to inlcude in their works.
- To create the geography of your planet you are more or less forced into the use of an infinite procedural terrain. This means very high polygon counts and render breaks with “Building procedual terrain…” that are pretty usless most of the time because the camera is usually placed in a satellite orbit altitude where the planet surface basically looks like a map anyway. This becomes very noticeable at higher resolutions.
But still the planet feature is a great addition to Vue and will create a host of new opportunities for great pictures.
