I don't think that it will ever make much of a dent.

First, because it doesn't really offer much that JPG doesn't already have.

Did you not read the article.  It offers a lot more than jpg.  A wider color space, high bit depth, better compression algorithm, and the option of going to a lossless compression.  jpg was developed before Windows 3.11 in the early 90s.  Don't you think a few new ideas haven't surfaced that are better.  With MS new format I wouldn't mind shooting in HD because of the bit depth would mean you wouldn't loose any info in the shadows and highlights.  You could adjust the exposure as if it where RAW.  I spent a few hundred bucks updating all my software when I bought went from my 10D to my 30D because my software didn't take the new CR2 RAW image.  Shooting in HD means you would get the benefit of RAW and jpg all in one.  Sounds great to me.

But ultimately, because it isn't free.  MS wants licensing fees.  That won't fly with most other companies, no matter how small, since they can use JPG for free.

MS isn't asking for licensing fees and is begging people to use it.  In fact they are spending their own money to help Adobe develope a plug-in for it.  I doubt they will every ask for money.

Mark

I really can't imagine how they could survive offering unlimited at $5.  I have over 100GB in photos alone, most likely I have close to 300GB of data.  I use an external hard drive at the moment. 

There is one catch that I found in the FAQ.  They throttle your bandwidth to 2-4GB a day.  So backing up 300GB would take about 3.2 years.  So I guess they are out of the question for me.  I'm sticking with a media fireproof safe and an external 500GB hard drive.

Mark

Having to update the software will probably be a common thing.  Everytime one of sites changes their log in system or layout the software will have to be updated.  Obviously they have little control over it.  My only suggestion would be to implement automatic updates in the program.  That way it makes it easier to keep on top of it.

Mark

I can't tell you how many times I have forgotten to change the ISO down after bumping it up.  Canon refuses to implement the ISO in the viewfinder in the 30D series like it is on the 1 series and 5D.  Many people want it because everyone makes that exact same mistake all the time.  It would be real easy to catch if the ISO was displayed in the viewfinder.

Mark

Alamy is not a fast moving company.  They take things nice and slow.  I think they have lately been under the gun and that is why they have been attempting to implement an upload process and redefining their approval methods.  But once again they have been extremely slow to get it started.  It took about 6 weeks to get my first approval but I wouldn't be surprised if it takes even longer.  It varies a lot.

Mark

Congrats, I've only sold one licensed image to.

Mark

IE seems too dumbed down.. it is impossible to find anything.� I am afraid that is what windows vista is going to be like :S

Yes at first glance once again MS sided with the dumbed down interface.  It took me a moment to go through the options to get the menu back on there and to re-adjust the interface to my liking.  The layout is fine once you get use to it except for the icons.  The force the icons to the right side and won't let you move them.  It drives me nuts because I want them on the left side because it is quicker to get to them.  That is my only complaint so far.  A lot of people have both and use Firefox unless they run into problems and then switch to IE for that particular site. 

Mark

I too could really benefit by an expert spending a day with me.� The biggest problem I find is the step in the calibration process when I'm to adjust the brightness of my monitor.� � The brightness of the monitor can make or break the photo!

The concept of color management is quite simple, the application of color management is a nightmare.� I've read many many articles on color management and I still get confused on how to get great results.� The problem with color management is the fact that it is only recently become a widespread concern and software and OSs have only recently began to address the issue.� Most of the implementation of color profiling and etc has been a hack job and each software program is doing it differently.� This wasn't a problem before because in the commercial industry where they have been worrying about it for a long time because they only used it a specialized setup and only one setup or process.� Software was developed to output consistent colors for a single streamlined process.

Now with digital cameras and photo quality printers it is becoming a widespread issue, and it needs to work across many applications and devices.� You might get your color management setup for photoshop and your printer only to find out that if you view the images in your web browser the colors� are off.� Or you update your printer drivers or change paper and your color profiles are screwed up.� Each program handles the coloring profiling differently and keeping track of it all is a nightmare.� This is true for both MACs and Windows, although MAC has done a slightly better job.� MS is promoting their new color management system in their upcoming Windows Vista but I'm skeptical.� Windows is becoming more and more dumbed down and I'm guessing their system is going to be better but over simplified for most serious photographers.� Only time will tell.� An effective color management system has to be a widespread standard that starts with the OS.� Every program needs to handle it and interact with the OS color management system in the same way.� Until that happens expect to get frustrated over color management.� Just my 2 cents.

So far I decided that using a monitor calibration system is good enough for me and I only count on photoshop and a few other color aware programs to display correct colors.  Like Pixart mentioned brightness is probably the largest weakness of monitor profiling.  The software tells you to turn the brightness all the way up, but I think this is due to the many cheap monitors and older monitors that don't have high brightness.  The brightness for the most part doesn't change the colors but just the intensity.  So the Spyder/Eye-one device profiles the color correctly but the intensity tricks the brain into thinking the colors are different.  This is a real problem for light or dark shades and when you print an image the highlights and shadows are way off.  Like Pixart I have to adjust the monitor's brightness by trial and error to get it right and turned my Samsung 213T down to about 65/100 to get it right.

Mark

I am planning on buying a second external hard disk.� The one I am looking at is a USB 2.0 320gb drive 7200rpm 8mb buffer.

Is there anything I should be looking for in particular or are they all pretty much the same?

When you are buying a drive that will run the OS or will be used as a cache during computation, performance is important.  7200rpm at 8mb buffer is the minimal specs you would want.  But as a backup drive your drive will be writing or reading in constant streams and most of the features don't matter.  So for backup any brand name hard drive will work fine.

Mark

There limits are extremely low and they are rejecting almost everything.  Very little is getting through.  I've stopped uploading altogether and have no intention of even bothering with IS until things improve if they ever do.

Mark

It was about 6 months ago.  I can't imagine you missing it because for one week solid everyone was talking about it.  My memory isn't good enough to give you an exact week.

Mark

I'm a part of the Alamy group on Yahoo and they discuss the search at great length.  So sign up to get the gory detail.  They have been supposidly been working on a new search engine for over two years.  I haven't been looking at the group lately to know if it has been finally implimented.  In the past each person was ranked into three tiers.  It was a mystery how they did it.  But essentially you were ranked on your first test images.  Once the ranking is set you are stuck no matter how good your future images are.  Also other agencies negotiated with Alamy to get a higher ranking so most people are put into the 2nd or 3rd tier.  When someone does a search it lists all of the images in the first tier before the other tiers.  So if someone's image is in the 1st tier and only has a few of the searched keywords it will list them before yours which has all of the keywords because you are on tier 3.  It annoyed me and a lot of other people to no end, but there wasn't anything you could do about it.  Your ranked tier made a huge difference on your sales so a lot of people are frustrator over it.  Alamy has been claiming to be developing a new search engine for over year to try and qwell the frustration.  They claim it will be more fair.  Hopefully it is.

Mark