i'm impressed by this development, i was thinking it couldn't get any worse than istock's 15% but this proves i was wrong !

now, what's next ? what can be lower than 3% ? being paid with coupons for free cheeseburgers ? win a free t-shirt ? unbelievable these guys are still in biz.

The social media (including Flickr, Instagram and similar) already are competing with and taking business from stock agencies.

Today many companies and organizations barely bother with their websites. The bulk of their client facing activity is now via Facebook. And much of the content which they use is stuff which the staff and clients ('friends') have shot and shared on their iPhones. The social media has directly and indirectly reduced the demand for content - especially for the sort of low cost content which microstock used to be about. Simultaneous these organizations have in general significantly reduced their printed output - eg documentation, media etc.

In this example the direct recommendation (share, like etc) replaces the need for keywording. The ubiquity of Facebok, especially in a business context, post dates the financial collapse of 2007/08 and the world recession which followed. Back then many more companies (even small businesses) still thought they needed an old fashioned website - and someone to build it for them. That is a lot of business which does not exist anymore.

mediums come and go, and the businesses are just following their users wherever they go, no matter if today it's Flickr/FB and yesterday it was MySpace and ICQ, pretty much anyone is basically test driving any option and seeing what sticks on the wall.

ultimately the collapse of printed medias and the traditional medias is irrilevant in the eyes of the younger generations as they're pretty much happy with netflix, youtube, and the socials.

the only ones still watching tv are women and babies, the only ones still buying newspapers are over-40 men.

what we're seeing now is just a transitional era that started being taken seriously just after the 90's and will go on for another decade in my opinion, let's say in 2020 paper will be definitely dead and forgotten and everyone will be online with 5G connections as fast as 1Gb, that means an unlimited supply of multimedia content, paid or free.

so what about photos ? photos will be more and more consumed and in demand BUT how this demand will be eventually monetized is still the million dollar question.

it's logic that in a vast ocean of images, i mean trillions or gazillions of free or paid images, keywording will be THE factor and this cannot be expected to be provided in any way by amateurs and random people uploading snapshots on Flickr or Instagram, it just takes too much time and it's no fun and even if they try they need a background on what a proper keywording is all about.

so, if keywording is terrible nowadays for free/semi-free images you can bet it will go totally down the drain in the next years until it will become just impossible to find what you need due to spam and bad keywording.

this cannot be solved by any magic algorithm as the search engines did with text content.
there's no artificial intelligence software able to classify images, the best you can get at the moment is face recognition and good luck with that ...

editing, selection, keywording, these things just cannot be automated in any way.
end of the story, and same goes for music and many other things, there will be always a place for agencies and people providing solutions to their customers.

i'm the first one saying you can find great free pics on PODs and Flickr/Instagram but that means wasting a few hours on those sites while you can buy an excellent stock image for 5-10 bucks in hi-res with a proper licence and you dont have to worry if the image is on focus or if it's noisy etc as it's been inspected and picked up by professionals before going on sale.

strictly speaking, you can't beat agencies in any  cost/benefit analysis.

the many bloggers and tech writers ranting and raving about a future where everything is free and provided by freetards is total bollocks, makes sense for bloggers and other things where quality doesn't matter but for anything else and especially for serious buyers agencies are here to stay.

as for FB/Twitter/LinkedIN replacing corporate websites, yes i agree and it's happening but it's a double edge sword because you can judge the value and professionalism of a company just by looking at their web site and FB page, so don't worry they will all reap what they saw and those don;t even have a proper web sites are just telling their clients they're a fly by night company who can't even afford to pay a web guy to make a few static html pages !

the key reason for why microstock agencies are a joke is that they don't keyword in-house.

if you're supposed to be a photo archive a strict keywording policy is the most important factor, even more important than the quality of the images.

How do Apple, Google, Starbucks and many others get away with making profits all around the world without paying taxes on those? They only pay taxes to the IRS for profits they actually made within the US.

considering their net gain margin is 10-20% with peaks of 25-30% on a good quarter they couldn't stay in business if they were to pay the same taxation as anyone else.

actually this is true for a good part of the whole US economy, most of the Nasdaq listed companies would go bankrupt if they were based in mainland Europe where taxation can be up to 40%.

same goes for so many asian enterprised that use any possible legal loophole to end up being based in tax havens like HongKong and Singapore, without HK and SG it would be game over for all these companies barely making 10% profits and this is the standards in many areas of consumer electronics for instance, there's an obvious reason why cheap stuff is produced in china and not in germany while Leica or Hasselblad and Phase One are still based in very expensive countries as they net margin is high and they can afford it, i mean selling a 8000$ Leica M-9 or a 10000$ Noctilux lens you don't care if taxes are 40% you still make fat profits.

considering all things discussed here and elsewhere, 500px is a bad joke as much as FAA and all the other fly by night PODs.

i like the idea and concept behind PODs, and indeed it's never been easier to sell online like nowadays but where are the buyers ? where are the sales ?

istock started in a similar fashion but there's a catch : their core group of initial users was made of both designers and buyers ! the PODs instead are mostly made of photographers and they expect us to bring clients for free on their platform !

their product is good but guess what, it needs investors to put a few millions $ on the table for aggressive advertising and this is not gonna happen so far.

of course they pay higher royalties, nobody is buying !

I know only this (it works with Lightroom 5):
http://lightroomfocuspointsplugin.com/

thanks a lot ! downloaded and will try tomorrow !

yes, it works only with canon/nikon picking up EXIF focus data, just as Nikon Capture does.

BTW, I'm not sure if Nikon Capture reports the actual spots in focus or just the sensor spots that were used for focusing.

i'm sure the camera has no way to be 100% sure if the image has been shot in perfect focus or horribly shaken.
that's where a focus analyzer would come handy but i think it's not yet been invented hahaha ...

i wonder, is there any kind of software able to spot where is the focus in a given picture and to eventually assess if the area is big enough ?

i think it could be doable mapping the image and then checking for areas with higher color/contrast intensity but i have never ever heard of any tool doing something like this.

Nikon Capture only works for nikon cameras and it's using EXIF data to spot the focus, i need something totally different fromt this, ideally i could check a batch of hundreds of pics and the software will automatically sort out of the bad apples with bad or poor focus.

by the way, similar concept for automated softwares who can spot minimal camera shakes !

istock is now de facto just another Getty collection, if they close the Calgary HQ it means it's no more profitable enough to be kept as a spin-off in canada.

but there's no problem with that, i'm surprised they waited so long actually, the problem is istock keeps losing customers and has been mismanaged since day 1 !

they went from being the microstock's market leader to becoming just another irrilevant collection like Thinkstock .. says it all about getty's managers unless this was their plan from the start ?

talking about collections, i'm seeing more and more excellent images on IS and SS, in most of the cases with 0 downloads and 0 views, it's a shame and indeed it's a buyers market nowadays !

with that reply, you sound just like the "type" i am talking about. they always have one common denominator about justifying it, the overall lack of respect for women in general. you don't need to be rich to find a wonderful woman anywhere, you just need to show them some mutual respect. that goes both ways my friend, western woman or third world pick ups. just sayin.

but respect must be earned.

i do live and let live, i just don't want to surround myself around that lot. it gets rather sad to see on a daily basis some fat old westerner self applaud himself and his fat westerner pals how wonderful they are cause they can score young chicks on their measly pension. getting younger uneducated girls from third world poverty is hardly a feat. it's just not what i want to see and it's not what i want to be around. to each his own man, but i find it rather sad. btw, complainers will complain where ever they are regardless if they have never left their villages or if they are in bar girl heaven.

ok, but let me remind you the first rule of traveling is that everything is relative.

at the cost of going off-topic, these old farts have zero chances with girls back in the west but not because they're old or fat or ugly, just because they aren't rich !

in a poor country these guys are seen as rich just because they're white, no matter if they have barely a pot to pi-ss in, the locals will also presume you've enough money to afford airplanes and rent in downtown and eat in restaurants, that's "rich" for them and therefore for some girls you'll be a "prize", just as in the West a rich guy is always a good catch for gold diggers and anything in between.

the logic at play is exactly the same, just in a different way and applied into a different culture.

so, there's absolutely nothing to be ashamed of from the social dynamics going on in such places, girls looking for a rich suc-ker, and western girls looking for a "provider" with a good job, but for whatever reason these guy are blamed and shamed and yet nobody complain if a western girl expects to "marry up" or the first question she asks is "what do you (for a living)" in order to size you up $$$ ...

my opinion, girls are dishonest and rapacious everywhere and are treated accordingly, there's NO reason to survive as an old fart in the west when you can live much better in the tropics for the same price, i mean the concept here is really "surviving vs living" !

feminists and dogooders will rant about "exploitation" but it's just envy ... and they're the first fostering the real exploitation of the third world whenever they buy clothes made in cheap countries or tropical fruit or coffee or whatever.

And, there are some places with low taxes and excellent conditions, public services because of good management and no corruption. Smart people go there!

yes, but there are always hidden costs and that's the issue.

as for living on the cheapest possible accomodations : yes you can do it, as low as 50 bucks per months in some countries, but it doesn't mean you'll be allowed to live there safely ! as the only white guy in town you'll instantly attract unwanted attention from thugs and corrupted cops, one day they could even come to you with knives and guns and steal everything under your nose, you're an intruder and you're not one of them and the police won't move a finger ... the only exception is if you marry one of their girls and speak their language, then OK you're one of them somehow but never 100%, is it worth it ? i say NO.

As I see, many of the big players are based outside the first world which might be a indicator of production conditions.

it's also an indication that stock reached the last stage of its boom and bust cycle because you just can't get any cheaper than that now