Vancouver, July 09, 2010. The lives of all creatives, from marketing managers to video editors to entrepreneurs, just got easier with the launch of ShotSpy, the Smart Stock Search Engine. This video and photo search engine enables users to search the contents of multiple photo libraries and video stockhouses simultaneously. The site is now the largest marketplace for stock available today, delivering over 37 million images, according to ShotSpy.

The video and stock photo search engine says the site saves users time, energy, and money by aggregating the content of the leading photo and video microstock sites, such as Fotolia®, 123RF®, Dreamstime®, Crestock®, and ClipCanvas®. The content delivered is royalty-free and ranges from $1 – $70 per clip or image. Users can refine their search and save their favorite images and clips in their personal ShotBox.

© 2010, The F Stops Here. All rights reserved. (Jessica D. Korman)

In January 2007, Dreamstime made available an assortment of images under its FREE umbrella. The FREE selection—an original and revolutionary sector that has attracted bargain hunters from around the globe—is a successfully proven concept that has secured Dreamstime’s footprint in the industry as one-stop-photo-shop giant.

Dreamstime has nearly doubled the number of images available ABSOLUTELY FREE (increasing its FREE library of images by 10% in the first three hours of the FREE upgrade as effected on October 27, 2009).

While the total number of images in the Dreamstime gallery is fast-approaching 7 million (with the whole gamut of images all being licensed—from the FREE to the economically priced, quality images), the increased offering of the vast and diverse, FREE images (which can be used for any project) elevates the company’s reputation as a principal in the industry.

“We anticipate a significant increase in free images,” Enache said. “…increasing the number of available images from a few thousand upward toward the hundreds of thousands in the near future.”

Improving content daily, one single photographer may add up to ten new images. The FREE section will be updated in real time and imagery licensed under the regular royalty free license (the image may be used for its intended purpose up to 10,000 times).

Link: http://www.dreamstime.com/free-photos.

To further entice the photo shopper, Dreamstime has also upgraded the site’s search engine making results infinite. Rather than sorting through the vast array of high quality, reasonably priced treasures (as discovered by Dreamfinder), page after page, real-time results appear as the user scrolls down the page. Extinguishing slow page loads, the new “panoramic” option is one more Dreamstime “convenience.”

“We’ve enjoyed feedback from users telling us they are able to find the image they are looking for within the first three pages of suggestions,” Enache added. “This search engine upgrade will negate ‘next page’ loads which can be burdensome to even the most patient shopper.”

Link: http://www.dreamstime.com/best-stock-photos-dynamic.

Dreamstime.com is currently the second leading agency in customer number with over 10 million unique visitors to the site monthly. The acceleration in numbers overall makes it the fastest growing stock agency in the world. In addition to the FREE images available, Dreamstime’s growing gallery is constantly updated with images from the site’s more than 77,000 contributors.

“Dreamstime has reached its peak in the rate of total downloads; a new file is licensed every 2 to 3 seconds. The FREE image offering and search engine enhancement not only make Dreamstime images priceless, but timeless,” Enache summarized.

For more information on Dreamstime, please visit: www.Dreamstime.com.

© 2009, The F Stops Here. All rights reserved. (Jessica D. Korman)

United States of America (Press Release) August 4, 2009 — Established stock photography company PhotoEdit Inc. has published the results from its first-ever student survey. Conducted for several months in spring and early summer 2009 at the request of a client, the survey questioned 284 high school students in the local area about their thoughts concerning the stock photos in their textbooks.

PhotoEdit, which maintains a focus upon multi-ethnic educational images, was primarily interested in discovering whether the students thought the textbook photos were applicable to their lives and their curricula. The responding students found many of the images helpful, but found that others were “not helpful, boring, from another century, unrelated to my life,” or all four.

The full results are available in a free PDF which will hopefully be useful for all stock agencies and stock photographers, as it offers insight into the minds of the end users. Anyone interested in the research can have the PDF file sent directly to them absolutely free of charge simply by emailing PhotoEdit’s content manager at mike.margol@photoeditinc.com and asking for it.

Additionally, in response to the survey results, PhotoEdit was motivated to create a brand new collection called Images That Teach. Consisting of 12 subject-specific galleries, the collection was designed with learning in mind: the images can help students of all ages understand concrete concepts in math, language, science, and other disciplines. The new collection also features the ethnic diversity that PhotoEdit is known for.

The galleries can be accessed from PhotoEdit’s homepage at http://www.photoeditinc.com and also from a direct link at http://www.photoeditinc.com/imagesthatteach/main.htm.

PhotoEdit hopes that the PDF and new Images That Teach collection will be helpful not only to stock agencies and photographers, but also to the publishers in the textbook field. Anyone with questions or concerns regarding the survey methodology, PDF file, or Images That Teach gallery is encouraged to contact the content manager at the aforementioned email address.

© 2009, The F Stops Here. All rights reserved. (Jessica D. Korman)

ClusterShot was developed by silverorange.com in order to fill a pressing need in the photo buying community. They noticed that a lot of the images on demand were not available through traditional stock agencies, and some images that are in demand are being rejected by stock agencies due to arbitrary “quality control” criteria.

ClusterShot provides easy sales transactions between buyer and photographer. They are now pleased to announce their pro account for $20/year. Among some of the features offered in the pro account package are removal of “ClusterShot” branding and individual domains for photographers.

© 2009, The F Stops Here. All rights reserved. (Jessica D. Korman)

The beta version of the Fotoglif image-sharing community and licensing platform is available now at www.Fotoglif.com. The site features more than 3 million images, with thousands of new ones from professional photographers and respected news agencies added each day from global breaking news, entertainment and sports stories. Traditional stock photos and images of everyday life will be added over time.

In addition to providing professional images for Web authors, Fotoglif offers photographers a revenue-generating outlet for use of their photos in the exploding online content market. While providing images royalty-free, Fotoglif allows photographers who post their albums on its service to tap into revenue that is generated via advertising views. A unique Registered Publisher Service gives bloggers and others who use the images the same opportunity to earn revenue from the site.

“Fotoglif is a great source of free images that aren’t available anywhere else. It’s been an invaluable resource for my site!” commented the writer of the World of Royalty Blog, www.worldofroyaltyblog.com, who goes by the pen name ‘Cinderella.’

Fotoglif also announced that it has secured an initial funding round from Hong Kong-based Sun Wah Hi-Tech Group, a division of Sun Wah Group, www.sunwahgroup.com. The company is a diversified conglomerate with businesses in six principal areas: real estate, financial services, infrastructure, technology, media, and seafood and food stuff.

“Fotoglif gives Web authors who want to add visual flair to their pieces an alternative to traditional photo stock houses and grass roots image sites, with the bonus of earning revenue from images they select,” said Fotoglif founder Michael Betts. “As a former photography studio owner, I see a huge opportunity to help photographers broaden the use of their images through our new business model. We’ve built our service to allow revenue sharing among those who provide the images and those who use the images – a classic ‘win-win’ scenario.”

Betts added, “The Fotoglif team is excited to be launching our company today. We’ve seen a gap in the marketplace we know we can fill, and we appreciate the backing of our financial partner Sun Wah Hi-Tech Group, the support of a seasoned board of directors, and the goodwill of our entrepreneurial colleagues within the Toronto technology community.”

How Fotoglif Works

Bloggers and other Web authors simply have to register for the site to begin to benefit from its content. (Any image can be viewed without registering, but users must register to benefit from the revenue share.) Once an image is selected, the site guides the writer on how to post the image: simply select the preferred image size and alignment, copy the code, and paste it into a blog or Web site text editor, similar to a YouTube video.

In addition, the photo’s location on Fotoglif can be easily shared right from the site to colleagues through Twitter, Facebook, Digg or e-mail. Registered publishers can simply track their daily image use on their statistics page. Payments to publishers are made through PayPal.

Image providers who want to host their collections on Fotoglif and participate in its revenue-sharing model can do so by contacting the Fotoglif team at partners@Fotoglif.com. A Web application and upload process is in the works and is expected to be available in mid-summer. Fotoglif already has partnerships with respected image providers including the European Pressphoto Agency, Getty Images, Newscom, Splash News, Thomson Reuters and ZUMA Press.

The company is also working on an application programming interface to give developers an opportunity to plug into the revenue stream. Anyone interested in participating in the closed beta for this service should send an e-mail to developers@Fotoglif.com.

About Fotoglif

Fotoglif, www.Fotoglif.com, is an online business that operates a professional image-sharing community and licensing platform. Photographs hosted in the Fotoglif site are offered royalty-free to bloggers, social media fans and other Web publishers to enliven the written word with high-quality images. The site features more than 3 million images, with thousands of new ones added daily from around the globe. The company’s business model allows Web authors who use the images, photographers and news agencies who contribute content, and advertisers on the site to all share in revenue opportunities. Fotoglif is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

© 2009, The F Stops Here. All rights reserved. (Jessica D. Korman)

The new imaginative flash-interactive tool pairs two images on the screen and challenges the contestant to select the best photo—the photo most worthy of purchase or download—based on concept, subject, aesthetics, lighting, composition, etc. This feature was initially established as a quality assurance system utilized primarily by the agency’s editors as part of their training to review the commercial aspects of stock submissions.

“We’re making the feature available to all members. It’s fun and will allow all users to learn to understand the difference between the images, degrees of quality and what actually sells,” said Serban Enache, CEO and co-founder of Dreamstime.com

As the member becomes an active participant, utilizing the feature and making accurate, consecutive selections, he or she will progress in a ranking system. As each member graduates from phase to phase, the images displayed on Stock Rank, and the comparison, will become more difficult validating the member’s ability to detect the most purchase-able image.

The DT players’ “tally” (or ranking) over the course of each phase will be posted on the community page to allow all members to monitor their success rate.

“The ranking system is designed to generate a fun competition within the Dreamstime community while enabling members to seek out that person who has an ‘eye for detail’ as a reliable go-to source for suggestions as to good/better/best photos in our blogs and forums. The participants’ skills summed together represent a grand wealth of knowledge that everyone can benefit from,” added Enache. “While Dreamstime has more than 70,000 photographers, the agency has 1.5 registered users–the majority being buyers. No matter the user (buyer, photographer, blogger or personal-user), every member has a natural eye for and interest in photography.”

PhotoArchiveNews.com – All rights reserved.

© 2009, The F Stops Here. All rights reserved. (Jessica D. Korman)

I like the redesign. It was smart of them to go with the black background, I think it showcases the images better and it is a departure from the white on most other agencies’ sites.

Now, for the details…

I like the pop-up in the initial search to choose between Editorial and Creative:

I also like the more search options pop-up:

I love the image preview, they kept the keyword search options, which was a feature I appreciated on the old site:

I would, however, like to see more options in “related search”:

One feature I absolutely LOVE is the “no people” option:

Another nice feature is that the sidebar is stationary as you scroll down the results frame:

One feature that I like personally, though have heard others complain about, is caption preview when rolling over the thumbnail. There is an option to turn “image preview” off:

If there is one thing that I do miss from the old site is the “refine search” tick box next to the search bar:

Overall, I think Corbis’ redesign is a success. I still love the collection, the results I got for both editorial and creative were, for the most part, relevant to my search terms and great images that I would select. The number of results may be smaller than some of the other creative stock agencies, but there were more quality images to choose from so less “bad images” to weed through. Another search filter I would love to see is a “cut out” option for silhouettable images. Except for the refine search option which they did away with, they did retain, and even improved upon, the many search and result features that made me love Corbis to begin with.

© 2009, The F Stops Here. All rights reserved. (Jessica D. Korman)

The above are screenshots from Dan Schwabel’s personal branding blog. Dan Schwabel literally wrote the book on personal branding. What does his blog and personal branding have to do with photography and photo editing?

Everything.

The first people notice when they click on your website or blog is how it looks. Before they even get to your content, people are going to get an impression based on the visual impact the page makes. You can’t make a visual impact, certainly a unique one, without the right image.

I came across that very same image many times on different websites and blogs. How is that personal branding, if the same picture can be seen all over the internet? A photo is going to lose its impact on the viewer if it can be seen across the web.

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As the web is becoming more accessible and used as new publishing platform, it should be integrated with tried-and-true print publishing methods, such as the employment of designated photo departments. Copy editors will ensure that your written content is correct and well-written. Photo editors are the ones who will find the most relevant image for your purpose. The image will be found based on the message you are trying to get across, the content of your site and the overall look you are trying to achieve. He (or she) will know the proper agencies to obtain your image, or if relevant, know the best photographer to shoot the image.

Web publishing is more than just finding the right web developer and designer, it is also about employing the right people with unique skill sets to help you achieve your goal.

© 2009, The F Stops Here. All rights reserved. (Jessica D. Korman)

Whether you are a large publishing house or a small website, a photo editor can help you find the best image and within budget. While it has become easier to search for visual content with Google Images, there are copyright issues. Just because you see an image, does not necessarily mean you can use it. A photo editor will be able to obtain the rights information and possibly permission for usage. If you are looking for a specific image that you would like to use, a photo editor has the tools to track it down, or arrange a photo shoot.

A photo editor also keeps up with all the latest trends in imagery and image sources so he knows which agency or photographer supplies the images you need.

As I said, anyone using visual content could use a photo editor. I’ll find the best images for any project. It could be a book with illustrations or historical photos or a Power Point presentation. People often ignore the impact a good image can make, and a bad image can make a poor impact.

This blog serves two functions, one is for the general public looking for images and how to find the most appropriate ones for their project, the other function is for image professionals. I would like to invite other photo editors, agencies, photographers, etc. to contribute to this forum. Comments are welcome and please feel free to contact me.

© 2009, The F Stops Here. All rights reserved. (Jessica D. Korman)