iStockphoto Now Running SXC

There’s an announcement on the front page of iStockphoto.com this morning:

We’re happy to welcome a new member into the Getty Images family. Starting today, the iStock team will start running Stock.xchng. That’s right: the world’s busiest free stock site is now part of our family.

So welcome to all you SXC customers and contributors. If you need any help getting around, you can give us a call toll-free at 1-866-478-6251 (international toll-free: 00-800-6664-6664).

I’ve not used stock.xchng before, but checking it out, there is now iStock branding all over the place, to easily get you from the free stuff, to the really good stock content.

There’s even a discount coupon for 10% off credit packages of 50 credits or more to get you into the iStockphoto buying mood: http://www.istockphoto.com/SXCoffer

It seems to be good news for iStockphoto contributors – a “competitor” driving business to iStockphoto.com .

How about a Vector?

Way back when, I described the difference between “photos” and “illustrations” at iStockphoto.com .  A “photo” is a pixel based image, wheras an “illustration” is a vector file – an editable definition of an illustration.  The artist combines lines, shapes and other elements, and as they are working, the editing program, such as Adobe Illustrator, renders the image from the elements the artist has created.

Vectors are cool, one reason being that since you have a description of the parts of the image in the file, you can tell software to render a pixel based version of that image at any size you want.  Teeny tiny, to super huge.  It knows a circle is a circle, and it can render out that circle as a 10×10 pixel image, or a 1000 x 1000 pixel image.  The circle just shows up with more detailing pixels the bigger it gets.  You don’t need editing software like Adobe Illustration to do something like this with an iStockphoto vector .eps .  You do need software that can import vectors, and I’ll go into that down below.

Another reason vectors are cool, is because you can go in and change colors and sizes of elements in the illustration.  Don’t like that box red?  Make it green.  Want that flower bigger?  Grab the group and scale it up.  For this type of granularity, you do need software that can edit vectors, like Adobe Illustrator, Freehand or CorelDraw.

What do you get?

So, when you buy an illustration on iStockPhoto, what do you get?  You receive a .zip file, and inside you will, at least, find a .eps format vector file, which is Adobe Illustrator 8 compatible.  In Illustrator, the designer will have specifically saved out the file to be compatible with Illustrator 8.  iStock is trying to keep compatibility with this older format for many users who are using legacy software.

Also, you will receive a minimum 1900×2800 .jpg version of the vector.  So, right away, if you don’t have a program that will read in the .eps vector file, you at least have a .jpg you can use in your project.  Please note, some older vector downloads do not have the .jpg included.  iStock is going back through and adding these to the files uploaded before this requirement.  You’ll know if you will get a .jpg in your download if you can use the image zoom feature on the illustration’s detail page, as seen below on the awesome RUSSELLTATEdotCOM’s image.

You may also get other interesting things, like a .tiff file, or a .ai vector file.  Most contributors who have taken the time to fill their files with extra goodies note that in the description field.

What can I do with it?

Ok, you probably know what you can do with the .jpg file.  What can you do with the .eps? If you’re a beginner and don’t want to actually mess about with the contents, you can rasterize it yourself (convert it to a pixel image).  From this thread:

On a Mac, you can do that in the Preview app which comes as part of OS X. If you don’t have a Mac or don’t have Photoshop there are freeware apps that do the same in Windows. It’s really simple. And free!

From the “Tip of the Week”, regarding Macs:

Open the EPS with Preview. It will automatically convert to a PDF. You can save it as a variety of other file types as well.

Those freeware apps mentioned above for windows?  Here’s a google search for “.eps converter“.

But, you don’t even need to download something.  Most designers, even beginners, are using an Adobe product, like Photoshop, InDesign or Acrobat.  These programs will read in a .eps file.  So will Corel Paint and Paint Shop Pro.  In Photoshop, for example, when you open the .eps, it will ask you what size to render (rasterize) the file at.

In my example file, I have a filled star shape.  You can see below, that when imported into Photoshop, it has a transparent background, which allows me to easily place it over something else.  Cool!  That’s not something I could do with the .jpg, which does not save transparency, and would give me a white background for this file.

Remember though, that you can’t actually edit these as vector elements in Photoshop.  You actually need Illustrator to easily change the star colors (you could do it in Photoshop by messing about with selections and adding color and such).

Conclusion

Even if you aren’t a vector whiz, you’re certainly able to use vector Illustrations from iStockphoto.com in many cases.  You can make your own XXL image from a 1 credit vector.  Not a bad deal, and there are definitely a ton of excellent vector artists on iStock.

Searching the Forums

On iStockphoto.com, there is a forum discussion board. We’ve talked about everything under the sun, or at least everything under the site. It is very likely that at some point, you’ll have a question that has already been answered. Searching the forum may bring you an answer quicker than making a new post, and if it something that is asked daily, searching will avoid posting the repetitive question.

At the bottom of the main forum list, and each forum’s list of threads (discussion topics), there is a search bar.

It’s easy enough to type in some words, pick the forum you want (including all forums), and hit search. Unfortunately, the search is not that great in it’s user friendliness.

For one thing, results from the search are non-sortable. They come back in a quasi-newest-to-oldest list, but it’s a bit mangled. The date of last post is listed however.

Also, the search does not really like searches that are more than one word. So you could type in “how to find lost image”, but you’re not going to like the results. What you need to do, is pick the most important word that could be used in what you’re looking for, like “lost”. Well, it didn’t find what we were looking for, but at least all the threads returned seem to be about something lost.

In addition, the search does not particularly like numbers, or words less than three letters.

So, what to do, if you can’t get the forum search to do what you want? Use Google!

It’s easy enough to restrict Google to searching just the iStock forum, and then you can enter the search you’re looking for. Your search of the forums at google would look like this:

site:www.istockphoto.com inurl:forum_messages.php ( your search terms here)

For example, to find the posts in the forum where I have mentioned my buyer tip blog, you could search on this:

site:www.istockphoto.com inurl:forum_messages.php sjlocke “buyer tip” blog

Although the returns aren’t sortable by date, the functionality of multiple words works wonders. I hope this helps you to find your answers quickly!

More Free iStockphoto Content

Aside from the “Free ___ of the ___” content that I discussed yesterday, there are also some partner promotions out there that can be a source for free content.  These may, or may not have a regular license like content downloaded from iStockphoto in the usual manner.  I’ll try to cover that in each case.

Free Content

Microsoft Office

If you’re a Microsoft product user, you may have access to hundreds of free images.  Does the following apply to you?

You must have a valid license to a Microsoft Office suite or any of its programs or a software product that includes Microsoft Clip Gallery or Microsoft Clip Organizer to download this content.

If so, head on over to the Microsoft Clip Art Collection.  The images here are easy to go through, easy to select, and easy to download to your Clip Organizer.

License: The images in the Microsoft Clip Art collection are for your personal use, only!  Microsoft bought special extended licenses from the contributors to this collection.  If you need a regular license to use for business purposes or a higher resolution version, each image has a link to the iStockphoto regular image download page.  For more details on the Clip Art license, see: http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/permissions/default.mspx#E4

HP Promotion

Logging in, and going to the following site link allows you to download 30 out of 52 free images: http://www.istockphoto.com/imageoffer.php?lpid=hpfree

These images come with the standard iStockphoto license.

Caldera Imaging

Like HP, if you are logged in and go to the following link, you can download 10 out of the 15 images provided: http://www.istockphoto.com/calderaoffer

Again, normal iStockphoto license.

Free Credits

Here is a link to sign up with a the code “5EDUFREE” for 5 free credits, and 20 free image downloads from a pre-selected group: http://www.istockphoto.com/educationaloffer

If anyone wants 10 free credits when signing up a new buyers account, just get in email contact with me, or leave a comment with your contact here, and I will send you a code.

Discounts

The following codes all say they work on your first purchase, but it couldn’t hurt to try to use them on subsequent purchases as well.

The code “TWIP” will give you 20% off of your first purchase price of $60 or more.

Use the code “5COOPT” during your credit purchase, and get 20% off your first purchase.  Plus, when logged in, you’ll be able to download 30 out of 60 pre-selected images, here: http://www.istockphoto.com/scoopt

Use “TWITSTOCK” when purchasing, to get 20% off of your first $60 or more Pay-as-you-go credit purchase, or get 20% off your first 30 credits/day Subscription with “TWITSUB”.  More info here: http://istockphoto.com/twitstock

Courtesy of HP Training, get a first purchase 20% discount on Pay-as-you-go credit packages over $60, plus 20 out of 50 free images here: http://www.istockphoto.com/hptraining.php?code=hpcd_en

From StockLayouts.com, get a first purchase discount of 20% on a $25 minimum PAYG order, when you enter “5TOCK1AYOUT5″ and 20 out of 50 free images here: http://www.istockphoto.com/stocklayout.php

Conclusion

Those “X out of Y” content download areas seem to have differing images, so pick your favorite and download away.  I hope some of this will be able to save you some money and make you a longtime customer.

Public Lightboxes

I’ve discussed the iStockphoto.com “private” lightbox before, as a way for contributors or buyers to keep a collection of images together for later viewing.  So, if that is a “private” lightbox, what is a “public” one?

A “public lightbox” is a collection of images from the community that revolves around a theme.  This theme could be “Halloween“, or “Blank Signs“, or “The Environment“.  These lightboxes must contain at least 20 images and have content from more than one artist.  A public lightbox can be moderated by 1 or more persons, who have an interest in contributing to the community in such a way.  They can, of course, contain the contributor’s images, but the intent is to provide a wide variety of targeted imagery to the viewer.  The moderator can add the images from searching the collection for something specific, or from requests from other contributors to add their images.

These public lightboxes are searchable from the site Lightbox Page , which you can get to by clicking the link at the top of most pages, or the sidebar, occasionally.

You will find, however, that some contributors will clog up the lightbox search with personal image lightboxes, with one image from another artist to get around that requirement for variety.  Unfortunately, there are some bad apples who realize the intent of the rule, but feel their desires are more important.  If you feel there is an issue with this, I would contact iStockphoto support, as we have not been able to get this regulated.

Anyhow, on the lightbox page, you will find several items.  The search bar for searching the public collection, the public lightbox of the week, newly added lightboxes, the lightbox blog where people request images for new boxes, and if you are logged in, the moderation panel.

Hopefully, the question you are wondering, is “Why would I search lightboxes when I could just use the search”, which is a great question.

You’ll find there are some wonderful collections out there, moderated by people with an active interest in serving the buying community.  As in the above “Blank Sign” collection, there is someone who has made an effort to pull out the best images along that theme, from the content collection.  When you search, you may find images coming up for “blank, card” that don’t fit the bill because their keywords are inappropriate (accidentally or purposefully).  Some may have the sign as an insignificant part of the image.  With the moderated public lightbox, someone is trying to present what they feel is the best of what they found.  You may agree with that, or not.

It may also help you to brainstorm, if you look along different themes.  I entered “future”, and as one result, got back “The Road Ahead“, a collection of “Long, straight or curvy roads going off into the distance.”  It may not have been something you had even considered for your project.  But there is a bunch for you to look at.  You may also find futuristic collections of backgrounds, or people, or abstracts.

So, consider the Public Lightbox search as an alternate to the regular search, when looking for themed imagery.

One note, keep in mind that your image collections for a project or for fun, can be kept private.  That just means they don’t show up in the search.  Others can still view them with a link in an email or blog.  This just helps to keep the collection clean, because it doesn’t particularly help other buyers to see “ABC Business Collection for XYZ Project” in the public search.

Is it Safe?

There’s a popular misconception that it is dangerous in some way to use imagery from a microstock content site, such as iStockphoto.com .  Dangerous in a legal sense.  That someone may come back someday and say that you don’t have the right to use a certain image.

Rest assured that buying an image from iStockphoto is very safe.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever read of a buyer who followed the licensing terms, having a legal issue.

Let’s take a look at several things that can assure you, the buyer.  Keep in mind, I’m not a lawyer, but a sensible person who reads a lot .  Note that in the following paragraphs, I’m addressing using imagery in a commercial context (advertisements and promotions), and not particularly editorial (educational and news pieces).  While you are free to also use iStock content in an editorial context, iStockphoto does not offer a section of unreleased (model or property) content, such as celebrities or newsworthy events.  I believe this is to help protect buyers who may be confused about the differences between the two types of uses.

The Model Release

When an image is used in a commercial context, such as an advertisement, or food packaging, or book cover, there needs to be permission given from the model in the content.

This permission is communicated in what is known as the model release.  You can view the current iStockphoto model release here .

by signing this release I hereby give the Photographer/ Filmmaker and Assigns my permission to license the Images and to use the Images in any Media for any purpose (except pornographic or
defamatory) which may include, among others, advertising, promotion, marketing and packaging for any product or service.

….

I acknowledge and agree that I have no further right to additional Consideration or accounting, and that I will make no further claim for any reason to Photographer/Filmmaker and/or Assigns.

So, with the release, the model is giving permission to use their likeness, and assurance that they will not be coming back in the future with any claims of any sort.  The release does offer the model some protection as well, regarding allowed uses, and the iStockphoto license agreement is very clear about what is allowed and what is not.  See section 4.a. of the agreement.

iStockphoto has always required a model release for images where the subject is clearly recognizable by the average person.  This used to be the industry “standard”, if you will.  There has been some concern lately that this standard might not offer enough protection to the buyer, so iStock has stepped up it’s requirement for a model release to include any photo where a person is the main subject, recognizable or not.  See this article’s section about contextual model releases: Evolving IP Standards .  This new standard started around January of 2008, so there has been a reduction in the number of “grab shots” of random people in the collection.  Some earlier content that might fall under this new standard may not have a release, such as people from the back or someone from the waist down, but to be honest, I’ve not read of any legal issues with images of that sort.

While the image details page does not currently tell you if there is a release for an image, you can rest assured that any image where the subject(s) are identifiable has a release.  If you have a question about an earlier piece of content, you can always contact support for a definite answer as to whether a release is attached.  We, as contributors, are making an effort to have this information provided on the details page.

As an aside, these are two great places to read about releases and legal issues:

1. Carolyn Wright’s photoattorney.com
2. Dan Hellar’s photography website

Property Release

Like a model release, the property release is permission from the owner/creator of recognizable property in the content to use that property in an image sold for commercial use.  Typically, on iStockphoto, the property release is used in an instance where another person’s art is visible in the content, like a painting on a wall, or a sculpture in a park.  There is a time limit on a person/heir’s right to protect their work, and that right usually goes away after 70 years after their death.  So you will see a lot of very old sculptures (early 1900’s and earlier) in public places on iStock.  What you won’t see is famous paintings in museums, because the museums will control the publicity rights of the pieces they own, and that includes commercial photography.  You may see modern sculptures if commissioned by a public government, and the government has the right to assign commercial rights to the photographer.

Another usage, is for actual property.  Images of publicly visible buildings taken from publicly accessible roads tend to be fair game for commercial photography.  An exception is property that has been trademarked, or is part of a trademarked logo, such as the famous Pebble Beach Lone Cypress .  Or the copyrighted nighttime light display at the Eiffel Tower .  Sometimes these things are ok in an image, as long as it is not the main subject of the image.  The London Eye is not permitted as a main subject on iStockphoto, but it can be included as a minor part of the London skyline.

After some resistance from the photographic community, the need for some property releases may be relaxing.  Witness the famous Rock and Roll Hall of Fame case, wherein it was determined that trademark protection for a piece of property may not actually be that easy to achieve for the property owner.

Rest assured, the iStockphoto inspection team is very vigilant and up to date when it comes to property releases, and they will err on the side of caution.

Conclusion

While, ultimately, in my opinion (and most that I’ve read), the onus to use a photo correctly falls on the buyer (and is stated so in the iStockphoto legal agreement), iStockphoto makes every reasonable effort to protect the, perhaps unknowledgable in these matters, buyer when it comes to properly released images.  While there is no buyer warranty provided as such, iStockphoto does their best to provide content that is safe for the buyer to use.  This is not some amateur photo sharing site where there is no oversight on these types of things.  This is a business, and is run as such.

Feel safe to purchase away!

Already Popular

Guess people out there like these buyer tips.  A search on google for “istockphoto buyer tips” puts this blog as the second entry, just after iStockphoto itself.

I have to admit, the field is a little light, as most stock image contributors seem to enjoy putting up blogs encouraging the competition, like “How to Make Money in Stock Photography”.  I don’t understand that – I think we should be helping those who are trying to buy our images, and have a successful business.

Thanks for reading!

iStockphoto email

iStockphoto.com likes to keep you in the loop.  How much you are in the loop depends on you, ie. how much email do you want to receive?

In the upper right of your screen, next to your language choice, is the link for your “Control Panel”.  Clicking on this will reveal an html layer below the title bar with lots of other interesting things to explore regarding some of your site preferences.  Let’s look at the section titled “Notifications”.

So what are each of these?

1. Email Newsletter :  Every two weeks, on Thursdays, iStockphoto sends out “The Contact Sheet”.  This newsletter is jammed with little goodies.  Usually several short articles which may be about something that is happening, like a contest, a new photo trend, some new tech gadget for photography or maybe a price change or discount.  There are also typically links to the free images offered that week.  A side bar normally contains a short article from an inspector or a designer with some useful tips.  There are links to active threads in the forums as well.  Pretty much a “What’s Going On” for iStock.Here is a link to a recent “Contact Sheet”: http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=490You can also search back through old articles (including the Contact Sheet) here .There is a separate “Contact Sheet” for buyers and contributors.

   Also falling under this heading, is the bi-weekly “Hot Shots” newsletter, which is a collection of images from both iStockphoto and Getty Images, the parent company of iStock.  It’s a purely promotional piece, but it’s fun to see what is showing up on both sites, and compare them.  (Well, that’s fun for us, anyways)

2. Email Weekly Tips : Twice a month, on Tuesdays, iStock sends out a weekly tip.  Ok, so it’s a bi-weekly tip .  This is normally a more extended article on something, like using something in the Advanced Search or how to buy images in the Dollar Bin.  It’s not something you need to survive, but something that would probably help out a bit.  The kind of thing I’ve been writing here, I guess.Find previous tips of the week here .
3. Email Partner News : This, and the following choice are rarely used, but this one deals with allowing iStock to send you news about any of the partners it may deals with.
4. Marketing Offers : While iStockphoto does not sell your email, they do at times come up with marketing promotions you may want to know about.  Like #3, I can’t really remember ever receiving anything to do with this, but that doesn’t mean something might turn up in the future.

If you write on your iStockphoto blog, you can also turn on or off your “Blog Comment Notification” to get or not get email when someone responds to your blog post.  That’s under “Profile” in your Control Panel.

Have a good week!

Your name here!

Everyone likes to personalize their design work, and an easy way to make something “yours”, is to find an image made for just that purpose.  A billboard, hand with business card, sign, whatever, that you can just photoshop your work into.  Again, finding these on iStockphoto.com is all about using keywords.

What are some good keywords to find things like this?

• blank
• empty
• copy space

Pair that up with what you are looking for, like:

• “business card”
• sign
• billboard

… and you get a pretty good result.

Another, similar design element, is the “white card”, which is someone standing next to or above an area of white.  This may also be called a “cut out”.

These are easy to put next to, or above an ad, or a website page, or anything like that.

Of course, once you have an image like this, it is fairly easy to use Photoshop or your image processing tool to add your content in.  For things like billboards or business cards that are not square to camera, you would want to use the transform tool to drag the corners of your content about (hold down cntrl on Windows) to fake perspective.

If you find any other good keywords for this type of thing, let me know!

“Photos” and “Illustrations”

Lets take a look at the terminology “photos” and “illustrations” when it comes to iStockphoto.com .

“Photo” on iStock, means a raster image.  An image made of of individual pixels, or what is known as a bitmapped image.  The kind of image that you cannot resize larger, without losing detail.  A “photo” can be any of the following:

• an image created by a digital camera
• an image created by scanning a slide or film negative into an image processing program
• a 3d computer render from something like Maya or 3dsMax
• a photograph, or a scan of a piece of traditional media art, like a painting, or pastel work
• a digital illustration created entirely in a raster image program, like Photoshop, or Painter

“Illustration” on iStock, means an image that is actually created mathematically in a program such as Adobe Illustrator, which is then rendered to your screen by the engine of the program.  The contributor doesn’t work mathematically, but creates shapes and constructs using visual tools.  The resulting file is, however, a mathematical or programmed description of the file.

Because the image is actually rendered to the screen by this description, the program can render out any size image you like, without losing detail.  This is in contrast to the “photo” or raster image above, where every pixel in the image is assigned a color, and trying to resize it means trying to make up data between two pixels that doesn’t exist.

This is why “photos” are priced by the size of the image, and vectors, which are infinitely resizable by their nature, are not.  They are priced on skill and complexity.  If you need extra detail (size) in a “photo”, you pay for it.

So, now that we understand the difference, we can use it to find what we are looking for.

At the top of every page on the site is the search bar.  As you can see, there are checkboxes for each type of media iStock sells.  Unfortunately, this piece (the checkboxes) of user interface can be a little flakey.  ie, it is hard to make your choice “stick”.  I’ll try to visit this gem on another day.

Assuming you can get your choice to stick, you can select just “photos” (raster images) or “illustrations” (vector images) to search through.

Lets say you are looking for a traditionally painted image of a bird.  You know you do not want a vector file for whatever reason, so you uncheck “illustrations” in the search bar.  You can then search for:

bird “painted image”

So, we did pretty good, however, we are getting some actual photographs that include painted birds.  Lets try adding in “illustration”:

bird “painted image” illustration

Much better.

So the point, is to first figure out whether you want a “photo” (raster image) or “illustration” (vector image) for your design.  Then you can use keywords for media types, like “painted image” or “pastel drawing”.  Finally, if searching “photos” you can use the keyword “illustration” to get rid of images that maybe show actual pastels or something that is painted.

Here’s some good keywords to get you going:

• “painted image”
• “pastel drawing”
• “digitally generated image”
• 3d
• “charcoal drawing”
• “pencil drawing”
• “chalk drawing”
• “pen and ink”
• “crayon drawing”
• “mixed media”
• “stained glass”

There’s a lot of great non-vector illustration work on iStock.  Of course, there’s a lot of great vector illustration as well.

If you need help with raster art, contact diane555 .   She’s the iStock contact person for this type of image.