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Using Lightroom to Track Stock Photo Submissions
I’ve been trying out submitting my photos to Picture Stock. Picture Stock (http:www.picturestock.com) is an “agency” for Stock Photo agencies. When you submit your photos to them, they make sure they’re “punchy”, keyword them, copy them to CDs, and submit them to 53 different photo agencies around the world for consideration. To my way of thinking, it greatly increases my chances of making sales.
Picture Stock charges fifty-cents for each image submitted until they’ve sold three of your images. After that, it’s all free. If one of the images sells, you’re sent an email asking you to prepare the file according to the client’s specification (since the files you submit are usually small JPEGs) and you are also sent a check for 50% of the sale. That’s 10% more than a lot of agencies pay you when you submit to them directly.
Right now, I feel I’m in the learning stage. I’m also guessing that the more images I submit, the better my chances of selling some of them. So, out of the 20,000 or so images I’ve kept over the years, I’m picking out 100 of them a month and sending them in with a $50 payment. That’s where Lightroom comes in. As I’m working in Lightroom several hours a day for a variety of reasons, when I happen to spot an image I want to submit for stock, I’ve set up a system for adding it to a Collection. When that Collection reaches 100 images, I Export it to JPEG to a folder called PicStok_# (# being the sequenced number of the submission), then burn it to a CD or DVD.
It didn’t take me long to figure out that I had to make it easy to spot images that I’d already submitted so that I wasn’t paying for submitting them twice and because, theoretically at least, all the agencies already had one copy of the image in their library. That’s where the color purple came into my life. Purple is the one Lightroom Label color that you can’t assign by just poking a number…so I have to be a bit more deliberate in assigning it. It’s also less likely that I’ve already assigned it to something else for another purpose. So I give the image a purple label. Then I choose it as a pick. Every so often, I call up the picks and drag them to the Collection I’ve already named Stock Submission # (# being whatever the currently appropriate submission number might be). As soon as I do that, the Collection shows me the number of images that have been dropped into that collection. I then open it while in Grid mode, Select All, and remove the Pick flag from all the images. Then I go back to work.
I just googled about picturestock - it seems to be a scam. Please check it out youyrself and maybe edit this post - its probably not such a good idea to advertise for them here on the LR blog :)
regards,
matthias
Mathias,
I'm very concerned to see your comment. Can you be more specific about what it was that makes you think they're a scam or give me some pointers as to where I should look? Beleive me, I'm just as interesting in spotting scams as anyone could be.
In any case, the routine is a good one for any category of photos you might want to add to continually...whether for a stock agency or for art gallery submissions.
Yes, the routine is very helpful, i was already thinking for awhile to achieve something like this and your system is good!
Google "pitcturestock scam" and you can find many forum threads of people reporting their experience with picturestock. I'll try to find some links for you.
this is a thread about it from sportsshoter.com:
http://www.sportsshooter.com/message_display.html?tid=1362
or this thread:
http://board.photosource.com/read.php?1,4280,7324
regards,
matthias
one more:
http://www.betterphoto.com/forms/qnaDetail.asp?threadID=4720
It is quite disheartening to see someone associated with O'Reilly and Lightroom talking about submitting to an agency like Picture Stock, when 5-minutes of Internet searching reveals that Picture Stock is not doing photographers any favours. Or treating them that well either.
Then again, we all make mistakes. It is called life.
Well, I certainly think you've all made me paranoid enough not to send the submission I was about to send. On the other hand, the fact that an agency has had pictures for a long time without selling them doesn't have to mean anything more than that no one wanted them. So far, we're only talking about three people's experiences. Yes, it makes me wary to hear all this.
As far as editing the post goes, I'm not sure there's not more constructive information to be had by leaving the post the way it is and letting our readers learn from it and to make up their own minds. The advice I've given for keeping track of posts you may be regularly making to the same source is still good advice. Thanks for listening.
Create a new collection for the submission, and tick the virtual copies setting. It's a more robust way to record stock submissions. For instance, what happens when you submit the same picture to another agency - you can't have two colours. Or what if you want to apply another colour to that image for some purpose? The VC also preserves the editing condition of the image at the point of submission. Colours are temporary indicators, not permanent stores of data.
If you read the blog, you'd notice that I suggested a new collection for each submission. The idea of making the collection "officially" virtual copies is a good one, so that they don't get molested if you do something else to the image that's in the main library. The idea of using the color is still a VERY
good one because it makes the images that have been selected for stock very visible when you're going through your whole selection looking for candidates. The matter of whether the color is going to change is a matter of your own self-discipline.
I read all the bad stuff about picturestock. I went to the links and read more bad stuff. But not one person offered an alternative stock photo agency that is not a scam. Is there one out there in webland? I had been thinking about Picturestock as a source, but hadn't arrived at the "checking them out stage". I'm glad I read this blog. But again, my question is, what is available for online stock agencies where people have had a good experiences?
Anyone?
Nick,
check out Alamy and Photoshelter.
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