Getty just put the axe on Stockxpert.com

We’ve heard that Stockxpert was a slowly sinking ship, but this week it has finally sunk.  It all began when stock image giant Getty recently bought out Jupiter, who had recently acquired Stockxpert from Haap Media, a Hungarian based company that owned both StockXchange as well as StockXpert.  It’s like a big square dance in this business… swing your parter round and round, with all of the buyouts.  It was announced a few days back that StockXpert will be no more.  What does this mean for stock contributors?  Well it means some of our images (not all) are now going to be listed on the new subscription based site Thinkstock.com and whatever revenues we were making at StockXpert are basically history.  Can we say pay cut?

I really don’t understand this move, killing a well established brand such as Stockxpert.  What does this mean for stock photo contributors? All we can hope is that the existing Stockxpert buyers move to the other agencies, and that the sales balance out.  Stockxpert was about 8% (a pretty big chunk of change) of my total microstock income, and that’s now gone.  Never a dull moment in the stock photography world! What irks me is that Stockxpert had around 4300 of my images, where istock has just under 600.  This is due to their higher rejection rates, and the fact that I can only submit 20 new images each week as a non-exclusive contributor.  The pressure to go exclusive is ever-increasing.  This is the exact reason why you shouldn’t put all of your eggs in any one basket in this biz.

I was thinking today about how incredible it would be to own a DSLR that was even 1/2 as good as our own human eyes are. Certainly cameras are just imitations of God’s wonderful creation and design, but have you ever really noticed how quick you can focus on any object? Talk about mind blowing; it’s practically instant. You don’t notice a delay, like you will on even the fastest digital cameras. They are getting better and better in time, but we can really appreciate how good we have it. Nature definitely did have it first.

Norman Rockwell was such a great illustrator, that he was practically a photographer.  His photo realistic images and sense of humor in his work have blown me away ever since I was a kid.  My mom used to hang prints of these on the kitchen wall, that she cut out of a Norman Rockwell calendar she got as a handout from the local bank.  We’ve always had beagles, growing up, so these are some of my favorites.  This stuff is just timeless.

The triple self portrait – pure genius.  For more info on Norman Rockwell, check out your local library or visit the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Here the Miz shows us how to conduct “Photoshoptic Surgery” on an image of a tractor with some dull/flat colors. Here we learn how to use curves and the photo filter option to really bring out the colors and saturation in Photoshop.

Are you as sick of these cold winter months as I am? Brr…

Just me goofing around, but maybe I’m good enough to be used on an HVAC direct mail piece or web banner ad or something?  Ha!

That’s a question a lot of stock photographers and illustrators ask themselves.  People ask me how my images get used, and I usually just say, “in advertising and marketing materials”, just to keep myself from babbling and boring them with a long story (like I’m known to do with my flapping jabber jaw).  It’s even tough to explain to a normal person what a graphic designer does, and somehow people still end up thinking its CAD or something totally unrelated like that.

Anyways, back when I was a traditional graphic designer, I would horde as many stock images as I could whenever I had a stock photo subscription somewhere such as Photos.com or Shutterstock. That way, anything I had a feeling I might be able to use in the future I would be able to save on my hard drive and then use at a later date. This is something that happens a lot; so basically if you sell stock images, a lot of them are probably laying dormant somewhere on an image buyer’s hard drive. When you have a design position you begin to get a feel for which image themes and what type of imagery you go through the most, and obviously you can’t keep on using the same pics over and over again (unless you want to be a boring designer). I worked at a company that went through tons of sports, fitness, and medical related images in the custom magazines we produced for our clients.  I honestly think at least half of my image sales aren’t ever even used – but who knows?

How can you find some of the images you sell in use? Go to amazon and search for your name or username/that you go by on the micros. Also try google book search in addition to plain old google. Lots of books online even have previews, and sure enough you will find your name credited in at least a couple if some of your images were used. Here are some recent finds my wife and I discovered.

Our beagle is pretty famous (he earns his Pedigree dog food, that’s for sure).  Try searching for your own images if you haven’t already, and start a collection of tear sheets. You will only find a small random percentage of images actually in use, because obviously not everyone will credit your name in searchable text in each instance of use.  If you don’t sell stock, but you do buy it – make a microstocker’s day by emailing them a link, or dropping them an email about how you were able to use their image!  It only takes a minute, and you will no doubt put a huge smile on their face

Here’s my first impression on flick panning, a new feature added to CS4.  When you click, drag, and release, the image glides and slides all over the place.  ME NO LIKEY OKAY!?

I found the answer already, after I recorded the screencast, of course. It’s so easy – just go to: Edit->Preferences->General and then uncheck “Enable Flick Panning”

A great video tutorial by Deke McClelland on how to use the reset and purge functions in Photoshop CS4 to increase the performance.  Clean out Photoshop’s plumbing when things get clogged up: Reset and purge.

This little Indian kid named Varun on youtube is a pretty smart guy.  I like this kid’s way of reasoning when it comes to mac vs pc.  I love macs, but I’m not going to lie… I think they’re definitely way overpriced for what you get.  I’m not taking sides, as I’ve worked with both for years.  I actually just ordered a brand new desktop pc with an i7.  It has more memory in the video card alone than my current (7 year old) computer has snapped into it’s motherboard DIMMs.  Savings? $1000-1500 over the new incredible iMac 27″.  That’s a lot of cheddar that can get redirected into new photo gear for me.  Anyway, I’ll be sure to post a full review of my new setup once it arrives.

Amazingly, a lot of graphic design jobs you might find won’t always have you on a mac.  Make sure you know how to use both – otherwise you’re going to have to educate yourself pretty quick once you land that first design gig straight out of college.  That means knowing what the heck you’re doing in Windows XP and the all new Windows 7, as well as knowing OSX.  Thankfully the Adobe programs are pretty much identical whether you’re on a mac or a pc, with the exception of the alt/option key on your keyboard (it’s not rocket science).

Wow, John Stossel actually covered the topic of graphic design very briefly on the abc tv show 20/20.  I must have missed this one – maybe you did too? He talks about the uber-hated comic sans font and even Paul Rand.