Getty is not the only company engaging in massive editing of its file. Several Corbis photographers have been advised in letters from Ross Sutherland, Corbis Chief Creative Officer, that close to 50% of their images will be removed.
Image Source launched the latest element of its aggressively creative marketing campaign "Open Your Eyes." This time, the royalty-free producer wants to "Open Your Ears" to a new CD and Web tool that use sound, dialogue and audio effects to describe stock imagery.
In an attempt to relieve Indexstock (IS) photographer anxieties, Photolibrary Group (PL) has made public details regarding payments of outstanding pre-acquisition royalties and the ongoing reliability of PL's accounting system.
Photolibrary executives obviously hoped to keep the matter of unpaid Index Stock royalties on the back burner until the ethics committee of the Picture Archive Council of America finished its investigation. However, photographers have made it clear that they are not willing to wait the six or more weeks this can take.
A major dilemma for stock photo portals is finding the right size for their collections. Customers complain about too many irrelevant images. Thus, a small collection would seem to be better. But an irrelevant image to one buyer, may be relevant to another. Cut the collection size, and customers complain they can't find the right image. What's the answer?
For the past three months, Getty Images has been engaged in a massive reduction of the number of images on its site. The good news is that the average-return-per-image for those remaining on the site is likely to go up dramatically. The bad news is that most suppliers are unlikely to see any growth in revenue.
The Hamburg, Germany-based Avenue Images has launched a budget-image platform, Petit Price. Though Avenue is calling this a microstock venture, there are notable differences.