Effective 12/01/2009, Pixmac no longer offers automatic keywording.
Photograph keywords may be added manually at Pixmac or through IPTC.

We are trying to increase quality of our services every day. With automatic keywording, we found out that most users give us pictures without any editing or preparation. Those pictures usually don’t make it in approving process, but cost money.

That’ s why we are focusing on skilled photographers, now.

Place of birth: London, UK
Work: Professional web/graphic designer and photographer;
Branding, corporate identity, web site design, design for print
Study: BA Hons in Graphic Design, Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication
Interests/Hobbies:  Photography, cats (anything feline), writing music, playing guitar, cycling

1) When did you start speculate about your future as an artist?
Pretty much as soon as I arrived in the world! As soon as I could hold a pencil I drew… and drew, apparently I was always attached to a pencil or crayon. I still have a fascination with any kind of pens, pencils, notebooks and stationery!  When I was about 13 or 14 I looked into what was around in the whole art world, graphic design really appealed to me. I spent five years at art college doing a  two year diploma and three year degree – which set me up and on course into the art world.

2) What art or website do you rate as your best?
I like really clean crisp looking web sites. The web sites that I have done generally follow that approach, depending on the brief and clients wishes. I guess I like the branding and web site I did for Chocolate Rain, who wouldn’t enjoy working with chocolate?! Also, generally, the latest thing I am working on I try to make my best!

3) Do you work with your own photos and paintings?
Yes I do – photography is a big part of my life particularly landscape photography. It is always a thrill to be able to blend the two things I love together. Sometimes I will do a shoot specifically for a client. But I also use a variety of other photographers depending on the brief, ie for product, food etc.

4) Have you ever bought any photos?
I do buy stock photography and I commission photography, if it falls out of my comfort zone for me to shoot. Personally, I admire so many photographers, sites like Flickr and JPGMag have brought great talents together… so I am hoping to buy some work from a few photographers to add to our collection at home.

5) What do you think about amateur sites? And what do you recommend to beginners?
For either designers or photographers, get your stuff out there, join some communities and get involved, ask questions and talk to people. Some great talent has been discovered amongst the community sites and some have been commissioned by big agencies and companies. By get involved it allows you and your work to shine. There are also tools out there now to put your own site together without needing to know coding which are perfect for a first time out in the web world. Or perhaps team up with another designer that can put a site together for you, maybe you can do a skills exchange.

6) Are you going to any new project?
I have some great projects going on at moment, a CD cover for an inspiring up and coming vocalist. The CD is also going to use some of my landscape photography which is exciting. I’m also working on a web site for an international orchestra, a 40 page brochure for a communications agency that I have done the branding and website for, so moving onto their printed literature is great to be involved with and work with them in their development.  I have a solo show for my photography opening on Sunday, plus I am currently putting a book together based on my landscape pics….. never a dull moment.

The Pixmac microstock agency is proud to announce that we now offer 7 million stock photos for our customers. Only a few competitors can say the same. Our collection consists of 3 sources. Two are creative and one editorial called “Celebrity”. Pixmac is the fastest way to get a stock photo or illustration for your design for a price that might surprise you.

When the pink company launched its marketplace in September 2008 it might have seemed like just another microstock company that is trying to make it. But look how much we have grown in a year! Pixmac has partners in 9 major markets and its sales are growing faster than expected.

Our company is  growing faster than other competitors in the microstock market according to respected site Alexa.com and  the amount of pictures grows with it. Not only that, Pixmac invented the “One Stop Shopping” way to get inexpensive quality photos in a matter of seconds without need of registration. Lee Torrens, a well known microstock blogger, says: “I LOVE your one-stop-shopping idea! It has always been a missing element of microstock agencies…” Yes, Pixmac focuses on speed and user friendliness.

Pixmac offers a lot now and has more in the oven to offer our customers. For example, Pixmac is working with a University on a project that will change your searching abilities and will make searching quicker and easier. We are also adding another few million photos to the database soon and working on some nice stock photo searching tweaks.

This week we’re launching a new updated website together with features such as Moneybookers payment method which added with payments by PayPal and/or  Credit Card. Also we have included a popular feature that sorts search results by downloads or date.

Vitezslav Valka (CEO) comments: “I’m always thrilled to see our customers happy with the user interface. Everybody deserves an easy tool that just works. I’m watching everything that happens in the company and believe me, it’s better than Red Bull and Duracell together!”

And one last thing for insiders. Watch our Twitter for special offers!

We have decided to make a serial of few interviews with world top graphic designers and tell their life stories and experiences.
Here is the first one!

Place of birth: California
Work: Professional web/graphic designer and illustrator;
Write instructional books;
Create easy-to-follow Adobe Software Training DVDs on Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop Elements through Class On Demand;
Teach software design classes in Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver;
Study: Fine Art in Photography
Interests/Hobbies: Cooking (especially baking), walking, going to museums, traveling, and watching movies

1 ) Do you always want to become an artist or it’s a just coincidence?

I think I was born an artist. My mother says I drew beautiful pictures on my bedroom wall when I was 2 years old and took a creative approach to everything I did growing up. As a child, I was an avid drawer and painter, did weaving, and worked with clay. I got my first film camera at age 12 and took photography classes all through Junior High, High School, and college. Since then, I’ve continued working in photography, took up oil painting and illustration, and formed a successful career in graphic and web design.

2 ) Where do you gain an inspiration for your masterpiece?

Inspiration often comes in the form of a feeling or a conceptual idea, or the intuition that there is some kind of problem that needs solving or some part of life that warrants examination. With photography, I will often take an idea (however vague or developed) and then go out and find it. For instance, the inspiration behind some of my photographs is simply “evoking childhood memories.” With that idea in mind, I just live my life with my camera and photograph the things I encounter that are consistent with that idea. It’s not really that difficult; the things to photograph are everywhere if you pay attention. With painting and design, I often let an idea inspire me and follow it where ever it leads to create the final product.

3 ) How long have you been working with graphics?

For the past 13 years I’ve been working with graphics and illustration professionally as a web and graphic designer through my own company, Luckychair.com, and I’ve been doing fine art photography for nearly 20 years. In addition, from 2000 to 2004, I ran my own greeting card company where I created my own line of cards with over 110 different illustrations. I’ve also been a design software instructor at Noble Desktop in New York City for about 5 years, teaching classes in Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and Illustrator. More recently, I’ve written 5 instructional books for Wiley and McGraw-Hill and appear as the instructor in 4 Adobe Software Training DVDs from ClassOnDemand, two of which have won prestigious industry awards:

Books:

• Web Design All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies
• How To Do Everything Illustrator CS4
• Dreamweaver CS4 All-in-One For Dummies
• Web Design: The L-Line, The Express Line to Learning
• Dreamweaver 8 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies

DVDs:

• Fundamentals of Photoshop Elements – Training DVD
• Dreamweaver For Designers – Training DVD (Telly Award Winner)
• Designer’s Guide to Photoshop – Training DVD
• Designer’s Guide to Illustrator – Training DVD (Communicator Award Winner)

4 ) What tools do you often use to create something significant?

For graphics, I primarily use Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver, though for my illustrations I prefer to draw in ink first, then scan the line art into my computer and enhance it in Photoshop. For photography, I use a variety of film and digital cameras including a Nikon FE, a Nikon D40, a Holga 120, and a low-res VTech digital camera. For my film cameras, I prefer using Kodak Tri-X film and developing in Dektol or PMK Pyro.

5 ) Do you exploit possibility of your photos (taken by you) and drawing? Or you can afford to pay and download official photos?

As much as possible, I have tried to use all of my own graphics, illustrations, and photographs in my books, DVDs, and training sessions. Most of my web and graphic design clients, however, require very specific imagery. Therefore, whatever I can not create myself must be found elsewhere on sites like Pixmac. Thankfully it is usually easy to locate, pay for, and download the photos and graphics we need.

6 ) How many photos, for example per month, do you buy?

The number of photos I download each month is tied directly to the projects I am working on. If I’m doing mostly logo design, business collateral, and website maintenance, the call for purchasing photos online is low. However, when I am working on new web sites and web site redesigns, I might download anywhere from 2 to 20 images in a month.

7 ) Have you noticed the world crisis in your business?

I wouldn’t say there is a world crisis in the graphic/web design business, but I would say that clients have been more frugal with their spending. Summers are typically slower than the rest of the year, and this year has been a little leaner than in the past. That said, with autumn approaching and year-end budgets that need to be spent, I’ve seen a gradual increase in customers over the past month which I think will continue through the end of the year and well into 2010.

8 ) What are your plans to the future?

The future looks bright! As I continue working as a professional web and graphic designer, I will be writing another For Dummies book this winter and possibly a new title on Photoshop. I am also in graduate school right now pursuing a Masters of Fine Art in Photography. After graduation I will continue with web and graphic design and hopefully also begin teaching art and design at the university level. My ultimate dream is to continue doing design while I teach and show my photographs at galleries and museums across the country.

Many of you searching for photos were confused with credits, our virtual currency. Pixmac has solved that now for you. You don’t have to learn what credit is and you even don’t have to register at Pixmac if you need just one picture.

This idea came up from our research that most buyers are searching for just one picture first. Usually they realise later that Pixmac is so easy that they can use it twice or more times! The second thing is most users don’t have time. When they’re in a hurry and they don’t have time to learn how the credit system works. Or perhaps they don’t have the time to register at Pixmac. And finally they don’t wanna purchase more credits just because they may not use them in the future.

Our solution? One Stop Shopping.

You can just search for picture you need, click the download button, pay the price and that’s it! Your project and your life is saved. We’ve saved some electricity, you can take more time to watch the wildlife out of your office window. And if you want a better price, then credits are there for you!

Lee Torrens says: “I LOVE your one-stop-shopping idea! It has always been a missing element of microstock agencies so I’m very glad to see you leading the way with this. I imagine there’s a minor loss of leads through not collecting email addresses, but as the market reaches further toward less sophisticated buyers, I expect this easy transaction style will be particularly handy. Great work!” – More about Lee at Microstock Diaries

It is as easy as 1-2-3

You’ll need 3 minutes to have the picture on your disk.

1. Search for the desired picture in the Pixmac stock photo gallery and click on it.
2. Choose the required size and click on Download.
3. Pay for the picture via PayPal or Credit Card. That is it!

On Wednesday, July 29th 2009, the Pixmac microstock photo bank has prepared a summer discount special. Buy credits at Pixmac and you automatically get five times more!

Details and conditions

This summer discount may be applied only once from the same IP address. If a user buys credits several times during the day, the discount is only good for the first purchase. On Wednesday, July 29th, the buyer will get the usual number of credits. The additional credits will be added within 24 hours to the buyer’s Pixmac account. Pixmac reserves the right not to add the additional credits for the buyer if improper use by the buyer is determined.

Pixmac microstock photobank was nominated and won the prize in the 2009 Internet Effectiveness Awards contest in the  Award for Innovation category. The competition was very high as there were 11 other innovative projects nominated.

IEA 2009 ceremony

Pixmac has been operating in the market since September 2008. The key advantage is the maximal simplicity and low prices of photos which you can use both in the advertisements and news. Even with this recent beginning, Pixmac has approached the tenth position among the world of microstock photo agencies. And we keep growing.

Our ongoing aim is to spread our great service onto the expanding global market.Its no secret, its our goal! Simultaneously, we are increasing the volume of photos and decreasing the time needed find them by the user. Cross your fingers!

Internet Effectiveness Awards

Pixmac has developed a new application for Facebook users. The application is called “My Pixmac“. With this application, all Pixmac photographers can place their photo sales statistics in their Facebook profile.

In the near future, we would like to add more functions to this application. What can we add to help you the most? You can leave us a comment below this article, or on Facebook, or Twitter or contact us at user@pixmac.com.

Pixmac was shortlisted for Internet Effectiveness Awards 2009 in the “Business to Business” category! IEA (Internet Effectiveness Awards) is the competition of e-shops and commercial websites for the most effective internet project. The winner will be announced on June 18th 2009. We are crossing our fingers!

Pixmac is growing rapidly. Thanks to our development team and interpreters we have extended the range of language versions to be serve our growing customer base. Pixmac is now available in Czech, Russian and in beta in German, Italian and Spanish. In the near future we are going to launch French, Polish and Brasilian versions.

Also, we haven’t forgot to update our current English version of Pixmac. A lot of things were polished and enhanced for easier customer use.

Zoom pictures
Our zooming system is really cool now. The displaying of 100% quality pictures takes just split seconds.

Using PayPal to pay by credit card
We have added the possibility to pay by credit card using PayPal.

Search for similar pictures
Pixmac has a new tool which could be very helpful for searching pictures. How does it work? Choose pictures which you like and add them to the lightbox. Open the lightbox and mark images which you want to search for similar pictures. Choose “Search for similar pictures“ from “Action“ select box and Pixmac will find similar photos.

We receive many emails from you. Thanks for your comments and suggestions which will help us better serve our customers. Many customers have emailed that it would be helpful if they could upload editorial photos on Pixmac. So, listen carefully! In a few weeks it will be possible to upload editorial content to the Pixmac celebrity section.

Two months ago we started our cheapest subscription rate ever. We are very happy to report it is going very well and Pixmac is growing.

In the near future we are planning many new functions and improvements. Stay connected for further updates on how Pixmac is working to be the best site for your photo needs. Pixmac is now on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.