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 are browsing websites all the time to find useful tools that can help our users to work with their images. Recently we have found some applications that can be worth trying – tools for invisible watermarking, searching for those invisible watermarks online and debluring and denoising images. We are in contact with Filip Krolupper – the leader of developers of those applications so we have asked him several questions.

What is the history of Advanced Photo Tools?
Everything begun with the application SignMyImage 1.0 that was released approx. a year ago. In four months the application got rid of childrens diseases and the version 2.0 was released. In the same time the first version of Image Spider was employed. Image Spider is a web crawler responsible for searching signed images.

In the meantime we developed image denoising tool called DenoiseMyImage.

In this time we have two professional applications and we are about releasing the third application for image debluring – DeblurMyImage.
In the beginning the project was one man show, but now I cooperate with other 3 programmers, who are experts in their area.

Emil – the author and maintainer of Image Spider
Petr – a guy responsible for Mac and Linux versions
Vlado – an author of GPGPU version of DenoiseMyImage

We are mostly located in Prague, Czech Republic, European Union. Emil is from Sweden.

There are some competitive applications, why is SignMyImage better?
SignMyImage allows to sign the photo/image by an invisible watermark and detect the invisible watermark automatically as well. This product was developed primarily for advanced photoamateurs/professionals that earn the money selling their photos. This application is appreciated by people/companies that don’t want to let thiefs download photos from their websites. Moreover we employ web crawler (Image Spider) that crawles the web and searches for signed images. We can say that SignMyImage is cheap equivalent of well known DigiMarc. Here are others rival in this field – Eikonamark, Icemark, Photopatrol.

German prestigious c’t magazine made a comparison between these five programs (incl. SignMyImage). SMI was considered as the second best software. We have to point out that the price of SMI license is a fraction of the others price. For example the price of DigiMarc (the best one) is $500 a year if you want to protect up to 5000 photos. The price of SMI for an unlimited license is 14.99 Euros without paying any annual fee.

What i s the development in the digital watermarking in last few years ?
In this area the number of papers grows rapidly. Here exist at least two conferences with this topics. But honestly, the combination of image scaling/cropping/jpeg compression is deadly. Most papers deal with one of these transformation and don’t care about the others. But all of these appears together in most cases. Lets imagine, if we consider all the transformations, we have no stable information because of crop, we cannot use information based on single pixel because of jpeg, and we don’t know the scale of image. One of the way often followed is probabilistic approach. This approach allows to store information in many instances in every part of the picture. That means if one part is damaged or cropped you can get the information from the rest of the picture.

What technologies are you using?
Our approach is different. We use moments of continuous areas. One of moment is center of gravity. This information is very robust to noise, scaling, jpeg. Unfortunatelly its not robust to crop, so we have the information insert to the image to several different areas.
We cannot forget the second part of the project, that has the same importance. It is Image Spider – our web crawler. It uses wide spectra of technology. It consists of SQL part, PHP frontend, C++ backend, Linux scripting support, SFTP interface …

What is your vision?
The main goal of the SignMyImage is to make Internet safer. We want to help people protect their knowledge, art abilities and skills. We want to help them protect their property rights. In our opinion nobody should be non-punishable, if he steals something what belongs to someone else. Including pictures, images, drawings and photos.

The goal of the ADP Tools group is wider. We are interested in bringing image processing techniques into live. Much theory from image processing is not used in application for photographers. We are going to fill this gap.

There are always some photographers  who are not quite satisfied with their microstock agency. The same thing seems to be happening at Apple App Store. Why does that happen? How to avoid it or fix it? After almost a year of Pixmac  service  being up and running, I’ll try to find answers.

First things first. Be sure I want to have Pixmac as a social responsible company. We are nothing like a bank or large burger chain that seems like a black box that just takes your money and does nothing with it. No! Not when I’m here. Sure, the company has to generate revenue, sure it must satisfy its investors. But why  push it to the edge? Why to cut affiliate programs in half, when the company believes it will be no pain?

I went over several threads at Microstock Group and found out that there is always people posting that some (in fact any) agency is the worst and they will delete their portfolio right away. Usually the agency owner doesn’t even read it and if they do they propably don’t take it seriously. I think that this is not the right way for our users(customers?). We’re all on a same boat, we’re here to help people that need pictures and we’re here to feed ourselves – together. So, let’s talk about the pain and find a cure!

Pixmac after a year of service

Pixmac is still a newcomer to microstock. Since our start in September 2008, we have had a few bumps in the road, and we’ve made some mistakes. We’re learning from them.  But I am proud to report that we made a huge jump forward since  Pixmac was started. But believe me, we have always kept our customers in mind every step of the way.

Good news

I’m really proud to sum up what we’ve achieved in last 11 months. And I’m looking forward what we can do in the future. There will be some challenging times ahead, but I am confident that I and the Pixmac team will be ready to face them.

Better sales every month

We are still growing! No matter in what season, no matter during a time of  crisis, and  no matter if CEO is on honeymoon! Pixmac proves that fast and user-friendly interface is the right choice for serving your needs. Tell your friends, tell your family, spread the word over Twitter and Facebook! There is still place for some more figures in the gross sales number. We do banners, promos, articles, contests to attract buyers. But it’s the word of mouth that makes the difference.

Low subscription prices

We know that  trying to beat the competitors with a rock bottom price was not the right choice. So we took down the advertisement on that in the first place. We pushed the prices of subscription to a  higher  rate. Still, we know it is not ideal. But trust me, there are some bright new ideas in the oven already.

Nice revenues from bonus credits

When we’re giving bonus credits to contests or on any other occasions, we have to set their price somehow. We used the subscription prices as a measure before. But I thought it’s time to reward you when  you spend time uploading to Pixmac. So now we’ve set the price of a bonus credit to $0,9 (as same as in the $500 credit pack). So you should get noticeably more if some user comes to your portfolio to buy a picture.

Slow/bad approving process

Fixed already, but worth noting. In the early months there was a lot to fix. Even when we came up with the idea to pay you for just uploading  as your first agency. Now it should be faster (matter of hours to few days) more positive and easier to use. We’ve also added a dispute option to the process. So you can always complain if some of your recent uploads were not approved and we will get back to you as fast as possible.

Lock-in time

If anybody remembers this. We started with 2 year lock-in. But, in February 2009, we’ve changed this to 1 year after a discussion with photographers. Sure it can be less and it will be. It just needs time to convince the owners, that they will not loose anything if they open the system a bit. Believe me, I am looking for a way to satisfy both sides.

Sliding commision without explanation

This is our fault. I’ve explained this issue on Microstock Group, so I’ll do the same here. Basically it’s about splitting the earned money into a few parts. First is the photographer, then from the rest something goes to affiliate and rest to Pixmac. Sure, the time of registration matters, because the options change as time goes by, so if you’ve registered today, your contract is the same for a lifetime unless you request a change (if the offer becomes better than what you have).

More features for buyers

We want the users to be happy, that is our way to satisfy photographers in the long term. For example, our latest great feature is  the similarity search. Even now we’re still working on improving, every result as an icon, which finds similar images. The user  doesn’t even have to know the keywords! Another  thing  worth mentioning is the eg. Facebook App that shows your stats to others;  A widget that can be used in several ways to promote your portfolio or any theme etc.

New languages and local people in team

This is my personal favorite. Pixmac has been translated into 6 languages already: English, German, Russian, Czech, Spanish and Finnish. Dutch, Italian, Brasilian Portugese, French and Polish are in the progress these days. And not just that! We have people in those regions that take care about the customers, preparing marketing strategies and are in everyday contact with  our headquarters in Prague.

Upcoming partnerships

We’re doing a lot in this field. Stay tuned and we hope you’ll be impressed. Pixmac should be much more than just another microstock site. I’m doing my best and the rest of the team  is too. By the way, have you tried Ginipic tool?

Yes, we can do more. And we will. Vitezslav “Zager” Valka, CEO of Pixmac

Lev Dolgachov

We conducted an interview with one of the most respected Russian microstock photographers, Lev Dolgachov.

This interview could be good inspiration both for beginning and professional photographers.

Here it is. Enjoy!

What role does photography play in your life?
I’m very dedicated to photography. Photography definitely takes most of my life now- it’s the main thing I do and it’s what I do for living.

How many years having you been using stocksites for your photos?
It’s been 3 years since I’ve started to license my works via stocksites.

Blue-eyed blond in pearls

Why do you shoot stock photos instead of other types of photos?
I don’t really do “stock photos”. What I do is what I love to do in photography as an artist. Stocksites are a great distribution channel but I would make basically the same if I would do it for fun, not for living.

What would be your suggestions for Pixmac to improve our service for users?
Image reviewing team. I would hire more professional reviewers or enhance the training of the ones you have now.

What photobank do you most like to work with and why?
I’m not into any kind of exclusive contracts with some particular license distrubutors, so I believe any agency who respects and treats me good as an artist is fine. Also, they should be able to sell licenses as well.

Is it hard to find a suitable model for photographing?
Finding really good model is not that easy, but once you can allow yourself to choose from many who want to work with you for some reason, it will not be a big problem.

Girl in fishnet underwear

What do you think of when your photos appear in advertisements, magazines, or on web pages?
It mostly feels good to see my work in action. I believe all artists love it. Art should be seen.

What advice can you give to beginning photographers?
Be professional. Whatever you’re doing in photography, always ask yourself if are you professional enough and how you can possibly improve the result or workflow. Be a perfectionist. Perfectionism is a key to success.

Many thanks to Lev for this interview. It was great pleasure for us to bring his advice and insights to our Pixmac users. Look at his photos at Pixmac.

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.

We will be making some changes soon that will affect you if want to you upload your pictures via FTP. These will come into effect on 2009-06-16. The changes to be made are:

1) You will no longer need the special FTP username. Please use the same nickname and password as you use to log onto the website.
2) There will be two directories on your FTP account. These will be ‘creative’, for creative pictures and ‘editorial’ for editorial pictures. Please make sure you upload your picture to the correct directory.
3) You will no longer be able to create your own directories.

We hope these changes will make it even easier to upload your pictures. If you would like more information, or have any problems uploading by FTP, please contact us at customersupport@pixmac.com .

Pixmac will be unavailable on Thursday, 28th May 2009 from 1pm to 1.30pm GMT (7am to 7.30am EST). We are upgrading our hardware and unfortunately that will interrupt the service.

We apologize for the inconvience and we will be back up and running as soon as possible. Thank you for visiting Pixmac and we hope to see you back again soon.

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.

Dear photographers, thank you for selling your photos using Pixmac! We would like to tell you about a new opportunity to increase your Pixmac revenues.

We have created new special pages for all Pixmac user profiles. You can find your new public Pixmac homepage at http://www.pixmac.com/author/USERNAME (replace “USERNAME” with your own Pixmac user name).

For example, our user named “Zager” has his Pixmac home page at:
http://www.pixmac.com/author/zager
The public Pixmac user profile features the list of his/her thumbnailed photos, his/her public lightboxes and his/her bestselling photos.

You can use the link to your Pixmac user profile to promote your work on your blog, on your Facebook profile or you can share the link using Twitter.

You can earn money even from the photos authored by somebody else if you add the #USERNAME handle to any link to Pixmac

For instance, you can earn commission by linking to Pixmac homepage
(http://www.pixmac.com/#USERNAME)
or by linking to a fresh list of photos featuring some subject:
(e.g. http://www.pixmac.com/pictures/nature#USERNAME)

You can find more about our affiliate program at
http://www.pixmac.com/affiliate

We are currently preparing some new tools for our partners. If you need anything, please feel free to tell us how we can help you.

We were talking with Erik from Imagery Majestic this weekend about questions popping up in communities and forums about the approval process. And we want to be fair and clear about this. For clarification of the issue, read more below.

Why were the all pictures rejected at once on Friday 3th April?

Vitezslav Valka, CEO: “Our approval system was under heavy development over the last few weeks. We’ve finally made a number of crucial improvements there. As you may know, the process was slow but we have found a solution to fix it. I would like to walk you through the process as it was on Pixmac until the end of last week. I’ll also go over the new one, which will be more effective and clear to our contributors.”

Old approval process

• picture is uploaded and sent to approval
• reviewer inspects the photo and sends it to editors (team coordinated by Denisa Haveldova)
• editor verifies the decision and finally sends it to web or to rejected pictures
• user gets an email per photo (lots of emails sometime)

New approval process

• picture is uploaded and sent to approval
• reviewer inspects the photo and sends it directly to web or to rejected pictures
• user gets an email once a day
• user can dispute (complain about the rejection) up to 30 decisions per week until a month from rejection
• disputes go to editor in chief (Denisa) and she makes final decision

The approval process is unclear to us. Solution?

Vitezslav Valka, CEO: “This should be much clearer now. When we were slow with our reviews, we decided to review (review again by Editor) the approved pictures first. The reason for this is simple: Get the pictures online and selling as soon as possible. That is why some of you were getting a few accepted and a few rejected pictures in last few weeks. Friday’s big rejection was a result of the dispute option being implemented. So from that moment, we don’t have to wait for the Editor’s final decision. The process is now pretty fast and I hope it is clear to everybody.”

Why is the rejection rate sometimes about 50% ?

Denisa Haveldova, Content: “The approval rate may sometimes be different from other agencies. Remember that we don’t have any upload limits, we’re happy that contributors upload a lot to Pixmac. Unfortunately we’ve experienced that a huge number of very similar pictures from one shoot will be uploaded, without any review from the photographer. We’ve also found that some contributors don’t check images in Actual size (Zoom to 100%) before uploading. So pictures that seem to be great at first, unfortunately don’t meet our criteria for the technical quaility, sharpness etc.

As to the reasons of refusal: Please keep in mind, that the text of the reasons for refusal is automatic. It aims to fit to the particular picture as much as possible, but of course each picture is individual, and from time to time it can happen that it will not explain the problem of the picture exactly.”

If somebody has 498 pictures approved and needs 500: We’ve seen some contributors who are only a few pictures short of the “500 accepted” goal from February. This is mainly caused by uploading a little more than 500 pictures to Pixmac without keeping in mind that some of them could be rejected. But everybody makes mistakes, so we have decided to pay the $500 or $100 even for 480 pictures.

Contact us if you have an individual problem!

If you have any questions about this issue, contact us via comments below, or send us an email. We’re here for you! Denisa Haveldova is the head of approving/editing team and she knows everything about our content. You can contact her directly: denisa.haveldova@pixmac.com. If you have a question regarding a particular image, the best thing is to mention the ID or put a link to it in the email body. Other technical issues are under the control of Vitezslav Valka, the CEO of Pixmac. Anything else can be solved by Contacting us directly.