IStockphoto
Encyclopedia
iStockphoto is an online, royalty free
, international
microstock photography
provider operating with the micropayment
business model. Images cost between 1 and 150 credits, depending on size and image collection (with credits ranging from $.95 to $1.50 USD each).
in May, 2000. Originally iStockphoto was a free stock imagery website. Over the course of time, it transitioned into its current micropayment model. The website was originally supported by CEO Livingstone's web development firm, Evolvs Media, but began charging money in 2001. iStockphoto has been profitable since then.
On February 9, 2006 iStockphoto was acquired by Getty Images
for $50 million USD. Livingstone promised that the site would continue "functioning independently with the benefits of Getty Images, yet, very importantly for them and us, autonomy. They will nurture and encourage our pioneering spirit so that our entrepreneurial culture will continue to thrive."
On September 18, 2006 iStockphoto displayed the first results of the Getty Images ownership. A new keywording taxonomy called a “Controlled vocabulary
” was borrowed from Getty Images and implemented on iStockphoto to control and manage keywords and searches, and to provide multilingual searching abilities. The system allows a contributor to keyword in any language, and because the controlled vocabulary is pre-translated, an image is searchable in any of the supported languages. Support for several languages was also added and the website can now be viewed in English
, French
, Spanish
, and German
. Keyword searches can also be performed in British English
or American English
, Portuguese
, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian
, Italian
, Japanese
, Polish
, Greek
and even in Japanese
and Cyrillic characters. Furthermore, the system provides disambiguation for terms with multiple meanings. For instance, when searching for “ball” on the site, it requests clarification: Ball (Sports Equipment), Sphere (Three-dimensional Shape) or Evening Ball (Celebration Event).
As of March 31, 2007, iStockpro closed. iStockpro was a more expensive version of iStockphoto that was never as popular as iStockphoto, and became redundant after the acquisition by Getty Images.
The company also accepts business in the following currencies
: US dollar, Canadian dollar
, Australian dollar
, Euro
, Yen, Chinese RMB and British pound.
On April 1, 2008 Getty Images disclosed, as part of its agreement to be sold to a private equity firm, that iStockphoto's revenue in 2007 was $71.9 million USD of which $20.9 million (29%) was paid to contributors.
Once approved, photographers can begin uploading their work through the website. They supply keywords, categorize the images, and submit them to the "inspection queue", where each image is examined to ensure that it meets the standards of quality, usefulness and copyright and trademark laws.
iStockphoto also sells vector graphics
made in programs like Adobe Illustrator
or Macromedia Freehand
; Macromedia Flash elements and raster
illustrations created in 3d graphics programs or bitmap editors like Adobe Photoshop
.
Contributors receive a commission of between 15% and 40% of each sale, depending on whether or not they are "exclusive", and on their current "canister level." New canisters are awarded for various milestones such as 250 sales, 2,500 sales, 10,000 sales, 25,000 sales, and 200,000 sales. Only five photographers have passed the 200,000 point, while 209 members have passed the 25,000 level as of 2008-03-13 and received the coveted "diamond canister. Canister values will reset at the beginning of each year in 2012."
Contributing photographers who reach a minimum of 250 sales (and have a submission acceptance rate of at least 50%) are offered the option of becoming exclusive to the company. If they do so, a bonus is added to their commission and they must not sell royalty-free stock images anywhere else. Rights managed
sales are allowed off site even under the exclusivity contract.
In an address to its community entitled “2008: A Year in Review and a Look Ahead″, iStockphoto's COO laid out price increases for 2009 while also mentioning that the company was paying out ‘almost’ $1.1 million dollars per week in royalty payments to contributors.
In September 2010 iStock announced plans to change it's royalty structure.
Files can be downloaded immediately, and used in almost anything. The basic license agreement prohibits only a few uses, such as web templates, print on demand
, adult materials, etc. Any print runs over 500,000 must pay additional royalties. Extended licenses are available for purchase to cover certain needs not met by the basic license agreement.
, back and forth, each time preserving at least one element and changing the rest to their heart's content. The battles are scored by judges appointed within iStockPhoto, and download credits are awarded in values of up to 50 credits.
obtained photos from iStockPhoto for its promotional material. One of the photos used as its backdrop the Christy Administration Building from Southwestern College
in Winfield, Kansas
. The college administration voiced concern that permission to use the photograph of the building was not properly obtained and is currently investigating the legality of its use. As of February 8, 2011, no lawsuits have been filed but discussions continue to take place.
clips in a variety of formats from web-size, through NTSC
and PAL
up to HDV
and HD
sizes. The collection is slated to open on September 5, 2006, and clips (between 5 and 30 seconds) will range in cost from $5 USD to $50 USD, based on resolution. iStockvideo was launched on schedule and as of February 9, 2010 the video collection contains over 250,000 videos.
This new branch of iStockphoto competes with motion stock collections already available from companies such as Getty Images
, Artbeats, and Veer.
Royalty free
Royalty-Free, or RF, refers to the right to use copyrighted material or intellectual property without the need to pay royalties for each use or per volume sold, or some time period of use or sales.-Computer standards:...
, international
International
----International mostly means something that involves more than one country. The term international as a word means involvement of, interaction between or encompassing more than one nation, or generally beyond national boundaries...
microstock photography
Microstock photography
Microstock photography, also known as micropayment photography, is a part of the stock photography industry. What defines a company as a microstock photography company is that they source their images almost exclusively via the Internet, do so from a wider range of photographers than the...
provider operating with the micropayment
Micropayment
A micropayment is a financial transaction involving a very small sum of money and usually one that occurs online. PayPal defines a micropayment as a transaction of less than 12 USD while Visa prefers transactions under 20 Australian dollars, and though micropayments were originally envisioned to...
business model. Images cost between 1 and 150 credits, depending on size and image collection (with credits ranging from $.95 to $1.50 USD each).
History
The company was founded by Bruce LivingstoneBruce Livingstone
Bruce Livingstone is a Canadian entrepreneur who founded iStockphoto, an online distributor of stock photography. Livingstone started iStockphoto in 2000 as a project offering stock photos for free over the internet. In 2002, high monthly bandwidth bills prodded him to implement a payment/credit...
in May, 2000. Originally iStockphoto was a free stock imagery website. Over the course of time, it transitioned into its current micropayment model. The website was originally supported by CEO Livingstone's web development firm, Evolvs Media, but began charging money in 2001. iStockphoto has been profitable since then.
On February 9, 2006 iStockphoto was acquired by Getty Images
Getty Images
Getty Images, Inc. is a stock photo agency, based in Seattle, Washington, USA. It is a supplier of stock images for business and consumers with an archive of 80 million still images and illustrations and more than 50,000 hours of stock film footage...
for $50 million USD. Livingstone promised that the site would continue "functioning independently with the benefits of Getty Images, yet, very importantly for them and us, autonomy. They will nurture and encourage our pioneering spirit so that our entrepreneurial culture will continue to thrive."
On September 18, 2006 iStockphoto displayed the first results of the Getty Images ownership. A new keywording taxonomy called a “Controlled vocabulary
Controlled vocabulary
Controlled vocabularies provide a way to organize knowledge for subsequent retrieval. They are used in subject indexing schemes, subject headings, thesauri, taxonomies and other form of knowledge organization systems...
” was borrowed from Getty Images and implemented on iStockphoto to control and manage keywords and searches, and to provide multilingual searching abilities. The system allows a contributor to keyword in any language, and because the controlled vocabulary is pre-translated, an image is searchable in any of the supported languages. Support for several languages was also added and the website can now be viewed in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
. Keyword searches can also be performed in British English
British English
British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
or American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
and even in Japanese
Japanese writing system
The modern Japanese writing system uses three main scripts:*Kanji, adopted Chinese characters*Kana, a pair of syllabaries , consisting of:...
and Cyrillic characters. Furthermore, the system provides disambiguation for terms with multiple meanings. For instance, when searching for “ball” on the site, it requests clarification: Ball (Sports Equipment), Sphere (Three-dimensional Shape) or Evening Ball (Celebration Event).
As of March 31, 2007, iStockpro closed. iStockpro was a more expensive version of iStockphoto that was never as popular as iStockphoto, and became redundant after the acquisition by Getty Images.
The company also accepts business in the following currencies
Currency
In economics, currency refers to a generally accepted medium of exchange. These are usually the coins and banknotes of a particular government, which comprise the physical aspects of a nation's money supply...
: US dollar, Canadian dollar
Canadian dollar
The Canadian dollar is the currency of Canada. As of 2007, the Canadian dollar is the 7th most traded currency in the world. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or C$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies...
, Australian dollar
Australian dollar
The Australian dollar is the currency of the Commonwealth of Australia, including Christmas Island, Cocos Islands, and Norfolk Island, as well as the independent Pacific Island states of Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu...
, Euro
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...
, Yen, Chinese RMB and British pound.
On April 1, 2008 Getty Images disclosed, as part of its agreement to be sold to a private equity firm, that iStockphoto's revenue in 2007 was $71.9 million USD of which $20.9 million (29%) was paid to contributors.
Contributors
Contributing photographers apply (via a short quiz regarding policies, requirements, basic photographic knowledge, and legal issues) before they are eligible to upload their images. The applicant's sample images are screened for quality and suitability before being approved. Photographers must be over 18 years of age to join (or have a parental consent form).Once approved, photographers can begin uploading their work through the website. They supply keywords, categorize the images, and submit them to the "inspection queue", where each image is examined to ensure that it meets the standards of quality, usefulness and copyright and trademark laws.
iStockphoto also sells vector graphics
Vector graphics
Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics...
made in programs like Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems. Illustrator is similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to its competitors, CorelDraw, Xara Designer Pro and Macromedia FreeHand....
or Macromedia Freehand
Macromedia FreeHand
Macromedia FreeHand is a computer application for creating two-dimensional vector graphics that are oriented primarily to professional illustration, desktop publishing and content creation for the Web. FreeHand is similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw...
; Macromedia Flash elements and raster
Raster graphics
In computer graphics, a raster graphics image, or bitmap, is a data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium...
illustrations created in 3d graphics programs or bitmap editors like Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
.
Contributors receive a commission of between 15% and 40% of each sale, depending on whether or not they are "exclusive", and on their current "canister level." New canisters are awarded for various milestones such as 250 sales, 2,500 sales, 10,000 sales, 25,000 sales, and 200,000 sales. Only five photographers have passed the 200,000 point, while 209 members have passed the 25,000 level as of 2008-03-13 and received the coveted "diamond canister. Canister values will reset at the beginning of each year in 2012."
Contributing photographers who reach a minimum of 250 sales (and have a submission acceptance rate of at least 50%) are offered the option of becoming exclusive to the company. If they do so, a bonus is added to their commission and they must not sell royalty-free stock images anywhere else. Rights managed
Rights Managed
Rights Managed, or RM, in photography and the stock photo industry, refers to a copyright license which, if purchased by a user, allows the one time use of the photo as specified by the license. If the user wants to use the photo for other uses an additional license needs to be purchased. RM...
sales are allowed off site even under the exclusivity contract.
In an address to its community entitled “2008: A Year in Review and a Look Ahead″, iStockphoto's COO laid out price increases for 2009 while also mentioning that the company was paying out ‘almost’ $1.1 million dollars per week in royalty payments to contributors.
In September 2010 iStock announced plans to change it's royalty structure.
Purchasing and use
Each approved image is added to the searchable online database, where it can be found by purchasers. Depending on the original size of an image, it can be bought in XSmall, Small, Medium, Large, XLarge, XXLarge and XXXLarge sizes. These cost 1, 3, 6, 12, 18, 22 or 28 credits. Vector and Flash files also cost 1 to 25 credits, based on complexity. iStockphoto offers discounts for buyers who purchase in bulk; bulk purchase gives up to 20% bonus credits.Files can be downloaded immediately, and used in almost anything. The basic license agreement prohibits only a few uses, such as web templates, print on demand
Print on demand
Print on demand , sometimes called, in error, publish on demand, is a printing technology and business process in which new copies of a book are not printed until an order has been received...
, adult materials, etc. Any print runs over 500,000 must pay additional royalties. Extended licenses are available for purchase to cover certain needs not met by the basic license agreement.
The Steel Cage
In 2005 iStockPhoto re-launched an old site feature, the Steel Cage. The Steel Cage is essentially an organized game of Photoshop tennis, in which contestants battle against their opponents in a 5-round game. The players trade a Photoshop Document, containing an artful, weird, or crazy photo collageCollage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
, back and forth, each time preserving at least one element and changing the rest to their heart's content. The battles are scored by judges appointed within iStockPhoto, and download credits are awarded in values of up to 50 credits.
Pricing
Since iStockphoto's launch in 2000, purchase prices have slowly increased, from initially bartered (based on accumulated contributions), to $.25 and then $.50, and more recently tiered at $1, $2 and $3, to a higher-cost tiered pricing of $1, $3, $5 and $10 or more for extra high resolution, to today's current pricing scheme where images cost between 1 and 250 credits, and credits sell for between $1.54 each and $.95 each in bundles of 12 to 20000.Ownership of material
The 2011 film The RoommateThe Roommate
The Roommate is a 2011 thriller film directed by Christian E. Christiansen and starring Minka Kelly, Leighton Meester, Cam Gigandet, Danneel Harris, Matt Lanter, and Aly Michalka. It was theatrically released on February 4, 2011. The film is a unofficial remake of the 1992 film Single White...
obtained photos from iStockPhoto for its promotional material. One of the photos used as its backdrop the Christy Administration Building from Southwestern College
Southwestern College (Kansas)
Southwestern College is a four-year private college affiliated with the United Methodist Church located in Winfield, Kansas, United States. It was founded in 1885 and graduated its first class in 1889. In addition to its campus programs, it offers online programs.-Academics:The main campus is a...
in Winfield, Kansas
Winfield, Kansas
Winfield is a city situated along the Walnut River in the west-central part of Cowley County, located in South Central Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 12,301...
. The college administration voiced concern that permission to use the photograph of the building was not properly obtained and is currently investigating the legality of its use. As of February 8, 2011, no lawsuits have been filed but discussions continue to take place.
iStockvideo
On July 31, 2006 iStockphoto announced the development of a new branch, iStockvideo, which will sell stock videoVideo
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
clips in a variety of formats from web-size, through NTSC
NTSC
NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...
and PAL
PAL
PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...
up to HDV
HDV
HDV is a format for recording of high-definition video on DV cassette tape. The format was originally developed by JVC and supported by Sony, Canon and Sharp...
and HD
High-definition video
High-definition video or HD video refers to any video system of higher resolution than standard-definition video, and most commonly involves display resolutions of 1,280×720 pixels or 1,920×1,080 pixels...
sizes. The collection is slated to open on September 5, 2006, and clips (between 5 and 30 seconds) will range in cost from $5 USD to $50 USD, based on resolution. iStockvideo was launched on schedule and as of February 9, 2010 the video collection contains over 250,000 videos.
This new branch of iStockphoto competes with motion stock collections already available from companies such as Getty Images
Getty Images
Getty Images, Inc. is a stock photo agency, based in Seattle, Washington, USA. It is a supplier of stock images for business and consumers with an archive of 80 million still images and illustrations and more than 50,000 hours of stock film footage...
, Artbeats, and Veer.