It will take place at a later date and we will update you as soon as this date is confirmed. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

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On the 18^th May we will be carrying out essential maintenance work on our servers. This will take place between 8am and 12pm (midday) UK time (BST).

During this period you will not have access to your management area. This means that you will not be able to upload, edit or delete images and you will not have access to request payment. There may also be short periods for which the customer website is not available.

Our FTP system will still be available for users of this service.

We apologise for any inconvenience this causes.

Banner image: Renjith Krishnan

This offers a great opportunity for you to look to the future and the upcoming events that will be making the headlines or proving popular topics of conversation among our clients and their audiences during the summer of 2013, in order to forecast the types of images that are likely to sell well over the summer period.

With this in mind, here are a few suggestions for events happening internationally from June- September 2013 that you might wish to use as inspiration for your upcoming submissions.

Some major religious holidays

June 21st: Summer solstice (Pagan)

June 30th: All Saints Day (Christian)

July 9th: Start of Ramadan (Muslim)

July 15th: St. Swithin’s Day (Christian)

August 8th: Eid-Ul-Fitr (Muslim)

September 5th: Rosh Hashanah (Jewish)

September 11th: Ethiopian New Year (Rastafarian)

September 14th: Yom Kippur (Jewish)

September 22nd: Autumn Equinox (Pagan)

Pictures or images that capture the tone and feeling of the holiday or event in question, as well as photos of people taking part in worship or religious activities are all popular in searches for images relating to religious holidays.

Political and international

June 5th:  World Environment Day

June 14th: World Blood Donor Day

June 20th: World Refugee Day

July 18th: Nelson Mandela International Day

September 8th: International Literacy Day

September 10th: World Suicide Prevention Day

September 21st: International Day of Peace

September 11th: Anniversary of the World Trade Centre attacks (America)

Abstract images, still-life pictures, street photography and multi-cultural imagery can all be used to represent the tone and message of various political and international events, as can a wide variety of other creative representations.

Major sporting events

June 13th-16th: US Open Golf (America)

June 28th-30th: Rugby World Sevens (Russia)

June 24th-July 7th: Wimbledon Tennis (UK)

June 29th- July 23rd: Tour de France Cycling (France)

July 10th- August 25th: The Ashes Cricket (UK)

July 25th- August 4th: The World Games (Columbia)

July 20th- August 4th: World Swimming Championships (Dubai)

August 26th- September 8th: US Open Tennis (America)

Good, clear high-definition shots of sportspeople, sporting events and people playing sports are popular, as are shots that portray the emotion, atmosphere or overall feeling of an event.

Other

June 2013 (date TBC): China will launch the manned Shenzhou spacecraft

29th September: The “Gaia” space telescope will be launched by the European Space Agency

Interest in all things relating to space, technology and the universe tends to accompany important landmarks in space exploration, and images that can enhance or represent these topics may well prove popular.

Don’t forget when taking or creating images for our inclusion within our site that some images, events, logos and designs may be subject to copyright or reproduction restrictions, and you should check this carefully before submitting any picture or image for publication.

In order to give yourself the best chance of maximum exposure to your potential customers and to allow us to process your images in good time, we recommend submitting your images to us a couple of months before the targeted events themselves occur.

Banner image: Artur84

Please find below the following details about this change:

• What has changed
• How to use the new facility
  • Accessing the facility
  • Editing images
  • Notification of amendment approvals/rejections
• Deadline for attaching release forms to existing images

What has changed

You now have the ability to:

• Change the licence type of your image (please note that licence type amends will be reviewed prior to being made live)
• Attach or remove model releases/property releases for live images (see further information below)
• Change the category which your image appears in
• Amend the keywords for live images (please note that keyword amends will be reviewed prior to being made live)

It also makes it easier to find live images as the table can be sorted, for example by image ID or date uploaded.

Images which are pending review will also appear in the listing, but please note that they cannot be edited until the review is completed.

How to use the new facility

Accessing the facility

To access the new editing facility simply click on the ‘View the images I have for sale’ link in your management area.

This will take you to a table showing all of your images. If you have a large number of images this may extend over several pages:

You can sort this table by clicking on any of the column headings which appear as hyperlinks.

To view or edit an image you can either click on the thumbnail, the image title or the ‘View/edit’ option in the ‘Actions’ column.

To delete an image click on the ‘Delete’ option under ‘Actions’.

Please note that in the short term we have included a column showing the model/property release attached to each image and a link to allow you to view the table with only the images which have no release form attached. These are short term additions to make it easier for you to link existing images to release forms and will be removed at a later date.

Editing images

Please note that any images which are pending review may not be edited.

When you select to view or edit an image you will see this screen:

You can amend as many fields as you wish in one go. When you’ve finished, simply tick to confirm that your amends are in line with our terms and conditions and then click on the ‘Save changes’ button.

Most changes will go live immediately. However, if you have requested a change to the image’s keywords or licence type then the amendments will be reviewed first. You will receive notification of whether keyword/licence type changes have been approved or rejected.

Notification of amendment approvals/rejections

When we review changes to the keywords or licence type for an image we will send you an email to confirm whether the amendments have been approved or rejected.

You can opt out of receiving the ‘approved’ emails by changing your email preferences. Simply click on the ‘Email preferences’ option in your management area.

Deadline for attaching release forms to existing images

As our release form library is a relatively new facility this means that a large number of live images have not been attached to a model release or a property release.

The new system enables you to go back to those existing images and attach the appropriate release to them.

We have already conducted a review of the existing images and, where possible, we have attached the appropriate model release or property release to that image.

However we have not been able to do this for every existing image for a variety of reasons:

• You have not provided a model/property release the image.
• You did not include a thumbnail image of the model/property on your release form.
• It wasn’t clear to us which model was featured in a particular image.
• We have only reviewed photographs, not illustrations.

Please ensure you check carefully the release forms which we have attached to your images to ensure we have not made an error – while we did our best to be accurate there is always a risk of human error.

On the 20th May we will provide customers with details of whether a release form is attached for each live image.
Please ensure that all your images which contain recognisable people or an item which is protected by intellectual property rights have an appropriate, signed, release form linked to them by this date.

After the 20th June we will remove any images where we believe a release form is required and hasn’t been linked to the image.

Please note that a release form may not be required for images sold under an ‘editorial use only’ licence. Please see our recent communication concerning editorial licences for further information.

Banner image: ningmilo

We wanted to give you an initial summary of what you told us and some feedback about what we’re going to do as a result. As you can imagine, many of the things we need to improve can’t happen overnight, but they will feed into our planning. We also hope to find some ‘quick wins’ to implement in the shorter term.

There were two main areas where you’d like us to improve:

• The first is the upload process, specifically for those of you who don’t have access to the FTP system. I understand the frustration of only being able to submit one image at a time, and this is something we do want to improve. The reason we can’t currently offer FTP to a wider audience is that our system requires significant manual intervention by us to process FTP uploads, so we can’t afford to offer it to more people. It’s not something we can improve quickly, but we will be looking at this in more detail to identify a better solution in the long term.
• The second area is keyword rejections. The subject of keywords is a difficult one because we have to find a balance between not wanting to reject excellent images just because of poor keywords, but at the same time not wanting to pollute the site’s search function. Plenty of other stock websites have issues with searches bringing back too many inappropriate images because they don’t control keywords well enough and we don’t want to become one of these. We will look at how we can better improve our support and communications about keywording to help you reduce failures.

These are some of the other things you would like us to change:

• Easier access to view your live images and the ability to change images when they are pending and live. I’m pleased to say that we will shortly launch a revised view of your live images which will allow you to change any details. This won’t currently allow you to change pending images, but we will look at whether this can be incorporated in the future.
• Better reporting, for example to include monthly statistics, sales value per image, etc. We completely agree! We’ll improve the reporting at some point this year.
• Layout of contributor management area. You feel that this needs to be simplified and the design improved. Again, we agree with this. Each time we add a new development we pop in a new link and it’s gradually becoming rather cluttered. We’ll look at how we can improve the appearance of this so that you can find what you need more quickly and easily.
• Improving the layout of the website for customers. The site design hasn’t changed much over the last few years and we agree that it’s due a review. Because of other priorities it’s unlikely that we will be able to fundamentally redesign the site this year, but we will look at it next year. One of the specific items you mentioned was the advertising on the website but currently the advertising revenue is critical to allow us to offer you the best commission possible. You also pointed out that the main homepage images don’t change very often. You’re absolutely right and we will do our best to refresh these more often in the future. Please note that the ‘featured contributor’ areas which appear on every page (left and bottom) are rotated monthly.
• Image categories are too complicated. Hopefully our recent change to the format of the categories in the upload form has made this a little easier. You have also made some excellent suggestions for how we could improve the selection of categories so we will be looking at these over the coming weeks.
• More explanation of rejections. You’d like more information on why we reject images and our rejection policy overall. While it’s impossible to provide personalised feedback on every image rejection we will provide more information on how we review images and the reasons for rejecting them.
• Ability to sell vectors through the website and also videos. This is an area that we’re keen to investigate and will be reviewing whether we can start vector sales later this year (video may take longer).
• Fewer free downloads and more sales. We’ll continue to look at ways of improving sales within the site. You can also help yourself – we find that contributors who regularly add to their portfolio tend to sell a little better and, unless your images are particularly unique in style or of an exceptionally high quality, we encourage you to price the high resolution version at $10 if you want to increase your sales volumes. We have to be careful in trying to reduce the number of free downloads, as these are critical in retaining the high visibility of the website. The majority of free downloads are from people who would not have purchased the image anyway, so we encourage you not to consider all of these to be ‘lost sales’.
• Turnaround times for image reviews. We’re constantly monitoring the turnaround times and, generally speaking, most images are processed within 48 hours of receipt. However, this doesn’t always happen. If we have a particularly high volume of images provided then this can increase turnaround times for everyone. Also some images and keywords require a little more attention and are referred on for a senior review, which can extend the turnaround time. Where images are sent to us by the FTP system the turnaround times can be longer due to the manual intervention required before we send them for review. When we receive very high volumes of images via of FTP (ie thousands) it can take significantly longer. We will try to provide more information to you on the turnaround times so we manage your expectations better.
• While you were generally happy with our referral scheme you were frustrated at some of the limitations. The trial of this will be finishing at the end of May so we’ll review the situation then. I’m confident that we will continue to have a referral programme and hope to improve this based on your experience and ours.

Later this year we will produce some contributor FAQs which will hopefully help address some of the points you raised in a little more detail and provide additional information on using the website.

We’re also grateful for the many positive comments you sent us. As well as making us feel appreciated, they tell us what we’re doing well and shouldn’t change (though nothing’s ever so good that it can’t be improved!). You were particularly complimentary about our response times to queries and payment requests, the % you receive from each sale and the profit you make from us compared to other sites.

Thanks again for taking the time to complete the survey.

Banner image: 89studio

What is an ‘editorial use only’ image?

As you know, up to now we have only accepted images which you have produced to sell for commercial use. To enable you to sell a wider range of pictures we can now accept editorial images.

Editorial images are for customers to use in a non-commercial way, for example to illustrate news articles, documentaries or reference books. All images may be used in this way, but an editorial image may ONLY be used in this way.

Therefore images which are submitted for ‘editorial use only’ must be factual pictures which cannot be sold for commercial use. For example they could be of a news story unfolding, a representation of a global brand, a famous modern building, or an insight into a national culture. Usually a release form is not required for images submitted for editorial use only, although there are some exceptions; find out more in our intellectual property rights guide.

You can find out about the types of images we will accept under an editorial licence in our updated image quality requirements document.

How to submit an image to be sold under an ‘editorial use only’ licence

If you use the website upload form you will find that there is a new ‘Licence Type’ option within the form so you can indicate whether your image is for commercial use or for editorial use only:

If you use the FTP system then you will find that there are now two sub-folders for you to use, one for images for commercial use and the other for images for editorial use only. Please upload your images to the appropriate folder.

Please note that images which are incorrectly submitted under an ‘editorial use only’ licence will be rejected.

What customers will see

When a customer views an editorial image it will be made clear that this image is not for commercial use.

Customer view of an image for commercial use:

Customer view of an image for editorial use only, with changed sections highlighted in red:

Our terms and conditions have been updated to indicate how an editorial image may be used.

Further reading

We have added details relating to editorial licences into the following documents which you should review:

Terms and conditions

Image quality requirements

Intellectual property rights

Banner image: Ambro

These new categories are available for newly uploaded images.

Existing images relating to travel to these countries will be re-categorised for you.

Banner image: Stuart Miles

We’ll be sending you a copy of Take Stock by email every other month. If you decide it’s not for you then you can simply unsubscribe using the link at the bottom of the newsletter.

You should have received your copy of Take Stock by tomorrow. If it doesn’t arrive then please check your ‘junk email’ folder and ensure that @freedigitalphotos.net is added to your safe senders list.

Sneak preview of this month’s newsletter.

Banner image: Stuart Miles

Please accept our apologies for this issue.

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We have experienced an issue affecting hotmail and other Microsoft email addresses.

As a result, if you have a Microsoft email address such as hotmail, msn or live then you may not have received emails from us between the 16th and 20th February. This will have affected the following communications:

• Sales notifications
• Image review approval/rejection emails
• Keyword review approval/rejection emails

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused. The problem is now fixed and we do not foresee it recurring.

Banner image: Grant Cochrane

This is how the drop down list originally appeared:

This is what you will now see:

We hope this change will make it easier to select the correct category. For full information on finding the right category for your image please see our ‘Choosing a category‘ guide.

Banner image: renjith krishnan

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Update: Unfortunately the maintenance work is taking longer than expected so uploads will remain closed tomorrow (27th February).

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Our upload facility will be unavailable on Tuesday 26th February for maintenance work.

On this day you will not be able to upload images via the website.

If you use the FTP system to send us your images this will still be available, although we will not be able to process the images you send us until the 27th February.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Banner image: renjith krishnan