Lots of news from Shutterstock this month. Being the first microstock to reach the 15 million image milestone is probably the most impressive news. They also launched a new contributor content editor to simplify image uploading and keywording. Shutterstock also launched a wordpress plugin which will help photographers with wordpress blogs increase their earnings through the shutterstock affiliate program. The plugin can display shutterstock images on your search results page or any page of the blog using a defined search string. More details on shutterbuzz

Getty acquired picscout, details in a press release. So far it seems the focus has been on the buyer plugins and image matching technology, I'm looking forward to a little investment / new features in the photographer back-end of imageexchange.

Veer announced they would be reselling images via partner websites starting with snapfish and Photogenica. Contributors will receive the same commission as if the image had been sold on veer.com

Pond5 announced they had become a one stop shop for both footage and stock images (500,000 images) to their 60,000 sellers and buyers.

Dreamstime launched a new weekly subscription offering, up to 70 level 1 images for $44.99 (10 downloads per day) and also a new limited time exclusive image use options - discussion about that on MSG. A new tier zero image level was added (with a new bronze coloured cinnamon swirl) pushing prices at dreamstime to something close to those of istock.

April Microstock Blog Posts

MicrostockDiaries looked at keeping track of model releases, A future standard for embedding model release data looks like good news for everyone.

On the MicrostockGroup blog Tyler took a look at some tips for speeding up Photoshop.

Yuri showed us how to spend 300k on lighting equipment.

AreanCreative offered some motivational help on overcoming a lack drive.

Close Crop vs Copyspace

I'm planning a post comparing images with lots of copy space to those with a tight crop, exploring if images with copyspace sell less often but for higher revenue because they are more likely to be used in print high-resolution applications instead of low-resolution blog posts. If anyone has any experience with portfolio examples they would like to share then let me know.

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