Summary of Microstock happenings this October:

DeviantArt.com and Fotolia got together to offer fotoilas image collection to the some 15 million creatives who use deviantArt via a specially themed fotolia sub-domain at stockproject.fotolia.com. This is all part of a plan for deviantArt to grow their own stock image collection, more details on that at stockproject.deviantart.com.

Crestock have been busily updating their site, got themselves a new logo and announced that Ellen Boughn would be contributing to their community blog. They tell us that their advertising budget for the next six months is double Crestock’s annual sales in 2009 "we clearly intend to make a success of this company!". Prices have also changed with the introduction of $1 'XSmall' images, along with reduction in size and price of 'Small' images which are now $3 ('Medium' size is now compatible with what was previously called 'Small', crestocks old 'Small' size was very generous). Pixel-for-pixel the prices seem the same, but there are now more options available. Vectors increased in price from $10 to $15.

Zoonar announced that they have added age fotostock / THP photo services as a distribution partner. Note that you may already have your images represented at age / easyfotostock if you have submitted them to panthermedia.

Moodboard anounced that they were suspending microstock uploads to focus on premium stock content, I reviewed them as 3/10 back in February after struggling to get enough images uploaded and accepted there. As I wrote in the review I like the idea, perhaps it was just the implementation that was wrong - or perhaps it's hard to target a site at both premium and budget buyers simultaneously while remaining credible to both.

Other News in Brief:
 

• Microstockdiares posted a report on the Stock in Russia conference.
  
  
• Veer announced various new features and enhancements
   
• Shutterstock announced that they have 1.6 million vector images, making them "the webs leading source of vector art" 
   
• Pixmac announced improvements to their "search for similar" feature, an example can be found here
   
• Niche microstock agency arcticstock launched a "much improved" version of their website.
   
• Tyler reviewed a new microstock agency with a twist 'isignstock' on the microstockgroup blog.
   
• I wrote a review of PicScout ImageIRC and ImageExchange, It's been a long time in the waiting to get images live in the database since PicScout announced that they were accepting images from individual photographers as well as agencies - results so far are encouraging.

• Printer Version
• PDF version