Just finished reviewing the Proofs for an up coming article on Downingtown that will be appearing in the April 2014 issue of County Lines Magazine!
In the issue, 5 of my images will be appearing, including a two-page article feature spread!
Needless to say, I am very excited for this type of exposure!
(Sorry!)
I am not sure when issues are mailed to Subscribers, but look for the Annual Wedding Issue!
Thanks again to the wonderful folks at County Lines Magazine for this!
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I was driving along Chamber Lake in Hibernia Park yesterday, and I had to stop for the view of the drawdown with snow.
This is a small (3635×1000) panoramic view, of 9 images ‘stitched’ together, looking toward the dam.
I was standing knee-deep in snow, and for the locals, there is a good 5-8 feet of water missing because of the drawdown.
You can also see maintenance trucks working on the dam itself.
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A little over a year ago, I blogged about my first experience with the photo contest site Pixoto, and during that time, my logs suggest that this was an interesting topic, so I thought I would follow it up.
As mentioned, I have been on Pixoto for over a year now, and I have done essentially the following:
Your mileage many vary…
After a Player/User uploads a file, and submits it to a Category, the fun begins.
Your image is now presented to the world, side by side, with another image, and from there, it is either a “Choose” or not… The ImageDuel™…
Sounds pretty straight forward.
If you start to win, your Image Score goes up and vice versa…
In the background, from what I have read, Pixoto has developed an algorithm that analyses the Rank of each Image, as they are presented, and scored accordingly.
So if a New “Image A” (0-0) [Win-Loss], which goes again “Image B” (5-10), and “A” “Wins”, “Image A” gets more points, than a Win against a (4-10) or less image… Simple.
It’s all about the algorithm…
and over the course of time, the Awards, hopefully, start to appear on your profile!
The Awards are broken up into the following basic groups, based on Time –
Each Time and Percent Level increases your Image Point score, as well as the Category it is entered in.
What this means, is that I can have several different images that are in the Top 5% for the Week, but because they are in different Categories, they will score differently.
In playing Pixoto for a year, it appears to me, that the Landscaping category is the hardest to score in, but can bring big rewards because of its popularity.
It is also very important to choose your Categories correctly.
As with any system, folks are going to look for ways to use that system for their personal benefit.
One of the easiest and most common for a Newbie, is to submit their image into the wrong Category to begin with, and then switch it later.
Thankfully, Pixoto ‘zeros’ out the Image Score when switched, but that does not stop one from submitting several similar images across several categories.
Is this Cheating?
According to Officials at Pixoto, they monitor the ImageDuel™s, and deal with them accordingly.
But with a little effort, it can be easy to find “Top Players” that have numerous ‘similar’ images adding to their high scores.
Example #1 – Similar Images (#15 & #30)
http://www.pixoto.com/images-photography/abstract/all/leading/on-08-01-2013
Which was ruled “Okay”, because the background was changed, i.e. a Photoshop 101 Tutorial change or edit…
Example #2 – Similar Images
http://www.pixoto.com/images-photography/flowers/all/leading/in-all
In several cases, it looks like the Photographer just walked around the object taking pictures. No real difference between the images.
I have also seen cases of several images submitted from a single modeling photo session – no change in clothing, makeup, etc…
Example #3 – Similar Images
Someone who clearly seems to have Mastered basic Photoshop layers…
Additionally, there are countless Threads on the Pixoto Help Forum that strongly suggest that the Points System is Broken or out right cheating.
To be fair, Pixoto does seem to take time to investigate Reports, and seems to have gotten better, but there seems to be a need to improve.
The bottom line, Pixoto’s lack of enforcement hurts the credibility of the site.
Now, I have to be legal, and disclose that I have apparently made money with Pixoto over the last year.
About 8 months ago, Pixoto started an Affiliate Program, and I immediately signed-up, and implemented the code into my website.
I did not see much activity at first, and I did seem to have found an early ‘bug’ at one point (see the Comments section [“Oh S*%#!” error]), but…
Since then, I am happy to report, as of this posting, my “Lifetime earnings” are $12.81 USD, which I have not claimed, yet…
and well over 2500 personal credits…
From a monetary standpoint, I am not quitting my day job any time soon.
As an exercise to see how my images compare to others, this is definitely one of the many that now are available, and I will continue to use it.
It would be kind of cool, if they could connect Google Analytics for the data nerds…
Is this a site for Artistry?
I have seen many beautiful images over the year, and some real junk, but that is to be expected.
My main complaint still being the liberal use of similar images.
What is also different, to me, is the general un-natural feeling to the top images.
One does have to remember that Pixoto allows and encourages the User to sell their images as Stock, which might account for exaggerated vibrancy, saturation and starkness, that can also be found on other, more well-known Stock agencies.
If you shoot a lot of Stock based photography, you will probably do well, but don’t be surprised, when an image, that might have been well received elsewhere (Facebook, Flickr, G+, etc), may not do well at all on Pixoto.
I was contacted by the nice folks at Kea Sigma Delta in Wellington, New Zealand, to do a review of their product SCRAP Photo Editor 1.2, which is currently only available on Windows XP, Vista, 7 & 8, and appears to be only a 32-bit application.
When I arrived on the site, keasigmadelta.co.nz , to download my free version of SCRAP Photo Editor 1.2, I am immediately told, that SCRAP is an acronym for Scale, Crop, Rotate and Publish, along with a very flashy 50 second YouTube video, extolling the virtues of the program.
Downloading the application is simple enough, but when I got to the point of Installation, I had to be especially careful, because of all the additional “Special Offers” that are included during the installation script.
When the First “Special Offer” window popped up, my security concerns were raised immediately, especially when the offer is for something called “SpeedyPC”. I do not wish to knock down this product, but it is not one that I normally run across. I did selected the Skip button to continue.
I was immediately confronted with the Second “Special Offer” for “blindbat”, again an application I’ve never heard of, that was even more forceful, in the sense, that it popped up a secondary window asking if I was sure that I wanted to skip the installation. Needless to say I declined.
Then there was the Third “Special Offer” (TidyNetwork) at which point I was seriously considering jettisoning the whole installation process, but I continued to the Fourth “Special Offer” (YAC (Yet Another Cleaner)), and finally into the main installation, which eventually launches your browser to a final “Congratulatory” page, thanking you for the installation.
Initial user experience – Very Poor
Once I was in the main program, I took a look at Task Manager and noticed that SCRAP had a small footprint of about 55 MB.
From there, I opened up a simple PNG file that I had recently done from the screenshot, to test out the basic capabilities of SCRAP.
Scale – In my current task, I did not need to do any scaling, but I did double-click on the scaling tool and was pleased to see an advanced set of tools presented in a simple dialog box.
Crop – Since cropping was the main nature of my task at hand, this tool was immediately put to use. I found it to work very similarly to those provided by other programs, but it was pleased to note, that after the cropping has been performed, the original image has not actually been cropped, i.e. non-destructive, until you save out the final file. A simple double-click of the crop tool, will also bring up the advanced dialog box, filled with numerous easy controls.
Rotate – I did not mean much use of the rotate tool during my testing, but the illustrations done in the video tutorials offer some very helpful tips on using the tool.
Publish – The most observable Publish tool, directs one to the Zazzle website, that offers photo based gifts, such as mugs and T-shirts. The Secondary publishing, is done by being able to saving various file formats (BMP/DIB/RLE, EXR, GIF, HDR, JPEG (2000), PBM, PGM, PNG, PPM, TARGA, TIFF), which still needs to be attached to a Posts or email, i.e. No Right Click and a Context menu pops-up to allow you to do whatever.
After the initial irritation of the installation, SCRAP does what it sets out to do.
It can open up some 30 different file formats, perform very rudimentary geometric edits, and then quickly saves files back out, in a variety of formats, to be used by another application.
Will I keep this application on my computer after this review, very doubtfully.
Why?
I am already at Adobe software user, and I normally have either Lightroom or Photoshop open at any given time, so for me to have something like SCRAP, involved in my workflow, seems rather pointless.
If you need a quick utility to convert one file format to another and don’t have money to spend, then SCRAP may be of interest to you.
If you’re scanning software does not provide these fundamental functions, then definitely you should investigate further usage of this product.
I hope you enjoyed my review, or found it at least interesting, please feel free to leave me a comment in the section below.
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A revisit of some recently Posted images, but moved into a Black and White presentation.
What do you think?
Please leave your thoughts below in the comments!
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