So the vacation was great, the weather was fantastic and the air in mountains was refreshing.
I am back now with a few GBs of new images (when I'll find some time to go over them? - absolutely no idea) and am working on the quite large backlog of emails and inquires. Hopefully, the backlog will be completely cleaned up in the next 48 hours.

Just in case if you experience any issue with ProStockMaster after you run auto-upgrade procedure - go to our download page and get the full set of binaries.
Windows: install it  in the same directory where the previous installation was located.
Mac: install it whenever you want, then select "Connect" when you run PSM at the first time and point to the previous DB location.

Today we have switched on the auto-upgrade flag on our web.
So if you wondered how you can upgrade to the latest and coolest v1.5, just run your previous version of ProStockMaster and it will do all the required updates automatically. When the upgrade finished, restart the application to run PSM with all the latest binaries. Simple like that.

This auto-upgrade procedure, like the entire idea behind ProStockMaster is all about the simplicity, usability and saving your time. Well, I forgot - PSM is about the innovation too. We were the first desktop software on stock photo market and we will continue pioneering and leading the stock photography desktop software market by the great technology and continued innovation. You can see an impressive set of the new features in v1.5 and you will see much more new stuff in the upcoming versions of ProStockMaster.

Just a side note: ProStockMaster v1.5 is the first in the world software which implements our "intelligent multi-threading" technology which we have developed for a graphic-intensive pure-Java applications. So if you got a modern multi-CPU computer hardware (e.g. Intel Core Duo / Duo 2, Intel Quad,  multi-CPU AMD or similar) you can benefit from the unleashed power of ProStockMaster capable of doing many things simultaneously. You keep asking us for a Rolls-Royce for your stock photography needs and we are happy to deliver it to the market, at very affordable price.

As I promised you 2 years ago, we are committed to the same licensing policy: there is a free license for up to 5 uploads daily (some additional minor limitations can apply) and there is a commercially available unlimited license. Both licenses grant you free upgrade and email-based technical support for one year.
Let me say that again, a bit differently: the customers who run PSM with the free license are eligible for our technical support too, during the first year. So do not hesitate asking your questions, we are here to help you.

I already told you in this post that the price will change and here are we go. After 2 years keeping the same $49 price with the rapidly changing market situation and because we truly believe that we have delivered you an exceptional piece of unique software which saves hours of your valued work time and pays you back every cent which you've invested in the license, we are raising the v1.5 price to $89.99.
We will consider special discounts for the people who actively promote ProStockMaster. If you believe that you are eligible for a special discount please contact us describing your business and we'll consider your offer.

All our valued customers who already own unlimited license will enjoy the free upgrade to v1.5. It includes also all the customers who purchased ProStockMaster more then 12 months ago. Consider the latest as our sign of the appreciation and the recognition for ProStockMaster early adapters and our passionate long-time supporters.

If you are interested in re-selling ProStockMaster as an individual or SOHO you are very welcome to register in our affiliate program. Additionally, we are very interested in co-operation with established businesses active in photography and, specifically, with businesses active on the stock photography market. So if you run a reseller business, an Internet shop or a photography portal please fill in our web contact form and hopefully we will do some business together.

Both Windows and Mac OS X versions are available for download from our web site.
Some more explanations on the new features are available here: http://www.prostockmaster.com/release_notes.php
We are still working on the documentation set and sites changes following the new release.

Using this opportunity, I would like to thank all the volunteering beta-testers that participated in v1.5 tests. Derek, Terry, Les, Arik, Bob, Sergei, Tomash, Alex, Nick, Francis, Rciky, Andy, Xavier and all the rest of ProStockMaster supporters in Europe, Americas, Australia, Asia - thank you all guys for the great work and wonderful feedback. Together we did it again - an innovative and unique product designed and developed specifically for stock photographers.

So far so good, and the Beta for v1.5 is almost finished.
Here are the release notes for version 1.5.0: http://www.prostockmaster.com/release_notes.php
Take a look, it might be interesting.
I know that the Release Notes are very brief and I am quite sure they can not be used as a user guide.
And our web site still talks about the old version - too bad, we have change it ASAP.

C'est la vie, as usual software development leads everything - we are a technology-driven company, are not we?
-  and we go forward with an exceptional but completely undocumented software

Being a bit serious at the end of this short post, I just want to note that as I promised I am going to build a series of how-to's for v1.5 very soon. Hopefully, the first one will be ready this week yet.

Enjoy your reading!

Yesterday we have released v1.5 Beta for Mac OS X. Windows version has been released a few days ago and the feedback I receive is very complimentary meanwhile.

So far so good. It's the time to get more things done.
While we are collecting the feedback and fixing issues in v1.5 it is a good time to fill in another hole, starting the new project: explanations and documentation for v1.5.
As a beginning, I am thinking of making a few online "how-to" lessons that will be used later as a base for the online guide for PSM.

I believe that we have created a very powerful tool which can boost your revenues to another level while saving hours of your worktime working with multiple online stock agencies. However, all these is correct only if the photographer knows how to get the most out of our software.

I really want to show what you can do with PSM v1.5. In this blog the things will probably come in the "back" order, from the most complex stuff to the simplest things, just because I am very keen to show here the most interesting stuff first. We will put all the "how-to"-s in the right order on our web later on, taking the reader step-by-step from the simplest operations to the more complex stuff.

With the fantastic success of microstock agencies in the last few years Novel Use is a native Alamy's attempt to follow this trend and open an additional revenue stream from microstock. Just look around - virtually everyone sell microstock subscriptions, why Alamy should not?

Particularly knowing that the competition is tight and a major microstock site made $70 mln revenues last year, followed by others tens-of-mlns-dollars microstocks, does not it make a perfect sense for Alamy trying to follow their success?

Well, I am not sure. At least not with NU idea.

Let me state: we do not speak about content. This is my point: content does not matter here. Content is similar. I can hear your strong "NO!", but, - com'on, forget for a sec all these technical "TIFF+scale-up+keywording" content preparation tricks "for a really HQ content" and just look what micros sell. Would you agree now? - they sell the same, particularly from the buyers point of view. I know that content people will never agree to this statement, but buyers just made their votes with their bucks, so it is better to hear the market. You can find content at microstock prices for at least 90% of your industrial buyers' needs. Buyers can choose buying content through Alamy or through a microstock. And - surprise - buyers are already subscribed to 2-4 microstock agencies (more info: InfoTrends marketing research).

So where is the Alamy's difference on this saturated microstock market? Well, it's not about the content, it's about the community. It's Alamy's Pros vs microstock Amateurs. Can you sell your community to a buyer? Not sure. Can you sell quite similar content for non-micro prices? Sure you can not, Alamy already knows this answer and therefore NU came out.

However, NU does not takes in account the most important - psychological - factor: for many pros Alamy was an alternative to microstock. NU completely destroys this vision. The last shelter for a pro who keeps screaming "I am not going to sell my images for a buck or two! Never ever!", this last shelter fails with the NU introduction. Well, probably it should not be so dramatic, but the feeling of many pros as they express themselves in Alamy blog and in other places on the Internet is quite similar to that.

That's why Alamy community strongly disagree to license their images under NU. Their vision is an opposite to microstock amateurs who say "I can get 30 cents per download or nothing if my images will continue sitting on my HD. Obviously, I go microstock!"

In my understanding, NU, which attempts to sell existing "non-micro" content to "microstock-like" buyers is an unnecessarily hard try. Not because Alamy has to educate the market that Alamy sells microstock too, but mostly because Alamy has to educate its own community that Alamy went microstock. And such community education could be a long and not necessarily successful process.

A reasonable alternative to this community education process could be... getting another community that is willing to sell micro. Change the community, because for the micro- market you need a micro- community. And forget your existing content! Keep selling it with "macro-" prices. For the micro market, Alamy brand, the team and agency's market knowledge supported by the right selling community can make the difference, while NU, propagating similar content with pro-community behind, which is unwilling to support micro-sales can kill the initiative at the very beginning.

Just wanted to share with you: a preview of what is going on with v1.5.



At the moment I am not explaining what you see here, but I am sure you recognize that as we promised the keywording is getting much easier, both for English- and for not-native English speakers.

We are getting pretty close to the finish line.
Since it's going to be quite a solid version release, we will start with the beta for a week or two. As usual, beta testers are eligible for the special discounts on their purchase. First release comes on Windows, followed by Mac OS X.

Interested in beta-testing for v1.5? Drop us an email to our support(at)prostockmaster(dot)com account, the sooner the better. Let me apologise in advance: we can actively support only a few tens of beta-testers simultaneously, late applications for beta-testing will be declined. Hope you understand my position - this is not a question of of our good will, but a capacity question.

Oh! - the last, but not the least: the commercial release of v1.5 will come with a different price tag.
So if you wish to benefit from the current price - buy the license now and get the free upgrade to v1.5 when it comes to the market!
IMHO - the best deal in the town. And please do not say I did not tell you

Sincerely,
David

I just looked at some GoDaddy statistics and was very pleased to see that ProStockMaster software run 75,568 times in the last 14 days. It makes a very respectable number of 5,397 in average runs a day. I do not know how many images were uploaded at each run, but the guys in the stock agencies definitely can collect this information looking for "ProStockMaster" user agent HTTP header in their log files.
Assuming an average of uploading 5 images daily at each run, we end up with 377,840 stock photographs uploaded with ProStockMaster just in 2 last weeks.

Nice, is not it?

We have the number of runs here because each time ProStockMaster starts it makes a request for the new software updates to www.prostockmaster.com. These anonymous requests are collected by GoDaddy stats and that's why we can count how many times the software has been started.

So, what you can expect in the upcoming version?
Let me give you a brief preview.

As usual, we listen very carefully to our customers, knowing that what they ask for is what they need.
We are working on:

1. Altering file statuses & upload time, so you can mark any image on your HD as "already uploaded" to some agency. This will help to avoid re-uploads, providing one source for stock image archive data.

2. Speeding up the image browsing. Like many other application, ProStockMaster will now store the generated thumbnails in the DB, thus making the browsing of the folder fast & efficient.


3. The keywords generation user interface will change, allowing you to play with the list of existing and generated keywords for each new keyword you enter.

4. StockXpert issue is solved in this release.

I am thinking about adding "find a duplicate image" functionality (anyway PSM keeps the images DB and anyway the app knows a lot about each indexed image), but I am not sure that there is a demand for that. Drop me a message/comment if you think it is something required.

We do not plan adding any new agency this time. Instead, we have to remove LO
We are checking what else we can do in the short term, not delaying the upcoming release for too long.

We plan releasing the new version in the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

David