Howard C.

My views are from the stand point of a contributing photographer. In 2018, I applied for a contributor's account with Adobe Stock and submitted a portfolio for review. No action was taken on my application for weeks, so I deleted all of the images on the pending account website. It should be noted that I was never contacted by Adobe before or after I deleted the images.

Five months later, I happen to discover three of my (copyrighted) images, presumably deleted, were displayed for sale on the Adobe Stock website. Credit for the images is attributed to only my first name. I apparently have one sale dated a few days after I uploaded the image, although my account was never accepted. Nor was I ever notified of the sale. You could say it's not a big deal, because the sale netted only $0.24, a 24% commission. Adobe proudly advertises 33 to 35% commissions.

I sent a polite query to Adobe contributor relations and asked why my images were for sale even though I deleted them because no action was taken on my account. The reply was: "We do not have an approval process for contributor accounts. Anyone can submit content to be reviewed." The reply was confusing, internally conflicting and did not answer my question - why are you selling the images I deleted.

Adobe makes very expensive software used by professional photographers and graphic artists. But if we have no income in spite of our hard honest work and God given talent, we will not buy Adobe products. I will continue taking photos and videos because I love it but I will certainly never again buy Adobe products because I can't.

I was a contributing photographer from 2013 to 2016. I resigned in 2016 after iStockPhoto (bought by Getty images) changed the contract and lowered the minimum commission to 1.5 cent. (The lowest commission prior to that was 28 cent). They also gave away images - no commission was paid at all. My portfolio is supposedly no longer on iStockPhoto servers, but I still see my images on Google search with the iStock watermark advertising their free image program. Some of these images are being sold at other agencies.
I have demanded iStock stop advertising my images as "free" but thus far, they continue to ignore me.

Age Fotostock is not very good at selling photos so they consigned some of my photos for sale to another agency (where I already was a contributor). So I resigned from Age Fotostock. They clip their photographers and deduct 24 percent of the payment due, allegedly for taxes. I find that hard to believe, as I have been a contributor to numerous stock photo agencies, of various countries, and no other agency has withheld taxes from an independent contractor.