Cutcaster Celebrates 1 Million Images, Quality over Quantity

Cutcaster.com, one of the internet’s premier sources of high quality, royalty-free stock images, announced a major milestone as its image collection surpassed 1,000,000 photographs, illustrations, and vector art.

“Everyone’s proud of the recent milestone,” says John Griffin, CEO of Cutcaster. “We weren’t the first or the fastest to a million but from the start we stressed quality over quantity and that guided our image growth strategy. Cutcaster is about providing world-class images through innovative solutions to meet our customers image needs and that will remain our top priority.”

The one-millionth image was submitted by Serbian photographer, iMarin, of a woman singing into a retro microphone. “I have been selling stock since 2006 and uploaded my photos to Cutcaster because of their high commission rates for sellers and their low $25 payout request for getting my earnings,” iMarin explained.

With a global customer base spanning many different industries including publishing, advertising, web design, blogging and product design, it’s crucial that Cutcaster provides images suited to a wide variety of applications. Image buyers have nearly limitless creative options when using Cutcaster images, which are provided under a royalty-free license with the option to purchase additional extended rights.

“Due to the smaller budgets, we are seeing an increased demand for affordable, premium royalty-free images,” Griffin noted. “As a result, Cutcaster is directly addressing the changing needs of the marketplace by providing an expansive selection of high-quality stock images via an affordable, user-friendly licensing model.”

The company attributes its growth to its innovative business model, which harnesses the power of talented photographers and illustrators worldwide, who regularly upload their work to the companies website. Over the last 6 months, Cutcaster’s library has been adding 20,000 new images per week or nearly two images every minute. Cutcaster’s expert review team screens every image for quality and compliance, enforcing some of the strictest standards in the imagery business. “Two out of every three images submitted by approved artists are now accepted at Cutcaster,” Cora Reed, the companies creative director noted.

“The photos I find at Cutcaster feel authentic and work perfectly within my layouts and budget,” says Mike Armenta of Taylor Stitch in San Francisco, who uses Cutcaster’s affordable images to make the newsletters he creates more appealing. “The website is simple to use, has fast search and great customer service.”

Earlier this year, the company introduced the commercially available search engine, SpiralSearch that was custom built using a unique controlled vocabulary and faceted search. SpiralSearch is just one of the many features of “Spiral” which is their custom framework used to build Cutcaster. Today, customers can find great stock images faster, more easily and with precision using the Spiral framework.

About Cutcaster
Cutcaster was founded in 2007 and has grown into one of the internet’s largest pay-as-you-go and credit-based stock image agencies. The company crowdsources the talent of more than 30,000 digital photographers and illustrators from around the globe who collect earnings each time a customer downloads their images.

Cutcaster translates website into 15 languages

Recently, Cutcaster team translated Cutcaster into 15 different languages. While it was a large undertaking, translating the site, a lot of the words they had originally used on the English version of Cutcaster lost their meaning when translated into different languages. Some of our translations don’t sound right or lack professionalism when read by someone living or from that country. Cutcaster is asking for your help. If one of the languages below is your “mother tongue” and you would like to earn a little extra money for a few hours of work checking and correctly their pre-translated versions of the site, they would love to speak with you about this project.

Cutcaster can provide you with an excel sheet with the short snippets of English and pre-translated text which needs to be checked and corrected if needed. They also can provide you immediate help if you have any questions.

Most phrases that need to have their pre-existing translations examined and in some cases corrected are 1 to 6 words long. There are around 500 phrases that need to be checked.

Danish, Korean, Greek, Dutch, Russian, French, Norwegian, German, Italian, Polish, Swedish, Czech, Japan, Portugese, Chinese

Cutcaster Makes Stock Photography Search Faster, More Accurate

Stock photography website adds contextual search engine, industry-leading royalty payments, and pricing improvements to its online marketplace.

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 7, 2011 — Cutcaster (http://www.cutcaster.com/), a leading source for royalty-free stock photography and illustrations, re-launched today with several upgrades, which address growing needs in the stock image marketplace for both image buyers and sellers.

“We wanted to make changes that would translate to real improvement for all our users,” said Cutcaster founder John Griffin. “Our search engine now helps buyers find, filter and download relevant images more quickly, and we’ve made it easier for our contributors to sell their images and earn good money doing it.”

Cutcaster has combined an easy-to-use search interface with a highly accurate contextual search engine that disambiguates word meanings. As the user types in keywords, the engine determines their meaning and the intention of the searcher to provide highly accurate image results. As the searcher applies additional filters—for number of people, orientation or dominant color, for example— search results are updated immediately, making it easy to focus and expand results as necessary.

“Faster image search makes a big difference for people. If you’re looking for several images for a flyer or website, finding them can take hours if the search engine isn’t sophisticated. Shaving time off that process is invaluable,” said graphic designer Michael Armenta of Taylor Stitch in San Francisco.

The checkout process has been improved as well with simplified pricing, shown in credits and dollars, and the introduction of PayPal. “Our goal was to make downloading images as seamless as possible for people. Users don’t even have to register to buy, and now they have even more secure payment options,” Griffin said.

For its contributors, Cutcaster has increased its royalty payments to one of the highest rates in the industry. “Our rate for exclusive images went from 50% to 55%,” Griffin said. “We want to continue offering excellent images from great contributors, and our rates help us attract and choose the best. At a time when other sites are reducing their royalty percentages and payouts, we’re increasing them,” Griffin added.

A greatly simplified user interface facilitates how contributors upload their images and view their image stats. “The whole site is optimized for our sellers now,” Griffin said. “There’s no guesswork, from signing up to providing the right tax forms, to getting paid.”

Cutcaster was founded in 2007 to serve the growing market for high-quality royalty-free stock photos and illustrations. With over 1 million images in its ever-expanding library, Cutcaster brings together image buyers and sellers into a relationship that focuses on affordable pricing and ease of use.

Cutcaster: Banner Design Challenge

Cutcaster announce a Banner Design Challenge to award any creative person who designs a banner or referral ad for Cutcaster. Details on the challenge can be found on the Cutcaster blog.

Cutcaster released Picture Buyer Statistics

Last week, Cutcaster started tor release the first installment of information they gathered from a picture buying survey they conducted last year with those people who use and download stock imagery.

Over 344 image users and buyers from mostly North America responded. You will find some of the answers picture buyers gave very interesting and not what you would expect.

Cutcaster blog: Picture Buyer Stats Released – Market Information for Online Image Users

When we decided to re-design and re-write the code for the new Cutcaster site last year, we knew we needed first to get a better idea of who was using Cutcaster, what was their process for using royalty free image libraries and how we could better serve them once we released the new site. Listening to what they told us led how we built Cutcaster and was a valuable undertaking not only for us but we felt that it would be really helpful for our Cutcaster members and the industry in general. Over the past year, we surveyed some of the largest and smallest image buyers using Cutcaster or in the stock photo and clipart industry to learn more about their image buying habits, demographics and photo needs in general. In an effort to provide our users and readers with details that can help educate and improve their sales, we are releasing what we have learned from the buyer surveys to the community at large.


Over the next two weeks, Cutcaster will be releasing a large amount of data from our picture buyer survey to help those interested in the stock photography market or using Cutcaster. If you use this information please link back to Cutcaster (http://cutcaster.com or this blog post). The survey was completed by 344 image users mostly in the US and Canada who use royalty free or rights managed images. The following results were collected from their responses.

• What category best describes the type of company or organization for which you work?
• When purchasing digital images and illustrations, which of the following activities do you perform?
• How many people work at your company?
• How many people work at your company?
• How frequently do you purchase stock photography in a typical year?
• How frequently do you purchase stock photography in a typical year?
• How frequently are image researchers or buyers downloading royalty free images or clipart per year. We can see that a very large percentage of responders said they license more than 50 images a year.
• Image buyers annual budget

Check out how much a typical picture buyer spends on a single image or clipart download from a stock agency. The above chart shows image buyers spend per single image. Remember that this includes both royalty free and rights managed licensing (as well as free).

Next week, Cutcaster will release more information regarding what decisions go into choosing an agency / image library, what picture buyers like most and least about their stock agencies they work with currently and what things image buyers want to see an agency do but aren’t at the moment.

Please read the complete story with image and answers at the Cutcaster blog.

Cutcaster Re-Launch - Check out the much improved site

January 25, 2011 - San Francisco, California - 100% out of ‘Beta’ and 100% ‘Betta’ is the word out of Cutcaster to start the new year.

Cutcaster, a royalty free image library out of San Francisco, re-launched photo and stock vector website today after completely re-designing the user experience and re-coding their website to dramatically improve the speed of picture search and the site.

“Our customers felt the need for speed and we pulled up in the ‘Ferrari of Search Engines’ with the passenger side-door wide open.” Griffin said. “Our image search tool is now superior in speed, accuracy and ease of use, freeing up users to focus on their creative projects.”

Browsing or searching on Cutcaster is completely free and you don’t need to register. Picture buyers can immediately purchase images with any major credit card or use site credits to download the images which includes all it’s metadata. Notable site improvements include faster image loading time, increased functionality, improved site layout, cleaner architecture and a simplified design that lets buyers focus on the image buying experience.

“Picture buyers don’t need 10 million images, they need the right image. We built a website that’s simple to use but has powerful enough filters to get them to that image immediately,” Griffin explained. “I’m confident these usability enhancements allow Cutcaster members to find the perfect image – fast.”

Users are able to browse Cutcaster’s image collections or perform a keyword search. When a user searches with keywords, they can then filter their search options by: categories, colors, contributor’s name, vertical or horizontal orientation, picture resolution, price, relevance and image format -- including jpeg and/or vector files. The moment a user finds an image that meets their needs, they can further refine their selection from the "Similar Pictures" filter or by choosing another image from the same cluster of images.

While some photo agencies were pinching pennies from their users’ pockets or others were closing their doors because of the economy, the Cutcaster team dedicated themselves over the last 9 months to listening to their customers’ needs, learning more about online image search and building one of the fastest and simplest user experiences for searching and downloading royalty free images.

Going forward, Cutcaster will focus on three things for their customers, noted Griffin. First, improving the quality and size of the image library. Second, keeping Cutcaster prices affordable for buyers but still paying out a large percentage to their contributors, and third, delivering the best user experience for both image buyers and sellers.

About Cutcaster
Cutcaster is a simple-to-use website for intelligently searching and downloading royalty free photos, hi-res pictures, stock vectors and free stock images for use on websites, presentations, newsletters, ads, books or any commercial project. Browse our enormous image categories, search faster with our intuitive search engine and download affordable creative imagery for as little as a few dollars.

Visit http://cutcaster.com/ to experience the dramatic improvement.

The New Cutcaster Website Design

Cutcaster just updated their website. They have completely overhauled the layout and design of the website and changed the color theme. The site looks now very fresh and is responding very quickly.

Change is Coming to Cutcaster

For the last 9 months, Cutcaster's team, armed with their users feedback, has been quietly planning, re-designing and writing code for the new and improved version of Cutcaster. (This is when you can picture their team huddled around the drawing board, burning the midnight oil and planning out the re-design).

The new site, which is still being tested, should launch by the first of next year. It will drastically improve the sites design, usability, search engine optimization, page load speed, sales conversions and overall visual appeal. The first version of Cutcaster allowed them to see how people used the site. What people liked. What confused people. What didn’t work. Some of it made them proud and some of it was frustrating. From the start, Cutcaster always asked for their users feedback and now you will see how the feedback shaped the redesign.

Why the change?
This was long overdue and has been carefully planned out. The Cutcaster site had become slow during high traffic times of the day, the database and code could have been written better and the color scheme, while different, was a distraction from the main ojective visitors had which was buying images.

Cutcaster want to be proud of the product they provide and the time had come to rebuild and re-invent.

What to expect?
The design of Cutcaster will be more elegant, provide better consistancy, be simpler to use and focus entirely on thier contributor's content. From the start, they knew they needed three things to be working for them.

First, Speed. Search had to be lightning quick and return the most relevant results or buyers would go elsewhere. The reorganization of their database and code will ensure that the search engine will return results immediately, cluster similar images and start to rank them.

Second, Quality. Cutcaster has some of the best quality available in any picture library online. They have a creative director and image review team that carefully checks all uploaded files and over the last year has removed over 300,000 files from their library that were dated, showed unlikely situations or felt "stockish." Now they are getting closer to 600,000 fully reviewed files of just the best of the best.

Third, Price. Cutcaster has the best pricing in the industry. Contributors set their prices and buyers can pay what they want. Our market-priced images tend to range in price from $1 up to $20 for a high resolution file. Buyers are sure to find a great deal everytime they search Cutcaster.

Over the next month, Cutcaster will continue to update you on the process and ask some of you to beta test the improved site to work out the kinks. 2011 is going to be a exciting year with the new changes and they are proud to be able to put out a product that shows all the hard work that was done in the background.

If you haven't already, please join Cutcaster at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace

Cutcaster Launches Educational Copyright Resource, Stock Photo License

September 15, 2010 - San Francisco, California -  Stockphotolicense.com, an educational copyright resource for photo buyers and researchers, launches their new website today with the goal of explaining in simple terms how one can use an image online and the various legal complexities of digital image use. The site provides detailed information on image license types, photo copyright issues, legal protections and extensions, using free images, Creative Commons, personal vs. commercial use and provides a list of questions you can ask your image suppliers before you buy an image.

As image use among bloggers, website owners and graphic designers increases, many image users don’t understand specific licensing terms or how to legally use content they find online. This has increased the amount of illegally downloaded images and copyright infringement cases, which happen in most cases without the image user even realizing the legal ramifications of their actions. Stock Photo License provides a checklist roadmap with questions you should be asking to ensure the legality of your image use online.

“We receive a variety of questions relating to the differences between royalty free and free images as well as how an Internet user can utilize images they find online.” John Griffin, of Stock Photo License and Cutcaster said. “Stock Photo License specifically presents information and resources on image licensing and copyright matters for the image researcher, photo buyer or anyone that wants to legally use another person’s image they found online.” The website lists copyright and legal resources as well as asks typical questions with answers to help an image user.

Stockphotolicense.com was created by Cutcaster, a photography marketplace that specializes in royalty free photos as well as free images, to serve as a resource for both photographers who upload their images online and those looking to download images. Stockphotolicense.com has an active user base and is seeking to add more resources to its list of specialists.. If you own or know of a copyright or licensing resource that could work with Stock Photo License please reach out to the team at team@stockphotolicense.com or follow SPL on Twitter @stockphotousage.


For more information on Stock Photo License please email team@stockphotolicense.com
Or Cora Reed at cora@cutcaster.com.

About Stock Photo License
Stock Photo License (SPL) presents information and resources on image licensing and copyright matters for the image researcher, photo buyer or anyone that wants to legally use another person’s image they found online. The website’s goal is to provide those who are unsure about image licensing with the information, legal definitions and resources to make informed and legal stock photo purchases. Stock Photo License is for every photo researcher, photo buyer, photo user and photographer who is interested in learning more about the changing landscape of photo licensing and is a collaborative effort between all the parties involved with photo licensing.

About Cutcaster
Cutcaster has tapped into a new and unique source of royalty free photos and illustrations that can be used for any kind of publishing, web design project, printing brochures, advertising, annual reports or electronic usage on websites and presentations. Cutcaster created the first model that adds structure to support licensing user-generated photography and vectors when you don't have the budget to create it yourself.  Sellers can set their prices or those new to the world of licensing can use the Cutcaster Algorithm to find the fair market price Photo buyers buy the content at the price shown or bid on content and name their price.

Visit www.cutcaster.com for more information.