123rf Overview for Photographers

123 Royalty Free is another of the upcoming microstock sites that seems to be gaining momentum. If offers both single purchase and subscription options for its buyers, and generous photographer payouts.

Getting accepted

Anyone can sign up. Submit a minimum of 10 images for initial review, as well as photo ID for verification. If your images pass review, they will be posted to the site within 24 hours and you can begin to submit more images.

Image Requirements (content)

No logos, copyright violations, etc.
Model Releases- any image with a recognizable or identifiable face requires a model release, even self-portraits of the photographer, as well as, a 3rd party witness signature. Editorial images are not accepted.
Nudes - full or partial nudity that is artistic and not explicit or pornographic.

Image Requirements (quality)

Images must be free of hair, dust, stains, smudges, etc.
Excessive noise or grain is not permitted.
Avoid over-sharpening, jagged edges, or compression artifacts.
Contrast should be well-defined, showing detail in both highlighted and shadowed areas.
Images should have both practical and aesthetic value. It should look good, but should have a definite theme or subject. Overly artistic images look nice, but don't necessarily sell well.
Pictures of people are much sought-after and often sell well.

Image Specifications

Types - photos, illustrations
File size - 4 MP minimum for photos. 10mb max file size for EPS files.
File type - JPG (quality setting "8" or higher) and EPS
Color profile - images must be saved using the Adobe RGB (1998) Color Management Profile, which can be set in Adobe Photoshop and other graphics editing programs.

Method of Upload

Web, JAVA, FTP

Other requirements

Keywords - Suggest adding keywords to the IPTC image data for each image prior to uploading. 123rf's upload system is built to automatically extract the data.
Number of submissions

No limit on the number of submissions per day.

Approval Process

All submissions are reviewed within 18 working hours. Email notification for each review. Approved images show up within 12 hours. Images without model releases will not be reviewed.