Brian Yarvin

The Guardian article was illustrated with an Alamy photo. I am impressed.

We seem to have drifted pretty far away from the original question. So ... Ed, there are a couple of kinds of approaches that need to be considered. The first are images that are targeted at the people you're describing. There are a fair number of publications for the inked crowd. You can easily check them out at newsstands. Then there are the images that Ian was hinting at - photos made to record the trend for outsiders. There could also be a small market for commercial images of this crowd, but I would leave that to those who are concentrating on commercial work in the first place. It seems like lots of potential in either case.

During the past five years or so, I have seen no difference between my RF and RM revenues on Alamy. In Ed's case with the food images, I'd bet he'd have seen that same small sale either way given the same set of images

0 First month (actually a month plus a week) with zero sales in quite a few years.

Mark, even whispering the word "Mac" draws them in. It's like blood in a shark tank.

Should you be caught - and I concede that the chance is beyond minuscule - I would like a video of you telling this to the judge.

Oh no! Not the Mac crowd again! Before you know it their'll be twenty posts encouraging Ed's friend to spend roughly the price of a new house in Pennsylvania on a new computer. I believe that combining Darktable for raw processing and GIMP for editing will the the easiest free solution. Faststone is really great, but it doesn't take the place of either of these. And Ed, don't worry about the kind of computer, the installing software will figure that out quickly enough.

Ed, if he's looking for no-cost software, he should check out our Linux thread.

In my experience, stock photographers are very superstitious. You might want to get a lucky charm of some sort in order to keep your streak going.

Like all raw processing packages, Darktable and RawTherapee need a fair amount of computing power. Make sure you've got the right hardware before you judge. Test as many of them as you can and see which you like best. All are capable of great results. BTW ... the right answer is almost never "spend thousands of dollars on new computer hardware" but I think you already know that.

John, I am lost when it comes to definitions of "sincere." Linux is the collective product of the efforts of tens of thousands of people and can be a very useful tool for all sorts of computer-driven work. For some people, it can be a way to escape from the closed systems of Apple or Microsoft, but for others, it may be the only way to accomplish a completely different task. I am trying my best not to project values onto systems like Linux (or stock photography!) and it's going well so far. Sometimes, I fail though. However, whatever Linux may be, it's been good to me.

Mark, I was referring to John's "advotorial" link.

I don't really understand why that link was dragged into the discussion. After all hundreds of thousands of people all over the world earn their livings maintaining and supporting Linux systems. And thousands more teach those who offer that support. And hundreds more write textbooks and manuals for those who do the support and those who teach it. Earning a living and having a business are the very reason so many people learn Linux in the first place. The Linux code and its packages may be free in themselves, but they are the foundation of a major industry.

Mark, I actually think that the idea of keeping your data and apps on different drives is far more important than what OS you use.

Mark, I've never been able to undo a dual boot without wiping the entire drive clean first. Be careful, and as always, keep your data and operating systems on different drives!