Crestock Acquired By Masterfile Corporation

To Crestock's Members:

Effective July 1, 2010, the assets of Crestock were acquired by Masterfile Corporation, through its subsidiary, Crestock Corporation.

Masterfile is a privately-owned company. It has been in the image licensing business since 1981 and is globally recognized in the advertising, publishing and stock photography community as a premium brand. The company is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

Why the acquisition? It's no secret that the microstock business has revolutionized the global stock photo industry and our acquisition of Crestock is a springboard for Masterfile to join the revolution. We believe the combination of Crestock with Masterfile's experience and resources will be beneficial to both clients and contributors. We can provide clients with quality stock images across all price points and licensing models, and give contributing artists an improved global marketing force for their images.

Crestock will be run as a separate business unit with considerable support from Masterfile in management, finance, marketing and technology. All the current Crestock personnel will continue working with the new company. We will strengthen Crestock by recruiting additional staff and management with microstock experience. Steve Pigeon, Masterfile's president and founder, will oversee the transition.

How will this affect you?

Continuity. Your current account and log-in information with Crestock will remain unchanged. Likewise, all unexpired credits and subscriptions will remain in force.

More quality microstock images. Crestock was founded on the principle of applying high editing standards to crowd-sourced image content. We intend to build on that tradition while increasing the size of the collection to bring you an even better product offering.

More pricing models. Crestock has one of the simplest pricing models available in microstock and we intend to stick to that principle, but we will soon be offering a broader range of files sizes and price options. We will continue Crestock's popular feature that enables you to do transactions by credit card without forcing you to buy credits in advance. And for those of you who like the price savings of buying with credits, we will offer smaller packages of credits for your convenience.

Website Enhancements. We plan to make a number of changes to the website in the coming weeks and months to improve your experience at Crestock. Among the changes will be improved search capabilities, translation of the website into multiple languages and transactions in multiple currencies. We also want to revitalize the Crestock community by adding fresh content to our blog and, with your help, develop an informative and responsive forum.

Contributing photographers and illustrators can look forward to enhanced performance in every aspect of the business as outlined in the Notice to Artists.