Wired today reprints the two page story "Stock Waves, Citizen Photo Journalists Are Changing the Rules" from Assignment Zero and attached a gallery "Stock Photo Showdown: Corbis Pros vs. iStockphoto Amateurs": "We've collected comparable images from iStockphoto.com and Corbis for a side-by-side comparison. Judge for yourself which image service wins the day".
Except for four examples, it is pretty easy to predict in advance which photo is microstock and which is not: "Not surprisingly, Corbis had much larger size and scope, and in areas like celebrities or news photos, iStockphoto.com can't compete. But as these photos show, there's a lot of overlap, and in terms of quality, iStockphoto.com fares quite well. The bill for iStock´s images was $30, almost $870 less than the $900 from Corbis."
