Crestock has been struggling for some time with backlogged submissions and poor response times to both contributors and image buyers, so for all concerned this should be good news. The scale of the microstock sector is making it difficult for small operations to continue to offer the levels of service required for continued success. It is a natural progression for such relatively small start us to be aquired and further developed by established industry players.

The fact Masterfile have taken over Crestock should be seen both as an endorsement of the quality of what Crestock’s founders and conributors have built and also of the importance and viabilty of the microstock sector going into the future. Masterfile come from the old school of stock photography but obviously see the need to be involved in microstock and in Crestock they’ve the opportunity to fast track their entry into the sector.