Another rejected image

[KTC]

Yes, it's blue because of the colour of the frame outside... but in some parts you can see the building through the blue.

 

Anyway, in terms of the B&W. I think it would possibly be sharp enough if the image was downscaled, but not at the present size.

[Inchiquin]

There's a subtle difference between sharpness and definition. It's a qualitative distinction that's hard to explain until you've seen it in action. In my early Alamy days I had two or three failures with images that I had thought were sharp, but when I analysed them carefully after the failure I could see that the main subject of the photo, although possibly just on the right side of borderline sharpness, was not sufficiently well defined.

 

Having looked at the image here a great deal, for me it does exactly what it says on the QC tin, lacks definition.

 

Alan

 

[M.Chapman]

This is an interesting thread. I've downloaded the image and looking at 100% I have to agree, relative to the images I would submit to Alamy, I would regard it as SoLD. But I think this is quite a useful test image. At the moment the image is 45.9MB. So I wondered, how far does this image have to be downsized before it meets the level of sharpness and detail that I would be happy to submit to Alamy?

 

I downsized the original jpeg to 24MB (3600 x 2392) in Photoshop using "Bicubic (best for smooth edges)" option. At this size I would regard this as being marginal for Alamy QC.

 

I then downsized the original jpeg (in one step) to 17MB (3000 x 1993) in Photoshop, again using "Bicubic (best for smooth edges) option. At this size I would be happy to submit to Alamy QC.

 

Try it for yourself. Where would you position the Alamy QC threshold?

 

Given the original RAW file, it would probably be possible to get better (sharper) results?

[spacecadet]

It's an OOC jpeg if I'm reading the EXIF correctly.

3000 is a touch under 6MP so my minimum size is 3250 long side. I sometimes use it for high ISO or other marginals. I wouldn't have expected to use it for this one. Being at f5.6 hasn't necessarily helped.

But we haven't heard back from the OP on various points we've raised, such as processing, so it's all guesswork.

[spacecadet]

1 minute ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

This is all about equipment, surely.

 

 

 

100% crop of above image, barely any sharpening and scrunched by software to make it smaller on my website

 

The NEX is well capable of passing, from what I hear. I think the SoLD is marginal enough to entertain the possibility of a processing or lens problem.

[liverpix]

On 6/15/2017 at 16:33, Betty LaRue said:

I may be wrong, but the impression I get from the OP's first post and image is that he submitted this image in B&W. if that is correct, whether there is color fringing or not is a moot point. So the rejection would be for other reasons.

Betty

You are correct. It was a b&w photo that I submitted which was rejected.

[liverpix]

On 6/15/2017 at 08:51, spacecadet said:

I think you should be able to read the roman numerals on the clock face. If you can it could be my laptop display, I'll have another look on my shiny screen downstairs. To me it's just off. I would probably have submitted it with my special processing sauce. But as I said not from a jpeg. You all taught me that lesson and I haven't forgotten it.

Edit: no, still off. There's also an acutance effect (I had to look that up, it's been a while) around dark-light transitions which looks like a processing artifact to me, as if clarity has been dialled right up.

Seems unlikely that an experienced contributor would make processing errors, though. My kit lens is OK at 5.6, but maybe this would have passed at 8-11? It certainly didn't need to be 2000th. at 200ISO.

Hi, what do you mean by special processing sauce please I think I used a very high shutter speed because I was on board a moving ferry, though I think the ferry was slowing down at the time because it was about to dock.

[liverpix]

13 hours ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

This is all about equipment, surely.

 

 

100% crop of above image, barely any sharpening and scrunched by software to make it smaller on my website

Was that a full frame camera and expensive lens you used ?

[liverpix]

13 hours ago, spacecadet said:

The NEX is well capable of passing, from what I hear. I think the SoLD is marginal enough to entertain the possibility of a processing or lens problem.

Sorry, what is SoLD ?

[Bill Kuta]

It's our shorthand for your diagnosis--Soft Or Lacking Definition.

[spacecadet]

7 hours ago, liverpix said:

Hi, what do you mean by special processing sauce please I think I used a very high shutter speed because I was on board a moving ferry, though I think the ferry was slowing down at the time because it was about to dock.

Downsize, maybe extra sharpening. But probably not on a jpeg original. You don't need 1/2000, ships don't move that fast, but the smaller aperture was just a suggestion in case the lens is a little soft at 5.6. My kit lens is OK at 5.6, doubtless it's a bit better at 8.

 

[ChrisC]

On 6/15/2017 at 03:21, liverpix said:

This is the original jpeg

I'm not sure what you've done in order to change it to Black & White, but when I zoom in on this colour version, Beetham Tower is blurry, as is the Steam Packet.com ferry, which suggests not a high enough shutter speed, the inside of the boat is out of focus as it should be, but the white part of the inside seems to have camera shake, also I can't make out the name of the white ship. 

Have you added more clarity or over sharpened that black & white to compensate the background, as the rope in the foreground of the B&W version seems overly blurred?

[liverpix]

49 minutes ago, ChrisC said:

I'm not sure what you've done in order to change it to Black & White, but when I zoom in on this colour version, Beetham Tower is blurry, as is the Steam Packet.com ferry, which suggests not a high enough shutter speed, the inside of the boat is out of focus as it should be, but the white part of the inside seems to have camera shake, also I can't make out the name of the white ship. 

Have you added more clarity or over sharpened that black & white to compensate the background, as the rope in the foreground of the B&W version seems overly blurred?

Well, I took the photo at 1/2000 sec. Maybe errors were due to movement of the ferry. Don't understand your last question.

[liverpix]

On 6/17/2017 at 09:51, spacecadet said:

Downsize, maybe extra sharpening. But probably not on a jpeg original. You don't need 1/2000, ships don't move that fast, but the smaller aperture was just a suggestion in case the lens is a little soft at 5.6. My kit lens is OK at 5.6, doubtless it's a bit better at 8.

 

Ok, thanks. I thought downsizing causes the jpeg to lose  detail.

[Jill Morgan]

4 hours ago, liverpix said:

Ok, thanks. I thought downsizing causes the jpeg to lose  detail.

 

If you have the RAW, then downsize the RAW then save as a jpeg. If you only have a jpeg, save that as a tiff, downsize, then save downsized image as jpeg. 

 

Jill

[Duncan_Andison]

Well, looking at the Colour and 100% crop on a retina screen and I'd say they're slightly soft.

 

So, as high pixel density screens have a tendency to make things look sharper than they actually are (such as Apple's Retina screen), then I'd say this would look SoLD on a standard screen.

 

A lot of people process and work with Retina, 4k or 5k screens these days that are between 21-27" in size. Effectively it crams more pixels into a smaller area making you think an image is sharper than it actually is. For this reason I have a separate monitor that is 2560x1440 at 27inch which gives you the right pixel density to be able to judge sharpness. Not saying that this is what's happened here but it is something to be aware of!

[spacecadet]

7 hours ago, liverpix said:

Ok, thanks. I thought downsizing causes the jpeg to lose  detail.

Not IME, but I'm not advocating downsizing as a routine procedure. I use it occasionally on high ISO and otherwise sastisfactory images which are marginal.

[ChrisC]

16 hours ago, liverpix said:

Well, I took the photo at 1/2000 sec. Maybe errors were due to movement of the ferry. Don't understand your last question.

I meant that the Bottom left rope, to me, looks softer than the colour version, so wondered what the workflow was to get it to black and white, if you take out the colour, that should be enough generally, but as it seems more blurry I wondered if you've done anything else to change it apart from de-saturate?

 

The colour and black and white version look very different to me, although it could be due to Flickr and as you have a load of other images on Alamy, I presume you have processed it different, that was all

 

Chris

 

 

 

[liverpix]

21 hours ago, Jill Morgan said:

 

If you have the RAW, then downsize the RAW then save as a jpeg. If you only have a jpeg, save that as a tiff, downsize, then save downsized image as jpeg. 

 

Jill

Thanks, may try that.

 

[liverpix]

9 hours ago, ChrisC said:

I meant that the Bottom left rope, to me, looks softer than the colour version, so wondered what the workflow was to get it to black and white, if you take out the colour, that should be enough generally, but as it seems more blurry I wondered if you've done anything else to change it apart from de-saturate?

 

The colour and black and white version look very different to me, although it could be due to Flickr and as you have a load of other images on Alamy, I presume you have processed it different, that was all

 

Chris

 

 

 

I can't remember the workflow; it was 2 weeks ago. I would normally adjust contrast and perhaps sharpen it.

[M.Chapman]

On 6/23/2017 at 06:07, Jill Morgan said:

 

If you have the RAW, then downsize the RAW then save as a jpeg. If you only have a jpeg, save that as a tiff, downsize, then save downsized image as jpeg. 

 

Jill

 

I often downsize too but always before conversion to jpeg. I don't understand your idea of jpeg>TIFF>Downsize>jpeg. Why would that give a better result than simply

open jpeg>downsize in PS or LR>save as new jpeg?

Downsizing in PS or LR is always performed on the uncompressed image, so I can't see the advantage in converting the jpeg to a tiff before downsizing.

Or have I misunderstood completely?

[spacecadet]

5 hours ago, liverpix said:

I can't remember the workflow; it was 2 weeks ago. I would normally adjust contrast and perhaps sharpen it.

Alamy used to advise against any more than default sharpening. It's still good advice, because your images shouldn't routinely need it. It might account for some of the Mackie line effect I commented on earlier. But I don't think it's the key problem here.

If you don't know your adjustments, presumably you're not using LR, because they would be shown in the file history.

[spacecadet]

42 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

 

I often downsize too but always before conversion to jpeg. I don't understand your idea of jpeg>TIFF>Downsize>jpeg. Why would that give a better result than simply

open jpeg>downsize in PS or LR>save as new jpeg?

Downsizing in PS or LR is always performed on the uncompressed image, so I can't see the advantage in converting the jpeg to a tiff before downsizing.

Or have I misunderstood completely?

I assume Jill is not using LR.  But I wouldn't convert a jpeg to TIFF just to downsize. To work on it, yes, but not just to downsize.

[Stephen Lloyd]

On 15/06/2017 at 14:41, Matt Ashmore said:

What I meant was this:

 

 

Maybe I'm paranoid but I worry about this kind of thing failing QC in my photos and would try and remove the slight purple edge. Whether this counts as CA, I'm afraid this is where my knowledge probably falls short, but to my eyes, I see a slight purple edge.

 

BTW .. hope OP doesn't mind us discussing his image like this. Have to say, I do really like the image.

 

If you look at the right side Liver Bird on the 100% crop it looks like fringing there too.