RCS

Thanks Harry - I'll have a look at the software you suggest. My understanding is that exiftool works fine with .DNG raw files (which is what I use, being stranded as I am in Pentax-land) but I don't know if .CR2 and .RAF are forced to use sidecar files? Yes, the duplicate file names could be tricky but...if you made a clean break between Canon and Sony you could split them into separate .csv files by date? Also note that exiftool starts from the photographs on your disk as its primary input and checks to see if they exist in the spreadsheet, rather than the other way ro

Over on the contract thread there was a really useful contribution by Mark Chapman on how to squirt your Alamy data into Lightroom Classic using exiftool. I nearly got it to work but not quite and have spent the morning playing around with it. I wanted to drop a few extra tips in a new topic in case it's useful to anyone, as it would only get lost in the contract talk. What I wanted to do was get my captions and keywords out of Alamy and put them back into Lightroom. The starting point for what follows is what Mark said here Contract Change 2021 - Official thread - Page

Alamy are like anyone else in 2021 with the word 'agent' in their name. They will put a buyer and seller together with the least inconvenience / cost to themselves, and if sellers are more plentiful than buyers then caveat vendor. If you've ever had to work with the utter numbskulls calling themselves recruitment agents in the last few years you'll know where Alamy are heading. I've read posts on these forums for the past few weeks where some folks have defended Alamy's shonky business methods and wondered if the authors had Stockholm syndrome. They aren't your friends, and now the door is ope

I joined up here because it seemed like a friendly place where people were paid fairly for their work. And for contributors, this forum is enormously useful. You folks who DO sell pictures (I'm new and still haven't ticked that box) do a great deal of Alamy's work for them by advising the rest of us (and each other) how to engage with the platform, and how to improve. And they've even got you advising them - for free - what to write in their own blog! I suspect you contribute because you're nice people and want to help, but it's also, perhaps, a little bit of leverage you have if y

I've had some success with this one which works in the browser rather than via a mobile app. https://identify.plantnet.org/ (Wintercress has popped up all over my garden this spring and as its flowers hadn't yet opened I couldn't spot it in my wildflower books, but this site got it straight away).

Similar experience for me. I uploaded two small batches on 25th Feb, and they're still in QC. Also 2/3 stars, no failures yet. My handful of previous uploads went through a bit quicker than this. I'm still finding my feet with QC standards so I'm reluctant to upload too much at once - that first failure, when it comes, is likely to be a really useful benchmark.

Thanks for this, and also to Harry Harrison for his insight. I'll take a look.

What's your experience with colour management with these professional services? I've used one of the well-known UK consumer companies for mugs and calendars for xmas gifts, and though I had low expectations, I was still disappointed. Getting the colours "right" on a home printer can be a very difficult job - and I've spent many a miserable hour swearing profusely at my failures - but at least when it goes wrong, it's up to me to put it right, and my workflow is now rather more satisfactory. As for the all-in-one devices, I suspect they are OK for non-critical, non-prof

I've got the Canon Pixma Pro-100. Very good, but the price of ink is crazy (as MDM warns, above) - c. £100 for a full set. Given that I'll sometimes go a few weeks or months between uses, I suspect that the tanks often dry out before they empty, meaning I'm not even getting full value for my money. Last time I (nervously) tried buying cheapo non-Canon ink, at £30 for a set. I made a few (colour) test prints, compared them to earlier Canon-ink prints, and couldn't tell the difference. More importantly, the printer didn't break!

Hello all having just had my first couple of submissions accepted, I wanted to drop by and say thanks for all the help and advice which forum members provide. Before I submitted anything, I spent quite some time reading through advice on QC and tagging in particular. With regard to QC, I doubt I'd have got through the initial submission without the guidance provided here. It's quite an eye opener when you start looking at your own pictures through Alamy's eyes. Some are fine; some are easily salvageable (I 've always shot RAW so can go back through them and remove excess sh