Johnnie5

i was having failures more frequently before I added an extra step to my process. I was just checking my photos in Lightroom while I was processing them and then exporting them, renaming them and uploading. I use Adobe Bridge for renaming but it is also a convenient program to double check your photos. You click on a photo, tap the space bar and navigate your way around the photo with a mouse. I still find things that I missed in Lightroom but I haven't had a failure in quite some time. If its just a dust spot I open the photo right out of Bridge and into Photoshop and fix it and save. I am sure the star ratings are based on your success rate over time so all you can do is stop having failures to get a better rank. I have five stars, my last failure was July 2018 for noise and before that November 2017 which was a because of noise and softness on an indoor shot at the Vatican. Now that I have five stars I am even more careful because I don't want to lose it.

It seems to be running slow where I'm at taking a bit longer than normal for results to come up. I'm using Firefox on a Windows PC.

Here is an article on Laptops suitable for photographers, I would be inclined towards the Microsoft Surface book 2. Laptops designed for gaming also work well for photo editing. https://www.creativebloq.com/features/best-laptops-photo-editing https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=best+laptop+for+gaming

"Five window Chevy truck" is the common usage here in the USA, Its a nice example of one and a nice photo. You could add "split window" also in reference to the windshield as 1954 and later models had a curved molded windshield/ windscreen.

https://itstillruns.com/history-five-window-chevy-truck-8539006.html As I ran through your photos I saw this one needed a bit more info, the article should provide that. I watch too many videos of guys fixing old cars and trucks.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/winners-of-the-2019-ocean-art-underwater-photo-contest/ss-BBYXdS7?li=BBnb7Kz&fullscreen=true#image=1

You have a very good eye for composition but your landscape photos look like unprocessed raw files. If you look at your competition for the subject matter you have covered you will find images with more saturation, contrast, detail and drama. It has been mentioned here before that it helps to have images that catch the customers attention as they are scrolling through the thousands of photos in their search results. Here is a video that should help.

I just bought Adobe premier elements and noticed that Adobe is offering a free 30 day trial for Premier and Photoshop. With Premier Elements there is an annoying black stripe across the workspace until you purchase and activate, I don't know what kind of restrictions they put on Photoshop. Premier Elements was more than my laptop could handle with 4K footage but works fine on my desktop. Having the trial period should help determine if your older computers can handle the software. Here is a link to the thirty day trial. https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-elements/download-trial/try.html

I posted this elsewhere but I'll post for those following this thread. https://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/alamy-quality-control/

Open Photoshop click on edit in the menu go down to preferences, and then performance, there you will find out how much RAM PS is allowed to use and change it. Mine is set to 8979 MB. You could try 16 MB for starters. Go to Scratch Disks next and if you have set how much photoshop should use in memory. I have a spare SSD drive installed and use that as a scratch disk. Use space on your C drive or if you have an M.2 drive or SSD that should give better performance. Here is a video, at minute 6:59 he gets to what I am talking about. I need to watch it too.

Alamy explains the star rating system here. https://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/alamy-quality-control/

For Automobiles you may want to add keywords that pertain to the models being UK or European models as they are usually quite different than the United States models of the same car. Brands like Seat, Opel, and Peugeot aren't sold in the U.S. but Ford, Lexus, Toyota, Mazda, Honda etc. are.

I thought it was just me. We miss you Jeff!

One option that hasn't been mentioned is to have a computer custom rebuilt. I recently checked and it seems you can still upgrade to Windows 10 for free which will save money. You can then transfer your operating system to an ssd. which is fine with Microsoft. If you already have a tower case you can have the motherboard, cpu. memory replaced with modern componets, Then have a new 4 terabyte hard drive installed and move all your files to that drive. You can then keep the old drive as a backup and work off the new drive. The only thing you need to keep is the original Windows registration number which should be on the case or a disc. I recently did this for a family member with no problems except to realize that I needed to enter the original registration number to keep Windows 10 eligible for updates. I am not sure if upgrading to 10 would be better before or after the hardware changes. I would suggest at least a 256 gb SSD but 500gb would be better. Windows can take up a lot of room and it helps to put Lightroom and Photoshop on the SSD, you can use the SSD for your scratch disk and cache . You could do the hardware changes without updating to Windows 10 right now and see how that works out. The architecture of tower computers hasn't changed over the years so all new components should fit.