Craig Joiner

Thank you for posting this Ian. I was thinking of Bob the other day when I realised his last post on another group was nearly 2 years ago and was wondering. I’d not met Bob in person either, although I had the pleasure of corresponding with him by email on occasion. He was always very generous with sharing his knowledge and I too found him a great inspiration. He had a lot of great stories to tell from his many and varied years in the industry and I believe he spent considerable time and energy working to protect photographer’s rights during the consultation on what would become the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 – something we all have benefited from. His wise words on the old Alamy forum often stood out in a sea of nonsense and I for one missed them when he left. His postcards were everywhere here in the South West and his business still exists today https://www.atmosphere.co.uk/ - he gave it to his employees when he retired as I recall. I see his many books are still available too and I have a few myself. A sad loss. RIP Bob.

You cannot claim for e-books in part 1 or part 2. https://www.dacs.org.uk/for-artists/payback/frequently-asked-questions#FAQ169

Sorry Ian, I'd forgotten that global lens sharpening only applies to the DeepPrime option and is probably hidden too so you may not have seen it. When you click on process photos and then select DeepPrime as the method in the process dialogue box, the global lens sharpening option becomes available. It's under the DxO Optical Corrections section but seems to be collapsed by default so you need to click on it to expand the section to see the available options. It's not the most intuitive interface, but at least once you have found the settings that work for you, it seems to remember them. Craig

I believe Joe is tallking about DXO PhotoLab which is a photo editing software. DXO PureRAW is something entirely different. Although I use it mostly for black and white images, I have not noticed any colour shifts in my colour images when using PureRAW.

In my experience DXO PureRAW is excellent at removing noise and the lens corrections are very good too, at least I find them better than the profiles baked into my micro 4/3 lenses and applied by Lightroom/ACR. Note that DXO PureRAW is not a RAW converter. It just produces cleaned up DNG files for downstream RAW conversion in your favourite RAW converter. The global lens sharpening in PureRAW is dreadful and, in my mind, totally unsuitable for stock images – images way over sharpened. In version 1 this was always on but they quickly released v1.5 and made it optional. I wonder why? Even with the global sharpening off, it still applies quite a bit of sharpening so sharpening will probably need turning down or off in your RAW converter when processing the final DNG files. I only use it for images from my Panasonic micro 4/3 cameras, especially my infrared converted body where images are prone to noise and can be a tad soft. I find Lightroom does a poor job with these images producing fuzzy rather than sharp edges, but the DNGs from PureRAW are very clean and sharp by comparison. I’d never consider it for images from my full frame Nikon unless maybe I had to rescue a particularly underexposed high ISO image though. Is it worth it? I think it all depends on what you are throwing at it so definitely look at the trial before buying. Craig

Indeed. That's a guaranteed way to lose our long-term clients. Nice one Alamy. Alamy don't want us contacting their clients direct, but its ok for them to annoy ours. @Alamy you need to re-think this madness. Contributors should be the first contact for these infringements if we have told you we license direct.

As Harry says, kepep a complete full copy of your lightroom catalogue. Best to copy the entire folder and subfolders. That way, in the unlikely event of disaster, you won't loose anything including your previews which can take a long time to rebuild if you only have the catalogue backed up. The current (June 2019) Alamy Lightroom Bridge definately runs fine in LR Classic. I don't think it's been updated for a while because Alamy haven't made any changes that have affected it since June 2019.

Someone who has an image they want to use and they don’t know who the owner is? Wasn't that what the Orphan Works was all about? I’m not expecting GIS to become a stock library and make us all rich of course, but this does make Google Images a slightly less hostile place for our images IMO. If it means a perspective buyer can find the image owner (or acting agent/library) with the click of a button and ultimately license the image then that has to be a good thing, right?

Exactly right Harry. Sorry I should have been clearer (trying to multi task is never a good idea!) Just add the required details to one image then while that image is still selected create a preset (sorry I mistakenly said template originally) and you can add the Licensor metadata to your preset. And thanks for the v6.14 update. I see now that Licensor URL has been around since 2008 after the PLUS coalition got it added so relatively new but not new new. It's been in beta for several months so although officially only became standard from 31st Aug when the Google Images change went live, it was agreed some time ago and has been in use during the beta. Indeed, a pain. But you can just simply point every image to the same generic page giving details of how to license your images rather than separate URLs for each image. This is the approach I took. I would prefer individual URLs to each image's 'home page' but I didn’t have the time to update every image individually. I may do this as a later project if I see any sign it would be worth my while. Craig

Lightroom Classic does support Licensor URL but I might have read somewhere it was a relatively recent metadata field so possibly only available in later Creative Cloud versions. It's under 'IPTC Extension'. Scroll down to 'Rights' and 'Licensor' is there. Click on that and it'll open up with a number of fields including the Licensor URL field. Relatively easy to create a preset in LR and then apply it to all existing images and on import. More info at: https://iptc.org/standards/photo-metadata/quick-guide-to-iptc-photo-metadata-and-google-images/ Edit: You cannot add the licensor details directly to a preset Lightroom. You have to first add it to an image in Lightroom and then create (or modify) a template based on the metadata for that image. Craig

Try the 'Embedded & Sidecar' option. With this LR just pulls the full size preview your camera embedded in the RAW file and is much faster. It won’t match what you eventually see in the develop module, but useful for checking critical focus at 100% etc. during initial culling. Craig

The current system doesn't do this either. It does, however, minimise the risk to an acceptable level as the image is immediately removed from sale and not subject to further downloads/sales until it is removed from public view. Waiting months for a deletion while still visibly on sale is asking for trouble, not to mention difficult to explain should the publisher stumble across it. In any case, Wim was suggesting the kill switch should kill anything in the pipeline too & I agree.

+1 for a kill switch. I sometimes license images direct to magazines that still demand the same images are not used in rival magazines for 6 months or more. Personally I thought the current restrictions were too blunt an instrument but I've come to live with them. However, if Alamy remove the editorial block I'm stuck. Deleting the image completely isn't an option because takes 6 months. A simple kill switch in addition to the proposed options seems like a reasonable compromise to me and would cover all eventualities. Craig