Cal

If you're talking about 5* I have a feeling (but no actual proof of this) that they don't really do that any more and it's only the people that already have it that get to bypass QC most of the time. If I had to further guess I'd say that opportunity might've gone away as part of the PA acquisition. I've been a member since 2019 I think, had one fail very early on, got to 3 stars after something like 2 weeks and have since stayed there. Definitely feels like there's a glass ceiling, but then again if it weren't for people discussing it here I'd never even know there was a higher tier, as it's currently 3/3* not 3/5*. (And what happened to the 4 *?)

In my opinion the NR photo looks worse in various ways than the original (not just the cheek artefacts) - it's waxy and for some reason the denoiser has actually failed to do its job in the plainer parts of the image. These days I tend to stay away from NR unless I think the image won't pass without it AND it's potentially saleable enough to do it. The fact that I've taken up shooting film again has probably desensitised me a bit to noise, but I find NR unless very gently applied just ruins how photos look. I bet you'd get away with the untreated original you posted here just perhaps downsized a bit. Alamy isn't excessively picky on luminance noise, it's chroma noise they seem to come down hard on.

Much higher with the clarity and you'll end up with jaggy edges/halos IME.

I think it's likely the average viewer wouldn't notice. Most of the time when I point out technical flaws like this to my non-photographer friends they think it's either a non-issue or just can't see what I'm talking about like a trained eye can. I have been known to "go off" a photo I previously quite liked when I spot a flaw in it, which annoys me. Regarding the photo in the OP, I know I could show that to 20 people and they'd have nothing but positive things to say. The CA, noise, fact that it's over processed and the dust spots would either go unnoticed or be a non-issue.

I had nothing until the 30th - one of the Grand Canyon for "0$" and then another of a street lamp for mid double digits. It still surprises me what sells. My months tend to be hugely variable as I have quite a niche port, some months I do quite well others it's not even worth reporting.

I meant to post here weeks ago but life got in the way. Some splendid entries already, I'm hoping I didn't miss the boat. My three as follows:- Sunset over the Mojave Desert in California. Taken during my Route 66 trip in 2022, I was late and didn't have the energy to make it to the top, but this view still made it worth it. I took my boots off and lay on my back and watched the sky for a few minutes after taking this, probably one of the most calming moments of my life. Followed by a frantic rush down the dune and back to my car which by the time I got to it was in near total darkness. I narrowly avoided p*ssing off a rattlesnake too. Manchester; Great Bridgewater Street looking towards Deansgate. A fortuitously placed sunray and very much a "grab shot" that turned out to be my favourite of the roll. That roll being some expired Provia 400X that I'd managed to get hold of, shot only last year. Manchester again, taken from one of the high points in Bolton in 2020 so it is missing some newly built skyscrapers. It was another more or less fluke shot, I got up that morning knowing the sun would rise right over the city, but the viewing conditions and fact the sun was behind the city just meant the contrast sucked and so realising my shots were duds I called it a day. As I was about to get into the car after packing up my stuff a cloud parks itself in front of the sun and silhouettes the city "just so", giving this awesome contrast. I really need to do this shot again but the chances of it happening again like this are really slim I reckon.

I suspect it's related to the fact that if you try to load your portfolio link it leads to a 404 (I assume it's not just me). I personally appreciate the ability to view my port from the forum as it always showed latest upload order which was useful for checking database refreshes etc. The page it leads to now isn't cutting the mustard.

The instructions could be useful, I'd be interested to see what/how you did it, for future reference. I plan to run my 27" iMac potentially well into obsolescence (already booting off an external SSD) but one day I'll eventually cave and upgrade but I'd love to be able to continue using it as a display. There is a huge gap in Apple's lineup at the moment and a Mac Studio + Studio display just isn't it. I really hope they see sense and introduce a worthy successor, but I suspect it'll be unjustifiably expensive as a result of our ever weakening currency.

I'm sure it's been mentioned already, but the NR has obliterated any fine detail in that image. I didn't even have to zoom it - the skin looks like waxwork.

I did the same thing. Transformed it from almost unworkably slow to feeling relatively new. The 27" 5K screen is so good and really doesn't have a direct replacement from Apple, so it's worth keeping these running for as long as possible. Whatever does end up being the replacement will no doubt cost an obscene amount.

adding to what everyone else has said, make sure you crank the chroma noise slider. that gets rid of the blotchy colour noise and leaves the luminance (grain). You don't want an absolute absence of luminance noise or you'll end up with banding.

You need to be prepared to hold yourself to a high standard to get photos submitted to stock libraries and/or prepare to have potential QC failures. I think it's also worth adding that in my experience Alamy is quite lax on QC compared to some other places, which can be very stringent. If you aren't shooting with the best of gear in the best of conditions (most aren't), consider downsizing. Any 24MP or higher image (6000x4000 pixels for example) can be reduced by half and still be big enough to upload. A 6MP image is still enough in many cases to be practical and useful.

Yes. With 35mm watch out for grain - it's pesky on anything but the lowest speed, pro tier films. For instance I find Gold 200 can be obnoxiously grainy in all but bright sun, but Portra 160 and Ektar 100 have a very fine grain across the board, and they hold a lot of detail. With medium format you could probably just upload the full res scan.

I think you might be able to get it to work with OpenCore Legacy Patcher, or by simply wiping the Mac and reinstalling High Sierra (they removed target display mode in later versions).

Looks mostly fine to me, with a small "but". There appears to be a "hint" of posterisation in the sky (unless it's just my eyes) - I find blue skies are VERY susceptible to this once you export to JPG because they simply lack the bandwidth to display it properly. I find this is especially true if the saturation has been bumped which it looks like it may have been here. Counterintuitively, one way to combat posterisation/banding in blue skies on export is to actually add a small amount of artificial noise. This allows a gradient to more easily form and can overcome the limitations of 8 bit. Alamy aren't too obsessive about noise - I have been recently submitting scans from 35mm film which isn't known for its lack of grain and they pass. The takeaway from this is I'd try adding a very small amount (almost imperceptible) of fine noise in post and then possibly shrink the image as well to between 6 and 10 MP.