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Almost impossible to upload images


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17 hours ago, Starsphinx said:

Does anyone else wonder if this is anything to do with the need for money resulting in the commission change?

 

That's a very very long bow . . . especially after having seen threads of this nature periodically over the past decade or so.

 

DD

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22 minutes ago, dustydingo said:

 

That's a very very long bow . . . especially after having seen threads of this nature periodically over the past decade or so.

 

DD

Ah - I am a newbie, so not familiar with it happening before.  It was just a case of a month after a huge upheaval seemed a little coincidental

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On ‎1‎/‎23‎/‎2019 at 15:26, Starsphinx said:

Does anyone else wonder if this is anything to do with the need for money resulting in the commission change?  Is Alamys equipment reaching its limits and needing replacing or increasing?

Andy,

 

The above is uncalled for, if you had been on Alamy for more than ten years  I would not respond to your post.

We all spoke and Alamy did listen, I salute Alamy and James for that.  There is no need for "cheap shots."

 

P.S. I am seeing more licenses and for a bit better fees, still have a way to go but it is better.

 

Chuck

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7 minutes ago, Chuck Nacke said:

Andy,

 

The above is uncalled for, if you had been on Alamy for more than ten years  I would not respond to your post.

We all spoke and Alamy did listen, I salute Alamy and James for that.  There is no need for "cheap shots."

 

P.S. I am seeing more licenses and for a bit better fees, still have a way to go but it is better.

 

Chuck

My name is not Andy and my gender is female - and the above was not a cheap shot.  I can and will pull like a bloody shire horse to help out but, just like a shire horse I like to know in which direction I am supposed to be pulling, and have a driver who knows what they want to be done.

The videos contained vague references to tightening and needs in other departments - we all know how fast ordinary hardware gets overtaken the same thing can occur with big server hardware.  IF there was a link between slowing uploads and equipment being replaced contributors could actually try and be of assistance by, for instance, making sure their work patterns did not get too similar resulting in higher peak upload times.

As was observed and that which Alamy may not have heard is that they have on hell of an untapped resource in their contributors beyond the simple ability to upload photographs.  

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Chuck, with all respect, Alamy did say they needed upgrades. I don’t think it is disrespectful to wonder if their servers are aging and full. 

Yes, periodically for years we have had a time or two with slow uploads. Those corrected themselves. Recently, though, it does seem much more prevalent than ever.

 

And no, I’m not suggesting it’s anything deliberate by Alamy, nor do I believe starsphinx meant that. It is our nature to try to connect things, right or wrong.

Betty

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Estelle, Betty and all,

 

The point I was attempting to make is that it is pointless to make "baseless accusations" toward Alamy.  I have written in this forum that

"The day that I do not trust Alamy or believe that Alamy is not able to represent my work, I will not contribute to Alamy or this forum."

 

I am still here and happy to continue to contribute to Alamy.  I am not going to concern myself with the age or health Alamy's servers.

This is a public forum and I think that we should all keep that in mind.  If I have a serious concern about What is happening with Alamy

I contact Alamy privately and directly and usually ask if I can make Alamy's response public.

 

My apologies to all for sidetracking this thread.

 

Chuck Nacke 

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11 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

Chuck, with all respect, Alamy did say they needed upgrades. I don’t think it is disrespectful to wonder if their servers are aging and full. 

Yes, periodically for years we have had a time or two with slow uploads. Those corrected themselves. Recently, though, it does seem much more prevalent than ever.

 

And no, I’m not suggesting it’s anything deliberate by Alamy, nor do I believe starsphinx meant that. It is our nature to try to connect things, right or wrong.

Betty

Thank you - I most certainly did not intend to suggest it was deliberate - and it was never intended to be negative.  I have played around with site hosting for years - I am used to "we are upgrading our stock so there may be patches of slow running for 2 months" - and generally users are happy to accept that because they know its temporary and they know in the mid to long term it means maintenance of high-quality service or even improvement.  

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  • 2 weeks later...

A week ago I uploaded 69 images first go and it took only 1 hour or so, since then I've tried at least 5 times to upload another batch and no success I even left the computer on overnight and by morning there were only a handful of images uploaded it has been a very frustrating week.

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.......and then on Saturday morning I was able to upload 136 images in no time at all. I'm wondering if hundreds of thousands of images are being uploaded by the big commercial photographers during the week maybe us mortal part time photographers should upload  on weekends when Alamy has more free bandwidth space.

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  • 2 weeks later...

One thing I've tried, with limited success, is to upload only small batches, typically 5 at a time, and then another 5, and so on.  Also I've started making my images smaller, which goes against the grain as far as quality is concerned, but makes them uploadable - just about!  Instead of my usual 50mg files (100 as TIFF, 16 bit files), I'm now reducing them to around 25mg...

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11 hours ago, will perrett said:

One thing I've tried, with limited success, is to upload only small batches, typically 5 at a time, and then another 5, and so on.  Also I've started making my images smaller, which goes against the grain as far as quality is concerned, but makes them uploadable - just about!  Instead of my usual 50mg files (100 as TIFF, 16 bit files), I'm now reducing them to around 25mg...

Er...

 

Alamy only accepts uploads of 8bit JPEGs containing more than  ~6MP (6 million pixels). They won't accept 16 bit TIFFs.

 

If you're having trouble uploading via Alamy's webpage, then try using FTP upload instead. It's more reliable and much quicker. Help on this is here.

https://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/how-do-i-send-you-my-stock-images/

 

I recommend checking images comply with Alamy's requirements before trying to upload using this tool. Saves a lot of time.

http://www.braeside.plus.com/photography/alamy/alamy.html

 

Mark

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Of course I'm fully aware of the upload requirements, after all I'm nearly 8000 uploads down the line!  I'm not suggesting uploading large TIFFs; instead I was suggesting making "normal" 50 mg jpegs smaller: around 25 mgs (before compression).   As far as FTP is concerned, I've tried it, and would continue to do so if I didn't get the message "Insecure server, it does not support FTP over TLS".  I've tried Googling a fix for this, but can't find anything that I can understand!  Any help with that gratefully received!  And by the way, I always check that images comply with Alamy's requirements before uploading: I'm not that daft...

 

Will

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Ridiculously slow.  First three attempts I simply closed my browser down after waiting an inordinate amount of time for the first image to upload.  Now I have left them alone to get on with it, gone to make a cup of tea, and they are crawling along at a snail's pace.  Seems to make no difference which browser you use.  This is happening too often, its unprofessional - Alamy needs to get its act together.

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I brought this up with James Allsworth at our meeting in Cambridge last month. I was seeing massive slowdowns or complete inability to upload at all during the daytime (GMT) and better performance late at night as were others at the meeting. 

 

James did say in his email  to me after the meeting when I again tried uploading at different time of day  and experienced the same problems "We're not seeing an overall dip in the numbers coming in, but I appreciate that there might be an issue somewhere if that's what you're seeing." He said he would check it out and get back but I have not heard from him and it appears that nothing has happened. Perhaps it is related to the recent issues with the website and the database but, whatever the case, there is absolutely no doubt that there is still  a problem.

 

I have not uploaded for about 3 weeks now but will check it out again soon. Given what others are saying I doubt there will be any change. I would suggest that anyone experiencing problems should email Alamy and post on here as well. 

 

 

 

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On 2/21/2019 at 09:51, M.Chapman said:

Er...

 

Alamy only accepts uploads of 8bit JPEGs containing more than  ~6MP (6 million pixels). They won't accept 16 bit TIFFs.

 

If you're having trouble uploading via Alamy's webpage, then try using FTP upload instead. It's more reliable and much quicker. Help on this is here.

https://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/how-do-i-send-you-my-stock-images/

 

I recommend checking images comply with Alamy's requirements before trying to upload using this tool. Saves a lot of time.

http://www.braeside.plus.com/photography/alamy/alamy.html

 

Mark

 

 

i tried the FTP, and ended up with 12 errors out of 16 :-( 

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4 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

 

 

i tried the FTP, and ended up with 12 errors out of 16 :-( 

 

Mmm... I just tried FTP and my images appeared to upload but never appeared in the destination directory :wacko:

So I tried Alamy's web-uploader instead and that was fine.

Hope I don't end up with a duplicate submission.

 

Mark

 

Update: Oops! I did end up with duplicate submissions. Alamy's server must have sucked my files out of the FTP transfer destination folder so quickly that they never appeared... Is that normal? I haven't seen it happen before.

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I have had several abortive attempts to upload in the past 24-48 hours. Sometimes none are uploaded; sometimes one or two but not the rest; sometimes a batch goes through. Most often however, nothing happens. At the moment a typical example is (not) in progress - 4 out of 10 have uploaded and it has been stopped on the fifth for the last 15 minutes. Sometime one sneaks in without it being recorded as arriving with Alamy, which results in a later duplicate.
 
I have a good broadband upload speed. I am using Safari on an iMac. I have tried clearing the cache several times. I have signed out of and back in to Alamy. I have restarted Safari. I have even restarted the iMac. Nothing seems to make much difference.
 
Looking back over the thread there doesn't seem to be a simple answer, although I have some resonance with the person who wondered about uploading at quieter times - e.g. evenings and weekends - although I have not the time or opportunity to look for better windows. 
 
It is very frustrating and an improvement would be good.
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  • 2 weeks later...

Chris. You will see that mine is the text before yours. I was helped by Alamy. They advised using FTP (you might need to research that on the web).  I had tried FTP in the past (FireZilla) but that resulted in a range of error messages and was equally frustrating. I downloaded and used cyberduck  on 8th March and used it for 21 images to Alamy and that worked fine and I have used it again since with no problem. That might be your best route.

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