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Programmes to rotate pictures


Dolorous Dave

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Hello all,

 

I stuggle to get the horizon level "in the field" so a few of my pictures need to be rotated ever so slightly. I have just tried using Fotor but it seemed to reduce a 13.9MB file into a 1.92 file - so I assume this would fail QC. What is the best way for me to slightly rotate my pictures without affecting the quality of the picture? A free option would be best. Thanks.

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Any decent image editing program, free or not, will allow you to rotate an image which will also mean slight cropping. Some have a ruler that will allow you to set horizontal lines in the image automatically. Reading between the lines are you saying you don’t edit your images at all? 

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No, I'm just starting outin stock photography. My photography experiance is all amiture wildlife stuff to record species and personal amusuesment. I have read posts in the forum saying that photo editing should be kept to a minimum and let the customer make any alterations. What editing should I be doing?

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Editing is a fundamental part of digital photography. The camera capture is only the beginning. It's not really what you should be doing but what you want to do but it is essential to understand the very basics at least - cropping, straightening, contrast and exposure adjustments. Unless you are very lucky you will need to do some basic dust spotting as well if using a camera with interchangeable lenses or you will soon start failing QC. 

 

If you want to improve your photography then you will need to learn how to shoot and process raw images as well as enhance images to your own taste. The idea that you should not edit for Alamy is nonsense. Some people edit a lot, some not so much I guess but there is no law against editing, written or unwritten. Editing does not mean you have to produce over-processed images. For me it means producing images with a good tonal range and nice contrast, with detail retained in the highlights and shadows, properly colour balanced, sharp on the subject, almost always with some local editing within an image and so on. 

 

Importantly, editing is not something to shy away from. It is part of the process and can be a very fulfilling and rewarding experience to work on an image to the point of being actually happy with it. Looking at your very small collection, I can see how you could greatly enhance most of those images in post.

 

 

 

Edited by MDM
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13 minutes ago, Dolorous Dave said:

Ah, it sounds like I should be getting into editing then, thanks! Do you know of any novice-freindly resources I can use to start me off?

 

I would recommend the Adobe subscription for Lightroom and Photoshop for about £10 a month if you can afford that.  The early learning curve will be a bit steep whatever program you use. Lightroom is by far the best for raw processing and image management in my opinion.  It is not difficult to learn the basics. Affinity Photo is a one off payment of around £49 and is getting a very good reputation so is a good alternative. Photoshop Elements is also excellent bit a bit more expensive than Affinity I think.  

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1 hour ago, Dolorous Dave said:

No, I'm just starting outin stock photography. My photography experiance is all amiture wildlife stuff to record species and personal amusuesment. I have read posts in the forum saying that photo editing should be kept to a minimum and let the customer make any alterations. What editing should I be doing?

 

Hi Michael, welcome. I think when people talk about keeping editing to a minimum, it's because they don't like spending so much time behind a screen and you can actually spend hours on a single photo if you go into Photoshop and start looking at layers. But you should be doing basic editing. In terms of clients making edits, they might e.g. boost the saturation, or add a vignette, or add a film grain effect so it's generally recommended to keep your pictures natural looking without 'gimicky' things like this unless you're feeling particularly arty, as clients can do it themselves and you'd be second guessing. Here's Alamy's reasons for failing QC if you haven't seen this yet:

 

https://www.alamy.com/contributors/alamy-how-to-pass-qc.pdf

 

You could technically get away with using JPEGs straight out of the camera as Alamy only spot checks your submissions after your first 3 images. However, you are much more likely to fail QC regularly if you do this and also editing can greatly improve your pictures - meaning you get more sales. When I first started seriously with digital photography I got hold of a lot of photography magazines for all levels. They all recommend editing raw files. JPEGs are actually already edited in camera (they might come out ok, might not, your camera is not super intelligent); if you work on the raw files you can control the editing yourself. It's recommended to work on the raw files rather than JPEGs as it's non destructive.

 

I agree with MDM and would also recommend getting the Adobe subscription so you can use Lightroom. Otherwise, GIMP is supposed to be good freeware, but not as easy to use as Lightroom.

 

Basic editing sumary - cropping, rotating, getting rid of dust spots, getting the exposure right (camera often gets this wrong), making sure blacks and whites are actually black and white, contrast, saturation. Can do this in a minute or under with Lightroom, depending on how much editing a picture needs. I actually do a bit more than this, but it's a good summary. Everyone has their own method for editing.

Steve

Edited by Steve F
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