Several questions

[BuddyL]

Hi all,  a few questions.

 

What is soft proofing?

When I crop an image, what is the minimum file size I should crop to export to Alamy? 

What export settings should I be using?

How on earth do people upload so many images given the time it takes to process, retouch and keyword? Spent all weekend doing this and now have about a dozen images. 

If I submit those dozen images and 1 fails, do they all fail? 

If the above happens do Alamy tell you which image has failed and why?

All info greatly appreciated

Thank you

[Steve F]

Hi Rick,

You should be able to edit a general image in 1-2 mins in Lightroom. What software are you using to edit?

 

Soft-proofing is the capability to preview in how onscreen photos appear when printed, and optimise them for a particular output device. Soft-proofing in Lightroom Classic lets you evaluate how images appear when printed, and adjust them so that you can reduce surprising tone and color shifts. I don't soft proof and I don't think I need to if I edit correctly and export in the correct colour space.

 

Minimum (uncompressed) file size in editing software is 17MB. Minimum exported JPEG file size is 3000 x 2000 pixels so 6MP.

 

Export without additional sharpening (or just using Lightroom's default setting if you haven't previously applied sharpening when processing the image). Export as maximum quality. Adobe RGB (1998) or sRGB colour space. I export as Adobe RGB; I seem to remember that Alamy converts all the images to one or the other anyway, hopefully someone else in the Forum can confirm.

 

Alamy only spot check your submissions, so they rely on you to do your own QC. If one photo fails Alamy's QC, they all fail. Yes, you get told the reasons why and I think they tell you which image. I've only failed once in 5 years using Lightroom to edit.

 

Time taken - some people use presets in Lightroom to batch edit their photos and this saves a lot of time. I don't, but I'm not a prolific photographer so I'm happy to edit on an individual basis.

Steve

 

p.s. I try to get the photos I take as 'correct' as possible in camera so less editing time is required.

 

p.p.s. You should also make sure your screen you use to edit is colour calibrated.

Edited August 7, 2020 by Steve F

[Harry Harrison]

1 hour ago, Steve F said:

I export as Adobe RGB; I seem to remember that Alamy converts all the images to one or the other anyway, hopefully someone else in the Forum can confirm.

Alamy converts to sRGB so no point uploading as Adobe RGB. Steve's covered it all I think but just to be clear, if one image fails they don't look at any more of the others. Do check for sensor spots, particularly in the skies of course.

Edited August 7, 2020 by Harry Harrison

[Thiago Trevisan]

3 hours ago, Steve F said:

Alamy only spot check your submissions, so they rely on you to do your own QC. If one photo fails Alamy's QC, they all fail. Yes, you get told the reasons why and I think they tell you which image. I've only failed once in 5 years using Lightroom to edit.

 

Just to confirm this part. I had the first rejection last week, the image rejected comes with a label stating the reason and all the others waiting received “One or more images failed QC. This means the remaining images have been rejected without being assessed.”. To my surprise, two batches after the fail I received the third QC star.

 

By the way, I didn't know about soft-proofing, thanks for the explanation.

[John Mitchell]

I've always been in awe of how many images some contributors manage to upload. The conclusion I've come to is that they must have superhuman powers. 😄

[MariaJ]

9 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

Alamy converts to sRGB so no point uploading as Adobe RGB. Steve's covered it all I think but just to be clear, if one image fails they don't look at any more of the others. Do check for sensor spots, particularly in the skies of course.

 

I emailed alamy CR last year asking for clarification on colour space and below was their reply.  They seem to be favouring Adobe RGB.

 

This is totally up to you and your own workflow, but we work with Adobe RGB and ignore any embedded ICC profiles when we process your images so before sending we recommend saving all images as Adobe RGB (1998).

 

[Harry Harrison]

33 minutes ago, MariaJ said:

This is totally up to you and your own workflow, but we work with Adobe RGB and ignore any embedded ICC profiles when we process your images so before sending we recommend saving all images as Adobe RGB (1998).

No, they've changed their minds and/or their working practices, there's a long thread about it here, see Alamy statement in blue on page 5:

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/11753-colour-space/page/5/

 

They would routinely send out the answer that you received but it was incorrect, Mark Chapman tested it by actually purchasing his own images and seeing what colour space they were in, which was sRGB but with no colour profile. In the end Alamy came clean.

 

Edited August 7, 2020 by Harry Harrison

[Bella]

8 hours ago, Thiago Trevisan said:

 

Just to confirm this part. I had the first rejection last week, the image rejected comes with a label stating the reason and all the others waiting received “One or more images failed QC. This means the remaining images have been rejected without being assessed.”. To my surprise, two batches after the fail I received the third QC star.

 

 

I believe some people have five stars, I have three but I have never failed QC. I wonder how many uploaded images it take to get to four or five. Anyone have any idea?

[Colblimp]

5 minutes ago, Bella said:

 

I believe some people have five stars, I have three but I have never failed QC. I wonder how many uploaded images it take to get to four or five. Anyone have any idea?

I have 5 stars - I've only had one QC fail since I started with Alamy.

[Bella]

8 minutes ago, Colblimp said:

I have 5 stars - I've only had one QC fail since I started with Alamy.

 

Thanks Andy... not sure when I will ever get close to 5,000 images but I'm working on it

[Colblimp]

4 minutes ago, Bella said:

 

Thanks Andy... not sure when I will ever get close to 5,000 images but I'm working on it

I thought that, but I just keep on uploading and the port just keeps increasing in size.  At the beginning of this year I had approx. 3,500 pics, I'll easily get to 6,000 by 31st Dec, hopefully more.  You'd be surprised how quickly the total number of pics goes up.

[Bella]

5 minutes ago, Colblimp said:

I thought that, but I just keep on uploading and the port just keeps increasing in size.  At the beginning of this year I had approx. 3,500 pics, I'll easily get to 6,000 by 31st Dec, hopefully more.  You'd be surprised how quickly the total number of pics goes up.

 

You're right, it's not long ago that I had just 700. I was working for the last 18 months or so and didn't upload much in that time.

[Bill Allsopp]

9 hours ago, Bella said:

 

I believe some people have five stars, I have three but I have never failed QC. I wonder how many uploaded images it take to get to four or five. Anyone have any idea?

I have over 4K images and a ***** rating which shot up from three a year or so ago. I have had one image fail in the last 20 months and 1,200 images. That was for noise - only a bit but my bad I should have checked more carefully. The fail did not knock my rating back - thanks for being understanding Alamy!

[MariaJ]

10 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

No, they've changed their minds and/or their working practices, there's a long thread about it here, see Alamy statement in blue on page 5:

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/11753-colour-space/page/5/

 

They would routinely send out the answer that you received but it was incorrect, Mark Chapman tested it by actually purchasing his own images and seeing what colour space they were in, which was sRGB but with no colour profile. In the end Alamy came clean.

 

 

Thanks for the update!

[Bella]

50 minutes ago, Bill Allsopp said:

I have over 4K images and a ***** rating which shot up from three a year or so ago. I have had one image fail in the last 20 months and 1,200 images. That was for noise - only a bit but my bad I should have checked more carefully. The fail did not knock my rating back - thanks for being understanding Alamy!

 

Thanks for the info Bill. It's just curiosity really as my images go through QC reasonably quickly anyway.

[BuddyL]

A late reply but thank you for all the information and advice. 

I use lightroom to edit and then photoshop to tweak things.

 I noticed Steve F takes 1 to 2 minutes to edit images, wow I need to speed up significantly.  Keywording seems to take forever, any tips to speed that process up? 

[MDM]

55 minutes ago, BuddyL said:

A late reply but thank you for all the information and advice. 

I use lightroom to edit and then photoshop to tweak things.

 I noticed Steve F takes 1 to 2 minutes to edit images, wow I need to speed up significantly.  Keywording seems to take forever, any tips to speed that process up? 

 

You should not take 1-2 minutes as some sort of given. There are no rules. You are producing some really excellent arty images that obviously need work and are certainly not going to be perfected in a minute or two. Your self portraits are fantastic and have real depth of feeling. Images like this are the end product of a process and can't be rushed. If you are taking snapshots of your local area or the like, as many people do, then you can maybe fly through them. For keywording, do a lot less - just use really relevant keywords, use phrases as well as individual words and include anything important in the caption. 

Edited August 9, 2020 by MDM

[Steve F]

2 hours ago, BuddyL said:

A late reply but thank you for all the information and advice. 

I use lightroom to edit and then photoshop to tweak things.

 I noticed Steve F takes 1 to 2 minutes to edit images, wow I need to speed up significantly.  Keywording seems to take forever, any tips to speed that process up? 

Hi Rick, just to clarify, i added the word 'general' to mean, as MDM says - e.g. non-arty snapshots of the local area. Occasionally I spend up to half an hour on an image. While not prolific, I am trying to grow my collection, so I try to edit as quickly as possible.

 

Keywording - practice. Also, you can assign keywords in Lightroom under particular overarching keywords. For example, you could have 'Fast Food' as your main keyword. Then you can save a number of keywords under this, e.g. unhealthy, fattening, food to go, obesity... Next time you have a fast-food image, these keywords will be available again. Sorry, writing this without LR in front of me, hopefully you can figure out what I mean. You do this on the Library tab.

Steve

Edited August 9, 2020 by Steve F

[Inchiquin]

On 08/08/2020 at 08:21, Bill Allsopp said:

 

I have over 4K images and a ***** rating which shot up from three a year or so ago. I have had one image fail in the last 20 months and 1,200 images. That was for noise - only a bit but my bad I should have checked more carefully. The fail did not knock my rating back - thanks for being understanding Alamy!

 

 

I suspect that the regularity of submissions plays an important part too. I have over 4000 images and no failure since 2014 but I'm firmly stuck on three stars. I've assumed this is because for the last 3 years or so other things have taken priority so I only upload sporadically.

 

Alan

[Colblimp]

19 hours ago, BuddyL said:

 I noticed Steve F takes 1 to 2 minutes to edit images, wow I need to speed up significantly.  Keywording seems to take forever, any tips to speed that process up? 

Do news and it's more like a 30 second edit...

 

As for keywording - I really don't want to talk about it because I hate it! 🤢

[Bill Allsopp]

13 hours ago, Colblimp said:

 

As for keywording - I really don't want to talk about it because I hate it! 🤢

Plus one for that, definitely the worst part of the job.

[BuddyL]

Once again thank you for the helpful replies. 

Thank you MDM for the very kind words on my limited folio of images.  Never photograph myself usually but lockdown forced me to think outside the box (or in this case outside in the garden) 😀

[MDM]

2 hours ago, BuddyL said:

Once again thank you for the helpful replies. 

Thank you MDM for the very kind words on my limited folio of images.  Never photograph myself usually but lockdown forced me to think outside the box (or in this case outside in the garden) 😀

 

Don't mention it BuddyL. They are very powerful and evocative moody images. I love the sepia one with your hands on the window. It really captures the feeling of isolation that so many people felt and probably still feel. The fact is that this thing has not gone away even if it feels like it has.

 

You might find it hard to sell the more arty pictures around Preston on Alamy. Pictures of the situation with the current restrictions might be more saleable. 

[meanderingemu]

On 10/08/2020 at 07:54, BuddyL said:

Once again thank you for the helpful replies. 

Thank you MDM for the very kind words on my limited folio of images.  Never photograph myself usually but lockdown forced me to think outside the box (or in this case outside in the garden) 😀

 

had a look at your self portrait, nice work.  One note, from a buyer's perspective the self portrait part is probably much less important than the general facts about what is In the image.  You should likely add KW that describe you that will help someone looking for that specific image.  and No, i will not make suggestions, you probably know yourself more than me 🙂