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dondekeuan

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Hi

I am hoping to encourage my husband to add his photos to Alamy but thought I would try things out for myself in the first instance and sadly, that hasn't gone too well :(

My husband has two Leica cameras - VLux 14 and DLux 9. He tells me he takes his photos in jpeg in 3:2 ratio

He used the free Lightroom App on his ipad to edit his photos. 

When I upload the photos after editing via Lightroom they appear to be too small for the Alamy QC test 

I don't know too much about photography so I have no idea what I am doing wrong.... I don't quite understand the lingo either which is not helping :) 

I have checked the Lightroom app and turned off the 'smart' preview but this didn't make any difference.....

Is there a setting in the camera or is it just the fact that I should use the full version of Lightroom.

I really would appreciate any advice. Thank you

 

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On 30/08/2020 at 16:50, dondekeuan said:

When I upload the photos after editing via Lightroom they appear to be too small for the Alamy QC test 

 

How do you know they are to small? Has Alamy's image uploader rejected them? Or are you looking at the size of the jpg file on disk and comparing to Alamy's 17MB requirement?

 

If it's the former, then make sure jpgs which are exported from Lightroom contain at least 6MP,  ie. 6,000,000 pixels (for example 3,000 x 2,000 pixels) before uploading.

 

If it's the latter, don't worry about the compressed jpeg file size on your computer disk being less than 17MB. Alamy's requirement refers to the uncompressed size. Any jpg file containing more than 6,000,000 pixels will be fine.

 

Mark 

Edited by M.Chapman
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On 30/08/2020 at 16:50, dondekeuan said:

Hi

I am hoping to encourage my husband to add his photos to Alamy but thought I would try things out for myself in the first instance and sadly, that hasn't gone too well :(

My husband has two Leica cameras - VLux 14 and DLux 9. He tells me he takes his photos in jpeg in 3:2 ratio

He used the free Lightroom App on his ipad to edit his photos. 

When I upload the photos after editing via Lightroom they appear to be too small for the Alamy QC test 

I don't know too much about photography so I have no idea what I am doing wrong.... I don't quite understand the lingo either which is not helping :)

I have checked the Lightroom app and turned off the 'smart' preview but this didn't make any difference.....

Is there a setting in the camera or is it just the fact that I should use the full version of Lightroom.

I really would appreciate any advice. Thank you

 

Hi, this might help:

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/13270-several-questions/#comment-255802

 

https://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/guidelines-for-submitting-images/?section=3

 

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

Steve

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12 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

 

How do you know they are to small? Has Alamy's image uploader rejected them? Or are you looking at the size of the jpg file on disk and comparing to Alamy's 17MB requirement?

 

If it's the former, then make sure jpgs which are exported from Lightroom contain at least 6MP,  ie. 6,000,000 pixels (for example 3,000 x 2,000 pixels) before uploading.

 

If it's the latter, don't worry about the compressed jpeg file size on your computer disk being less than 17MB. Alamy's requirement refers to the uncompressed size. Any jpg file containing more than 6,000,000 pixels will be fine.

 

Mark 

Thanks Mark. They were rejected by the uploader.

This is useful :)

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53 minutes ago, dondekeuan said:

Thanks Steve - this is great :) Than you so much..... 

 

Glad that was useful. Also, I'm assuming your cameras can take pictures using both raw and JPEG file formats. A JPEG taken straight from the camera memory card is a compressed file type that has already been edited in the camera using the camera's software. You normally wouldn't want to edit this file because it has already lost information through the compression and edits. A raw file is the uncompressed and unedited file from when you take a picture. You should work on the raw file in Lightroom so YOU choose how it's edited, and then export as a JPEG - which you can upload to Alamy.

 

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7 minutes ago, Steve F said:

 

Glad that was useful. Also, I'm assuming your cameras can take pictures using both raw and JPEG file formats. A JPEG taken straight from the camera memory card is a compressed file type that has already been edited in the camera using the camera's software. You normally wouldn't want to edit this file because it has already lost information through the compression and edits. A raw file is the uncompressed and unedited file from when you take a picture. You should work on the raw file in Lightroom so YOU choose how it's edited, and then export as a JPEG - which you can upload to Alamy.

 

Thanks Steve - yes it does. However, rather sadly,  my entire collection of photographs were taken in JPEG :( Which well and truly explains why I was having an issue....  Thank you Steve. Onward and upward from here.... And of course this gives me a great excuse to head our with the camera today.... 

 

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Just now, dondekeuan said:

Thanks Steve - yes it does. However, rather sadly,  my entire collection of photographs were taken in JPEG :( Which well and truly explains why I was having an issue....  Thank you Steve. Onward and upward from here.... And of course this gives me a great excuse to head our with the camera today.... 

 

Enjoy! I don't know where you are, but it's sunny here 🌞

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2 minutes ago, dondekeuan said:

Thanks Steve - yes it does. However, rather sadly,  my entire collection of photographs were taken in JPEG :( Which well and truly explains why I was having an issue....  Thank you Steve. Onward and upward from here.... And of course this gives me a great excuse to head our with the camera today.... 

 

You can still work on the old JPEGs. They just wouldn't be as high quality as the files produced from working on the raw files first. But as long as they meet Alamy's submission guidelines they'll be fine.

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Looked up the cameras and one is a one inch sensor and the other is a 12 mp Micro 4/3rds.  One inch sensors can shoot acceptable shots, but tend to need both good light, low ISOs, and no cropping.   Same tends to be also true of 12 MP Micro 4/3rds sensors.  These are both cameras with fixed zooms. 

 

A number of people shot with a Sony fixed zoom lens one inch sensor camera, but they've tended to be experienced photographers.   Newer Micro 4/3rds cameras have 16 MP sensors.  Frankly, I got rid of my 12 MP Micro 4/3rds system (Panasonic GF1) when I saw the results of a APSC 20 MP Sony, and shortly after bought a 24 MP Sony a6000.  A larger format camera gets more options; raw files get more options. 

 

Exports should be 6 MP compressed JPGS, though some low detail photos can work, too, just not always.   Noise is a problem with smaller sensors at high ISOs. 

 

The other things is Leica brands a number of Asian made cameras that are not produced by Leica, though the lenses may be designed by Leica.  Here's a review: 

 

Fundamentally, it's a Panasonic camera with some tweeks.   YouTube comparison review with the Sony RX100 VA here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-t8qEQ7FHU

 

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I always run my JPEGs through the AlamySizeCheck software before uploading as a final check to make sure that I didn't flub. I think that you can still download it here.

 

Any files under 17 MB, the minimum uncompressed size for Alamy, will show up in red. It's an old program, but it runs fine on my PC with Windows 10 (don't know about Mac).

 

Good luck.

Edited by John Mitchell
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17 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

I always run my JPEGs through the AlamySizeCheck software before uploading as a final check to make sure that I didn't flub. I think that you can still download it here.

Though anyone new to this old bit of software would need to know to ignore the 'Fail' messages. Useful for seeing if the file is over 17MB in the second column but that's about it. The file should be sRGB not Adobe RGB, or rather there is no point uploading as Adobe RGB as Alamy convert to sRGB. 

 

Edit - No, I'm wrong, he's updated it since the screenshot to Red for over 17MB and just warns about anything apart from Adobe RGB, still misleading in that respect though. Personally I'd go with pixel width x pixel height is more than 6,000,000, aka 6MP, as Mark suggests, and sRGB.

Edited by Harry Harrison
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1 hour ago, Harry Harrison said:

Though anyone new to this old bit of software would need to know to ignore the 'Fail' messages. Useful for seeing if the file is over 17MB in the second column but that's about it. The file should be sRGB not Adobe RGB, or rather there is no point uploading as Adobe RGB as Alamy convert to sRGB. 

 

Edit - No, I'm wrong, he's updated it since the screenshot to Red for over 17MB and just warns about anything apart from Adobe RGB, still misleading in that respect though. Personally I'd go with pixel width x pixel height is more than 6,000,000, aka 6MP, as Mark suggests, and sRGB.

 

I still upload in Adobe RGB, both here and to my own website. Alamy can do whatever they want after that. Yes, the size-checker seems to have been updated to reflect the "new" uncompressed minimum file size of 17 MB. If memory serves, it was either 24 or 26 MB at one time.

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8 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

I still upload in Adobe RGB, both here and to my own website.

 

Try this test.

Adjust a saturated image with strong reds so that AdobeRGB image has a good histogram.

Here's an example of such an image and its histogram.

 

AdobeRGB.png

 

Now convert that image to sRGB (as Alamy will do) and look at the histogram again.

Adobe-RGB-converted-to-s-RGB.png

 

Look what happens to the histogram...

Confusingly, if this test is tried on an sRGB monitor, in spite of the significant change in histogram, the two images will look pretty much the same...

How can this be???

On an sRGB monitor the saturated reds in the AdobeRGB image will be clipped by the monitor whereas the saturated reds in the AdobeRGB image have been clipped/adjusted by the image editing software during conversion to the smaller sRGB colour space. So the two images end up looking about the same. Both have clipped/adjusted reds.

With a wide gamut monitor the two images look different (only the second one will have clipped/adjusted reds).

 

Given that Alamy QC recommends avoiding badly clipped histograms, I think it's best to either work in sRGB, or convert to sRGB, or softproof in sRGB, and then check the histogram before uploading to Alamy. Uploading AdobeRGB images to Alamy risks clipped histograms when Alamy convert to sRGB.

 

Mark

Edited by M.Chapman
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2 minutes ago, Allan Bell said:

Just another step to take in processing.

 

Allan

 

 

You still got that old picture of yourself as a child - I'm surprised by now you haven't replaced it with you as a baby!😉😁

 

John.

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10 minutes ago, Stokie said:

 

You still got that old picture of yourself as a child - I'm surprised by now you haven't replaced it with you as a baby!😉😁

 

John.

 

How's that?      One year old.

 

Don't blame me for the quality, I did not take it.

 

Allan

 

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17 minutes ago, Allan Bell said:

 

Boys and girls wore dresses at that age in those days.

 

Allan

 

 

I was just teasing. You should have seen my home made haircut around that time....

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1 hour ago, M.Chapman said:

Not if you work in sRGB throughout... Keeps it simple.

 

Mark

 

True. But don't we want to get the most out of our images by using higher gamut ranges?

 

Allan

 

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1 hour ago, gvallee said:

 

I was just teasing. You should have seen my home made haircut around that time....

 

LOL. You reminded me of a time when mum was very shocked at my haircut. My little friend and I had been under the dining table behind the cloth which hung down a long way with a pair of scissors playing at barbers. Heaven knows where we managed to get hold of the scissors.

 

Allan

 

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1 hour ago, gvallee said:

 

I was just teasing. You should have seen my home made haircut around that time....

 

Even though these things are in our living memory it seems to be from another age doesn't it?

 

In fact we have lived through quite a few ages. More than in the same period before we were born.

 

Allan

 

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2 hours ago, Allan Bell said:

 

How's that?      One year old.

 

Don't blame me for the quality, I did not take it.

 

Allan

 

 

I dread to think what the next picture will be like......

 

John.

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15 hours ago, MizBrown said:

Looked up the cameras and one is a one inch sensor and the other is a 12 mp Micro 4/3rds.  One inch sensors can shoot acceptable shots, but tend to need both good light, low ISOs, and no cropping.   Same tends to be also true of 12 MP Micro 4/3rds sensors.  These are both cameras with fixed zooms. 

 

A number of people shot with a Sony fixed zoom lens one inch sensor camera, but they've tended to be experienced photographers.   Newer Micro 4/3rds cameras have 16 MP sensors.  Frankly, I got rid of my 12 MP Micro 4/3rds system (Panasonic GF1) when I saw the results of a APSC 20 MP Sony, and shortly after bought a 24 MP Sony a6000.  A larger format camera gets more options; raw files get more options. 

 

Exports should be 6 MP compressed JPGS, though some low detail photos can work, too, just not always.   Noise is a problem with smaller sensors at high ISOs. 

 

The other things is Leica brands a number of Asian made cameras that are not produced by Leica, though the lenses may be designed by Leica.  Here's a review: 

 

Fundamentally, it's a Panasonic camera with some tweeks.   YouTube comparison review with the Sony RX100 VA here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-t8qEQ7FHU

 

Thanks MizBrown - very useful :)

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