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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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15 hours 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.

 

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.

Thank you John :)

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5 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

 

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

Thank you - I think I get the histogram bit - another very useful bit of info :) 

 

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On 03/09/2020 at 17:32, John Mitchell said:

 

What do you do, Mark?

I take the pictures in RAW and keep them (so I always have sRGB, AdobeRGB and other colour space options available in future if I need them).

But... at the moment I convert RAW to sRGB in PS ACR and my PS working space is also set to sRGB.

My reasons are as follows;

1) Alamy convert to sRGB (so there's no point sending them AdobeRGB).

2) The other libraries I contribute to also require sRGB.

3) I think sRGB is still the best for web use and for the average user (who doesn't have a wide gamut display - although that is changing).

4) Working in sRGB throughout gives me a consistent WYSIWIG appearance to the screen image and histogram in ACR and PS, which also matches the sRGB jpgs I submit to Alamy etc.

5) Although AdobeRGB gamut is wider, I find the difference between correctly rendered sRGB and AdobeRGB landscape images (which is what I tend to shoot) is pretty small on my wide gamut (P3) display. (Some online examples of sRGB vs AdobeRGB are rendered incorrectly which exaggerates the difference and makes sRGB look quite dull).

 

If you have a wide-gamut monitor and a fully colour managed web-browser you may find the test pages I put together interesting.

http://tekimageon.scienceontheweb.net/P6.html

http://tekimageon.scienceontheweb.net/P7.html

http://tekimageon.scienceontheweb.net/P8.html 

 

You can check if your browser is fully colour managed here, and if your monitor has a gamut that is wider than sRGB.

https://cameratico.com/tools/web-browser-color-management-test/

 

Mark

Edited by M.Chapman
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9 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

I take the pictures in RAW and keep them (so I always have sRGB, AdobeRGB and other colour space options available in future if I need them).

But... at the moment I convert RAW to sRGB in PS ACR and my PS working space is also set to sRGB.

My reasons are as follows;

1) Alamy convert to sRGB (so there's no point sending them AdobeRGB).

2) The other libraries I contribute to also require sRGB.

3) I think sRGB is still the best for web use and for the average user (who doesn't have a wide gamut display - although that is changing).

4) Working in sRGB throughout gives me a consistent WYSIWIG appearance to the screen image and histogram in ACR and PS, which also matches the sRGB jpgs I submit to Alamy etc.

5) Although AdobeRGB gamut is wider, I find the difference between correctly rendered sRGB and AdobeRGB landscape images (which is what I tend to shoot) is pretty small and my wide gamut (P3) display. (Some online examples of sRGB vs AdobeRGB are rendered incorrectly which exaggerates the difference and makes sRGB look quite dull).

 

If you have a wide-gamut monitor and a fully colour managed web-browser you may find the test pages I put together interesting.

http://tekimageon.scienceontheweb.net/P6.html

http://tekimageon.scienceontheweb.net/P7.html

http://tekimageon.scienceontheweb.net/P8.html 

 

You can check if your browser is fully colour managed here, and if your monitor has a gamut that is wider than sRGB.

https://cameratico.com/tools/web-browser-color-management-test/

 

Mark

 

Thanks, Mark. I'll have to do some research on all this. It's pretty much ancient Greek to me.

 

I don't understand the test (last link) at all. Vertical bars? What vertical bars? Differences? What kind of differences?

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

 

Thanks, Mark. I'll have to do some research on all this. It's pretty much ancient Greek to me.

 

I don't understand the test (last link) at all. Vertical bars? What vertical bars? Differences? What kind of differences?

 

In that case you don't have a wide gamut monitor... or if you do it's been set to use an sRGB profile.

For example, in the "How far from sRGB is your display color gamut?" section the top half of the red bar appears to be a brighter red to the bottom half, if you have a wide-gamut display. If you have an sRGB display you won't see any difference. I'll post a screenshot later to illustrate what the difference looks like.

 

Mark

Edited by M.Chapman
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7 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

 

In that case you don't have a wide gamut monitor... or if you do it's been set to use an sRGB profile.

For example, in the "How far from sRGB is your display color gamut?" section the top half of the red bar appears to be a brighter red to the bottom half, if you have a wide-gamut display. If you have an sRGB display you won't see any difference. I'll post a screenshot later to illustrate what the difference looks like.

 

Mark

 

Thanks again. So "vertical bars" refers to the coloured rectangles, which I would call horizontal. I don't see any differences at all between the brightness of the colours between the top and bottom halves of any of the the rectangles. I'm using a fairly basic monitor, but it is calibrated.

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1 hour ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Thanks again. So "vertical bars" refers to the coloured rectangles, which I would call horizontal. I don't see any differences at all between the brightness of the colours between the top and bottom halves of any of the the rectangles. I'm using a fairly basic monitor, but it is calibrated.

 

Here's a sceenshot to illustrate way the bars appear on a wide gamut monitor. I tagged my wide-gamut monitor screenshot as sRGB so that the split in the bars should now be visible on an sRGB monitor, SO THIS IS NO LONGER A VALID TEST IMAGE. I created it to illustrate (to those who only have an sRGB monitor) how the vertical bars split into 2 sections when this page is viewed on a wide gamut monitor.

 

Test-image.jpg

 

Anyway, given that your monitor is close to sRGB, even if you work in AdobeRGB, the image you see on screen will be pretty close to the one seen by Alamy's customers once Alamy has converted it to sRGB. The main discrepancy wil be in the histograms. The histogram you see in PS, when working in AdobeRGB, will not show you the clipping that occurs when the image is converted to sRGB by Alamy.

 

Mark

Edited by M.Chapman
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11 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

 

Here's a sceenshot to illustrate way the bars appear on a wide gamut monitor. I tagged the wide-gamut screenshot as sRGB so that the difference should still be visible on an sRGB monitor, SO THIS IS NO LONGER A VALID TEST IMAGE. I created it to illustrate how the vertical bars split into 2 sections when this page is viewed on a wide gamut monitor, for those who have an sRGB monitor.

 

Test-image.jpg

 

Anyway, given that your monitor is close to sRGB, even if you work in AdobeRGB, the image you see on screen will be pretty close to the one seen by Alamy's customers once Almay has converted it to sRGB. The main discrepancy wil be in the histograms. The histogram you see in PS, when working in AdobeRGB, will not show you the clipping that occurs when the image is converted to sRGB

 

Mark

 

Thanks for that. It's a bit clearer now. I do see the clipping that you refer to when I convert some of my RGB images to sRGB in PS Elements. How does one work from the the beginning in sRGB, as you suggested, when using RAW conversion software? That would seem to be a better option than converting before submitting..

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16 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Thanks for that. It's a bit clearer now. I do see the clipping that you refer to when I convert some of my RGB images to sRGB in PS Elements. How does one work from the the beginning in sRGB, as you suggested, when using RAW conversion software? That would seem to be a better option than converting before submitting..

Photoshop

In PS menu Edit>Color Settings...

    Working Spaces

        Set RGB to sRGB IE61966-2.1

   Color Management Policies

       Set RGB to Preserve embedded profiles

       Profile mismatches:

            Tick - Ask when opening

            Tick - Ask when pasting

      Missing profiles

           Tick - Ask when opening

Click OK to save

ACR

Assuming you are using ACR in PS. Open a RAW file in ACR and then click on the underlined link underneath your image at the bottom centre of the screen.

Set Color space to sRGB IE61966-2.1 and 16 bit depth.

Click OK to save.

 

All above settings are remembered.

 

Mark

 

Edited by M.Chapman
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1 hour ago, M.Chapman said:

Photoshop

In PS menu Edit>Color Settings...

    Working Spaces

        Set RGB to sRGB IE61966-2.1

   Color Management Policies

       Set RGB to Preserve embedded profiles

       Profile mismatches:

            Tick - Ask when opening

            Tick - Ask when pasting

      Missing profiles

           Tick - Ask when opening

Click OK to save

ACR

Assuming you are using ACR in PS. Open a RAW file in ACR and then click on the underlined link underneath your image at the bottom centre of the screen.

Set Color space to sRGB IE61966-2.1 and 16 bit depth.

Click OK to save.

 

All above settings are remembered.

 

Mark

 

 

I'm currently using Capture One Express for Sony for RAW conversion. It doesn't look as if I can specify sRGB workspace in this free version. Perhaps it's set to sRGB workspace by default. I don't know.  Apparently, choosing sRGB workspace can only be done in the "Processing Recipe" in the Pro version of Capture One. However, I notice that I can check sRGB profile (which I haven't been doing) when exporting images from Express to PS Elements for resizing, etc. Perhaps I should be taking advantage of this. What do you think? Also, I can upload colour profiles to Express, but I'm not sure how to do that. I'm obviously pretty dumb when it comes to this stuff...😬

 

 

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

 

I'm currently using Capture One Express for Sony for RAW conversion. It doesn't look as if I can specify sRGB workspace in this free version. Perhaps it's set to sRGB workspace by default. I don't know.  Apparently, choosing sRGB workspace can only be done in the "Processing Recipe" in the Pro version of Capture One. However, I notice that I can check sRGB profile (which I haven't been doing) when exporting images from Express to PS Elements for resizing, etc. Perhaps I should be taking advantage of this. What do you think? Also, I can upload colour profiles to Express, but I'm not sure how to do that. I'm obviously pretty dumb when it comes to this stuff...😬

 

 

In the latest version of Capture One Express for Sony (I sometimes use it for my RX100 images) I select sRGB colour space in recipe section of File>Export> Export Variants...  menu

Alternatively I select sRGB on Image>Edit with...>Photoshop menu

But I'm not an Expert on C1, so others may wish to comment...

 

As you're running PSE you will probably find the color space setting method is different to what I described as I'm using Adobe PS CC. What version of PSE are you running?

 

Mark

Edited by M.Chapman
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10 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

 

In the latest version of Capture One Express for Sony (I sometimes use it for my RX100 images) I select sRGB colour space in recipe section of File>Export> Export Variants...  menu

Alternatively I select sRGB on Image>Edit with...>Photoshop menu

But I'm not an Expert on C1, so others may wish to comment...

 

As you're running PSE you will probably find the color space setting method is different to what I described as I'm using Adobe PS CC. What version of PSE are you running?

 

Mark

 

I think I have the latest version of Express. I see the option to export images in sRGB in the "ILC Profile" section of the menu that you mentioned. Will choosing it also create an sRGB workspace, I wonder. My version of PS is ancient, no. 6 I believe (I know, it's time to upgrade, but I only use it for basic stuff like cloning). The  colour settings are in "Edit" as you said. It seems that I'm already set up for the sRGB colour range in Elements. Adding the sRGB profile to images is found in "Image". I'll experiment with doing all of the above. Thanks muchly.

Edited by John Mitchell
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3 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

I see the option to export images in sRGB in the "ILC Profile" section of the menu that you mentioned. Will choosing it also create an sRGB workspace, I wonder.

 

That's the one, in the ICC Profile section. I'm not sure if it changes the working space. I found this comment on C1 support pages "Alternatively, as Capture One displays the image in the Viewer using the ICC profile that’s selected in the highlighted Process Recipe, you can use a recipe to display the color space permanently". But I think this comment may not apply to the "somewhat crippled" Express version because changing the recipe colour space doesn't alter what I see on screen or the histogram. So, I suspect changing the ICC profile in the export recipe doesn't change the working space of Capture One Express to sRGB, but it does cause it to convert the image from whatever its "native" working colour space is to sRGB and embed the sRGB ICC profile during the export process. But, as I said, I'm no expert on C1 as I rarely use it.

 

Anyway by exporting in sRGB to PS, you have saved a step in the process of producing images for Alamy, and what you see on screen in PSE during final editing will match what gets stored in the sRGB jpg for Alamy (including the histogram). NB. If you're using an old PSE it has only limited support for 16 bit operations, so be careful if making large adjustments to levels/contrast/shadows /highlights as you may cause banding/posterising effects.

 

Mark

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2 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

 

That's the one, in the ICC Profile section. I'm not sure if it changes the working space. I found this comment on C1 support pages "Alternatively, as Capture One displays the image in the Viewer using the ICC profile that’s selected in the highlighted Process Recipe, you can use a recipe to display the color space permanently". But I think this comment may not apply to the "somewhat crippled" Express version because changing the recipe colour space doesn't alter what I see on screen or the histogram. So, I suspect changing the ICC profile in the export recipe doesn't change the working space of Capture One Express to sRGB, but it does cause it to convert the image from whatever its "native" working colour space is to sRGB and embed the sRGB ICC profile during the export process. But, as I said, I'm no expert on C1 as I rarely use it.

 

Anyway by exporting in sRGB to PS, you have saved a step in the process of producing images for Alamy, and what you see on screen in PSE during final editing will match what gets stored in the sRGB jpg for Alamy (including the histogram). NB. If you're using an old PSE it has only limited support for 16 bit operations, so be careful if making large adjustments to levels/contrast/shadows /highlights as you may cause banding/posterising effects.

 

Mark

 

My uneducated guess is that the working colour space for Capture One Express is sRGB given that most images are displayed online these days. But who knows.

 

Yes, my antique edition of PSE is limited. Fortunately, the minor tweaking that I do for for Alamy can be done in 16-bit. I like the simple interface of the older software, but it's high time I upgraded to the latest version...

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9 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

My uneducated guess is that the working colour space for Capture One Express is sRGB given that most images are displayed online these days. But who knows.

 

Internally it's certainly working in a much wider colour space (maybe even LAB?). For the user who wants an sRGB export it's just a question of how Capture One Express renders the image on screen and generates the histogram that matters.

 

Yes the latest PSE does have quite a few bells and whistles now but I think it's still limited to 8 bit for some processes. PS CC is much better, 16 bit throughout, and automated CA removal is a feature I really like and rely on (a great timesaver). The user interface is fairly similar so it's not too difficult to migrate to full blown PS CC.

 

Mark

Edited by M.Chapman
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21 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

 

Internally it's certainly working in a much wider colour space (maybe even LAB?). For the user who wants an sRGB export it's just a question of how Capture One Express renders the image on screen and generates the histogram that matters.

 

Yes the latest PSE does have quite a few bells and whistles now but I think it's still limited to 8 bit for some processes. PS CC is much better, 16 bit throughout, and automated CA removal is a feature I really like and rely on (a great timesaver). The user interface is fairly similar so it's not too difficult to migrate to full blown PS CC.

 

Mark

 

I find that Capture 1 Express does a very good job of removing CA automatically. The software does just about everything I need at present, and I can live with the minor annoyances. Have you ever tried GIMP? It sounds interesting.

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1 hour ago, John Mitchell said:

 

I find that Capture 1 Express does a very good job of removing CA automatically. The software does just about everything I need at present, and I can live with the minor annoyances. Have you ever tried GIMP? It sounds interesting.

 

Yes I've tried GIMP, but it was a while ago. At the time I found its user interface was just too different to PS. I disliked all the floating panels and the light theme. It looks to be better now (I just downoaded a copy) but still looks like quite a learning curve to adapt from PS, so I won't take it any further. If you're looking for a budget alternative, thats closer to PSE (in terms of user interface) but also suports RAW files, Affinity photo isn't bad. But I don't think it has auto CA removal and isn't as good as C1 or LR/PS for RAW conversion.

 

Mark

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