QC Borders and Rebates

[diarmuid]

I understand the QC issue with 'borders' where black/white/blank/picture-frame strips surround the photo (Customers can add their preference later).

What I wanted to do was to separate two images in a montage; before-and-after images of the same subject, ten years apart.

I left a narrow, black/blank vertical gap between the two side-by-side images, as leaving no gap looked visually odd to me - with clashes of edges and colours and truncated objects.

The montage failed QC due to 'rebates and borders': "we don't want borders" - according to the QC pdf.

Does my central, visual,temporal 'separator', a ten-years-of-elapsed-time, deliberate 'gap' really constitute a 'border' or 'rebate'?

Would appreciate any advice, for or against this approach, or this QC failure.

 

 

   

[Mr Standfast]

Hi,

 

That does not sound like the sort of border Alamy want to filter out,  allthough a border is a line separating two areas.

 

Might be worth uploading a copy to the forum for others to look at or maybe email member services explaining as you have done here, it is possible to appeal a QC fail.

 

Stay safe.

 

(I had a look at this https://www.alamy.com/contributors/alamy-how-to-pass-qc.pdf

which does not have any examples of rebates or borders.)

[geogphotos]

Just to add that I have had my first QC fail for a long time. 

 

I've sent the set in as Reportage instead even though the bulk could well pass QC - just too much of a guessing game for some images. 

[meanderingemu]

On 06/11/2020 at 22:11, diarmuid said:

I understand the QC issue with 'borders' where black/white/blank/picture-frame strips surround the photo (Customers can add their preference later).

What I wanted to do was to separate two images in a montage; before-and-after images of the same subject, ten years apart.

I left a narrow, black/blank vertical gap between the two side-by-side images, as leaving no gap looked visually odd to me - with clashes of edges and colours and truncated objects.

The montage failed QC due to 'rebates and borders': "we don't want borders" - according to the QC pdf.

Does my central, visual,temporal 'separator', a ten-years-of-elapsed-time, deliberate 'gap' really constitute a 'border' or 'rebate'?

Would appreciate any advice, for or against this approach, or this QC failure.

 

 

   

 looking at some of the "montage" and "multiple image" search, it seems that kind of borders is allowed.

Edited November 9, 2020 by meanderingemu

[diarmuid]

Thanks folks for your replies,

Here is one of the failed photos, a montage of two photos (before and after) of an earthquake-damaged suburban street.

All those houses were levelled and the road repaired. It is now called earthquake 'Red Zone', and no buildings are allowed on this land.

QC failure reasons given: 'film rebate/not cropped' and 'number of images'

The 'number of images' QC failure is clarified in my other forum post.

My conclusion is that QC do not approve of that black strip separator, and that they do not believe that those two images (in one photo) are

of the same subject.

[meanderingemu]

hard to tell.  as i said if you do a search for "Montage" you will see plenty of separation borders between images, though most are white- and of course it doesn't mean they were approved, they may have made it through in a batch and not be the ones reviewed. it will be interesting to see what feedback you get from Alamy

 

What was your caption?

[diarmuid]

Thanks Meanderingemu.

I can't add a caption/description until it passes QC, which it failed!

I too searched current Alamy photos for examples of montages, borders, frames and before-and-after combos and found many good examples.

Agreed, they may all have slipped through, or QC rules may have changed since they passed QC.

It has been a new and interesting project for me, and I have enjoyed taking new shots of the damage that I photographed ten years ago.

I do hope Alamy clarify their issues for me, and hopefully eventually accept this type of photo.

[Robz]

1 hour ago, diarmuid said:

I can't add a caption/description until it passes QC

 

You can embed the caption, description, tags etc in the image before you upload - but I don't know if they are actually looked at by the QC team, I suspect not.

Anyway, if the image then does pass QC they are already loaded into Image Manager and so long as you have a caption and 5 tags the image will go on sale.

https://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/captions-and-keywords-for-images/?section=8

[geogphotos]

As an update to my post above. I did send in that batch as Reportage ( which bypasses QC). But before I had been emailed about the 'faulty' image I had actually submitted those again as regular stock assuming that the problem image was another one which could not in any case go as Reportage. I hastily sent MS an email asking for the stock batch to be deleted but as you all know that is not possible.

 

Guess what - the problem batch has just passed QC and so now I have duplicates of all these images - one copy as Reportage and one as Stock. 

 

I wish that they just did QC in the background rather than this sudden everything grinding to a halt which messes up workflow. 

Edited November 10, 2020 by geogphotos

[spacecadet]

11 hours ago, diarmuid said:

Thanks folks for your replies,

Here is one of the failed photos, a montage of two photos (before and after) of an earthquake-damaged suburban street.

All those houses were levelled and the road repaired. It is now called earthquake 'Red Zone', and no buildings are allowed on this land.

QC failure reasons given: 'film rebate/not cropped' and 'number of images'

The 'number of images' QC failure is clarified in my other forum post.

My conclusion is that QC do not approve of that black strip separator, and that they do not believe that those two images (in one photo) are

of the same subject.

Unfortunately that separator probably looks too  much like an accidentally included film rebate. As you know it's important that QC aren't presented with something that looks like a failure item, even if it isn't.

Edited November 10, 2020 by spacecadet

[Mr Standfast]

1 hour ago, spacecadet said:

 QC aren't presented with something that looks like a failure item, even if it isn't.

 

+1

[diarmuid]

"QC aren't presented with something that looks like a failure item, even if it isn't. "

Agreed.

I did ask QC if I used a white strip, or even inserted a power pole or other null strip from another photo, would that be acceptable.

No response as yet - just another 10-day ban on uploads.

I then removed the offending separator and it failed again due to "number of images" (refer my other forum post).

It seems QC don't believe that those two photos are of the same subject, the same street corner 10 years later.

'number of images' (according to the QC pdf) is a failure reason that only pertains to contributor's initial QC upload of 3 required photos.

So, another 10-day ban on uploads😞.

Edited November 10, 2020 by diarmuid
added a missing word