Regaining 4/5 stars

[meanderingemu]

3 hours ago, geogphotos said:

 

I am not trying to game any system!😶 

 

All I am trying to do is get back to the situation I was in until a few weeks ago - be able to submit a constant stream of high quality images to Alamy without having an interruption in my workflow. An interruption which is no huge deal but is an inconvenience.

 

Let's say I have a 100 images in my backlog. Does it make any difference to my QC score to submit them as one batch, or perhaps submit 10, wait, then once they've passed submit another 10. etc to quickly build up a history of QC passes. 1 pass for 100 images  or 10 passes for those 100 images?

 

 I am asking purely to better understand the experience of others.

 

In any case those submitted yesterday have passed by this morning. 

 

 

 

where did i say You would be gaming it 😉

 

based on anecdotal evidence the number of times you go through QC seems to have an impact.  What i was pointing out is thankfully, uploading 100 images in one shot, or 10 time 10 images in different AIM submission, but within the same QC batch did not, as not everyone is as ethical as you.

[meanderingemu]

53 minutes ago, Pekka Liukkonen said:

I´m quite happy with my three stars but they could as well be in some brighter colour. Blue would be nice...

 

lol. 

 

to be honest the main advantage of the 5 Stars and direct approval for me, is i can fill in all the "Optional Tabs" immediately.  I find that for my images going through QC i often forget...

[MizBrown]

1 hour ago, spacecadet said:

How long is it and how many have you uploaded since your last fail? That was the only figure that was ever useful to me- that and your pass rate over, say, six months to a year.

 

My guess in going from two stars to three is that one part of the calculations is time since last failed QC. 

[geogphotos]

For now probably uploading 5-20 stock images a day is the best policy and not going to lead to a big backlog because winter weather often means time indoors not taking pics. Might be the best means to try and improve QC ranking also. 

 

Then I can also do Archive material and submit without QC.

 

Thanks you formal the answers and your time. 😁

Edited December 15, 2020 by geogphotos

[Allan Bell]

4 hours ago, spacecadet said:

How long is it and how many have you uploaded since your last fail? That was the only figure that was ever useful to me- that and your pass rate over, say, six months to a year.

Of course you have the option of larger batches. Up it to 30 and you have 1000 images a year- my ten-year average. My average batch size is, er, about 30.

 

The earliest mention I can find of the star ratings is 15 July 2017.

 

The longest period between failed QC was 13 months and I was still a one star at that failure. 523 were uploaded in that period.

I think the overall recorded number of fails must be taken into account.

 

Having said that I believe Alamy was very lenient with me when I uploaded my first trial batch of four images, which what was required at that time in 2008 and which failed 3rd November of that year. The second submission passed QC on 6th November and I was in. I then had 5 fails up until 23 December. The next pass was 1st Jan 2009 followed by another 3 fails up to 12th January 2009. Followed by two passes, one fail, one pass, and two further fails by 13th February. Bearing in mind a QC fail imposed a 30 day penalty in the sin bin at that time Alamy gave me a lot of rope before starting to impose the penalty.

 

My pass rate generally improved but I have not usually managed to get through a year without a fail or two or three..........

 

As I have said in the past:-------  "MUST DO BETTER"

 

Allan

 

Just to add I have had a batch of 12 images in QC since 3rd December and not looked at yet.

 

ITMA

 

Edited December 15, 2020 by Allan Bell

[Mr Standfast]

4 hours ago, Allan Bell said:

I am a one star general - still.

There is another side to this and that is if I upload a batch of say 10 images I will have to wait at least 7 working days and sometimes up to 14 working days for them to pass QC and the covid situation at this time can make it even longer. Now I upload the next batch of 10 images and Tag those just passed QC. Wait another 7 - 14 days before I can upload more images and Tag those just passed. That means I can only upload say 30 batches in a year, or 300 images in a year.

Whereas 4 or 5 stars can be uploading say three batches of 10 images a week. Say 1,500 in a year.

 

Personally I feel as though I am in a catch 22 situation and yes it is my fault for failing QC too often. But as you can see from the above that if I have an unblemished QC record from today I would imagine it is going to take me the next 3 years to gain another star or two.

 

Is it worth carrying on?

 

Allan

 

 

Yes, 'cos you're not just here for the stars.

[Cal]

27 minutes ago, Mr Standfast said:

 

Yes, 'cos you're not just here for the stars.

 

I can see his point though. For general stock, subjects that aren't time critical I can't see it being an issue, though with the volume I'm producing lately it would be a ton of work once all submissions finally did pass and need metadata adding. However, for anything even remotely time sensitive (like Christmas markets) the prospect of going into QC and then having the images pass once these events were over would for me make it feel pointless. I know there's always the subsequent years but the here and now is as important as any future period of time.

 

I don't know Allan's circumstances but all I can say is I got three stars soon after starting here despite one QC fail so I'd at least hope that if he has say a string of 10-20 subs that have passed he should at least go up to 2 stars. From the guidelines when I read them it sounds like 1 star is basically for people who consistently submit subpar material, either through ignorance or arrogance and would think it unfair if Allan has been languishing in one star limbo for a length of time spanning many passes. 

[John Mitchell]

21 hours ago, Sally said:

I really don’t think that it matters how many images are in each submission. There seems to be a complex algorithm which means that every so often my images are in QC (with a 5 star rating). Just upload whatever you like IMHO as long as they won’t fail QC.

 

 When I mentioned small batches, I was thinking that it's easier to check thoroughly for technical issues with a smaller number of images. Of course, it's all relative. Ian takes and uploads a lot of photos, so his idea of a small batch is going to differ from someone like me who uploads only a few hundred images per year. I do think that frequency probably matters, though, if you want to speed up the rating process. But again, who knows.

Edited December 15, 2020 by John Mitchell

[John Morrison]

13 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

who knows.

 

Erm... this sums up this entire thread...

[John Mitchell]

1 minute ago, John Morrison said:

 

Erm... this sums up this entire thread...

 

It sums up a lot of things, at least in my world.

[geogphotos]

22 minutes ago, John Morrison said:

 

Erm... this sums up this entire thread...

 

 

An odd attitude to hold given your 3557 posts. 

 

To me it seems a perfectly legitimate subject to discuss.

 

Participation is optional. 

[John Morrison]

2 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

An odd attitude to hold given your 3557 posts. 

 

Only 2619 posts...

[geogphotos]

4 minutes ago, John Morrison said:

 

Only 2619 posts...

 

 

Same difference surely?

[Mr Standfast]

2620 now...

[geogphotos]

Just now, Mr Standfast said:

2620 now...

 

Exciting isn't it! 😁

 

I always love the posts made by people about how others shouldn't be posting. 😂

[Mr Standfast]

49 minutes ago, John Morrison said:

 

Erm... this sums up this entire thread...

John,

Forgive me for peeking at your pictures but is that the right spelling for the Pickering Almshouses?

Nice saturated colours!

🦔

 

[meanderingemu]

33 minutes ago, John Morrison said:

 

Only 2619 posts...

and 2 checkmarks!✔️✔️

[geogphotos]

20 minutes ago, Mr Standfast said:

John,

Forgive me for peeking at your pictures but is that the right spelling for the Pickering Almshouses?

Nice saturated colours!

🦔

 

 

 

But also looking at those deep dark shadows - John has some in his recent pics- is where I have learnt that you have to be careful. 

 

I often like to lift the shadows but with these really dark, deep December ones it can be almost impossible to avoid noise and you have to leave them alone. 

[John Morrison]

1 hour ago, geogphotos said:

 

 

But also looking at those deep dark shadows - John has some in his recent pics- is where I have learnt that you have to be careful. 

 

I often like to lift the shadows but with these really dark, deep December ones it can be almost impossible to avoid noise and you have to leave them alone. 

 

Deliberate...

 

2 hours ago, Mr Standfast said:

Forgive me for peeking at your pictures but is that the right spelling for the Pickering Almshouses?

 

Not deliberate... thanks... 😀

[Thiago Trevisan]

9 hours ago, MizBrown said:

 

My guess in going from two stars to three is that one part of the calculations is time since last failed QC. 

 

But probably not that if you have a recent fail you won't be seeing a new star anytime soon. I started uploading in February and had my first fail around batch 90. Three batches and ten days later a new star popped up. Just a new data point to help solve the QC Stars puzzle 

[geogphotos]

10 hours ago, John Morrison said:

 

Deliberate...

 

 

 

 

Yes, I realised that keep the deep shadows is deliberate. It was not a criticism. It is something I realised through getting a QC fail for chroma noise. So when they can't be avoided I am trying to crop or just leave them as they are. I experimented with noise reduction but didn't like the way it softened the pics. In any case there is not much detail in these really deep shadows to bring out. 

[John Morrison]

1 hour ago, geogphotos said:

 

 

Yes, I realised that keep the deep shadows is deliberate. It was not a criticism. It is something I realised through getting a QC fail for chroma noise. So when they can't be avoided I am trying to crop or just leave them as they are. I experimented with noise reduction but didn't like the way it softened the pics. In any case there is not much detail in these really deep shadows to bring out. 

 

I've always liked the look of 'something lit against something dark', or, less often, 'something dark against something lit' (which seems to work at thumbnail size too). It seems like one of the simplest ways to draw the eye to the subject of a picture (along with 'leading lines', shallow depth of field, and other tricks of the trade), especially when the subject doesn't occupy a large party of the picture area.

 

I 'open up' shadows regularly, but never by much: not just because of the noise that's created, but because of the look. Wherever there's sunshine, there should be shadows (though this observation may be more philosophical in nature than photographic)... 😎

[MizBrown]

4 hours ago, geogphotos said:

I experimented with noise reduction but didn't like the way it softened the pics

 

Have you tried DXO's PhotoLab 4?   Deep Prime seems to do the best noise reduction with less softening of any program I've ever used before. 

 

Tropical sunshine at 1,000 meters and higher tends to have really dark shadows.