photos after submission

[Walker_manDJI]

Hi I'm a new to Stock photography and Alamy, 

 

After you have submitted your photos, and they have passed QC, do you khave to keep all the originals youself or can you delete them as they will already be with Alamy.

 

Thankyou

[Hanna_Fate]

Never delete your files!

 

If you aren't exclusive, you can submit them to other agencies.

[Chuck Nacke]

On 21/01/2022 at 12:44, Walker_manDJI said:

Hi I'm a new to Stock photography and Alamy, 

 

After you have submitted your photos, and they have passed QC, do you khave to keep all the originals youself or can you delete them as they will already be with Alamy.

 

Thankyou

Darren,

 

I save all original RAW files, and the 16bit TIFF's that I make from them.  I do not much care about the 8bit JPEG's that I upload to Alamy or any client.

 

Chuck

[Allan Bell]

Why would you want to delete them?  They are your intellectual property and your copyright material. As mentioned above you may decide in the future that you wish to submit them to another organisation and you cannot do that if you have deleted them.

 

I am in line with Chuck Nacke in keeping all my RAW and tiff files.

 

Allan

 

[John Mitchell]

Isn't there a wise old saying that goes something like this, "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater." 😁

[DJ Myford]

Alamy is not a photo storage site. Downloading your own images is not a service they routinely offer, although they have been known to oblige in exceptional circumstances. If your originals were in ARGB format, any images you get back from Alamy would be in SRGB, so you would lose some of the gamut. Also, in the past they stated that you need to be able to replace an image if they somehow lose it, but that may no longer apply.

[Rebecca Ore]

On 21/01/2022 at 11:44, Walker_manDJI said:

Hi I'm a new to Stock photography and Alamy, 

 

After you have submitted your photos, and they have passed QC, do you khave to keep all the originals youself or can you delete them as they will already be with Alamy.

 

Thankyou

 

I always keep the raw files and keep the copies I've sent to Alamy.   Raw files may be reprocessed in the future (LightRoom Classic has some useful new tricks).

[Jill Morgan]

I keep all RAWs.  I also keep the jpgs I submit to Alamy.  

 

As Rebecca says, you may want to go back and redo some as editing tools improve.  I have done this to a few with the improvement to PS and LR as well as Topaz AI software. You never know what's coming down the pike.

 

Jill

[Cryptoprocta]

Another reason to keep your RAW files is in case of any dispute or claim over the file's authorship.

[Taina]

Never, never delete your files.

 

Keep your original files, all editions and remember to do backup copies regularly.

[John Gaffen]

I've kept everything I've ever taken, since I started with Alamy, going back to late 2004 and early 2005  in my own  archive, including all the original RAW files, all processed Tiffs and Jpgs. They are backed up at least once, sometimes more times depending on the subject.  I  sometimes go back to re-edit my collection when I realize I have missed a good image. As Jill has already mentioned, some images can be  improved with advances in software too! 

Edited January 25, 2022 by John Gaffen

[Marianne]

Darren - I had a quick look at your photos and you need to caption and keyword them completely. E.g. you have an image of "Purton ship graveyard" and you don't include its location -  is it in a town called Purton or in some other city? what country? the image also said "black and white" but it's in color. As a newbie, you need to read more about how to properly keyword and caption your images since this is how they are found by buyers.

 

Re: keeping your photos - what everyone else said. I have my RAW, tiffs, and jpegs backed up on my Photoshelter site (which is a website and cloud storage site) and backed up to two (and sometimes more) hard drives. One time 10+ years ago, a freak lightning strike in February that hit the transformer outside my home wiped out my computer and a backup drive that was attached at the same time, costing my $2,000+ for file recovery, so now I am more careful about backup - it was clear proof of the truth of the received wisdom that you should have files in three locations - and unfortunately I hadn't backed up to Photoshelter yet - now the RAW files go there on upload. I also have various backup drives in my safety deposit box and at my daughter's home in a different state. 

 

I'm glad you asked this question - I'd hate to see you lose all your hard work! Good luck & welcome to Alamy. 

 

Edited January 25, 2022 by Marianne

[M.Chapman]

22 hours ago, DJ Myford said:

If your originals were in ARGB format, any images you get back from Alamy would be in SRGB, so you would lose some of the gamut.

The colour profile tag and some of the original meta-data will also be removed. I think Alamy might also increase the jpg compression, depending on the compression level used when uploading. Bottom line is keep your uploaded images and the RAW files if you have them.

 

Mark

[Walker_manDJI]

Thankyou everyone. I will definitely keep all my RAW files now 

[Sally]

I’m not sure why people are keeping their jpegs. I delete them. If I needed one, I’d just recreate it but I can’t think of a situation I have needed to do that. Keeping them just takes up more storage space. 

[M.Chapman]

1 hour ago, Sally said:

I’m not sure why people are keeping their jpegs. I delete them. If I needed one, I’d just recreate it but I can’t think of a situation I have needed to do that. Keeping them just takes up more storage space. 

I keep them both as a record and for uploading to usage tracking sites if needed.

 

Mark

[sb photos]

On 24/01/2022 at 17:57, Allan Bell said:

Why would you want to delete them?  They are your intellectual property and your copyright material. As mentioned above you may decide in the future that you wish to submit them to another organisation and you cannot do that if you have deleted them.

 

I am in line with Chuck Nacke in keeping all my RAW and tiff files.

 

Allan

 

 

I keep the RAW and the their sidecar xmp files, and jpg's as uploaded. The jpg's take up very little space, and are filed so I can easily find and view them. They could be useful in the future and would save time if I had to recreate them. Sometimes I keep a limited number of RAW files that I haven't processed that may be more topical in the future. These days storage space is cheap.

[Sally]

10 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

I keep them both as a record and for uploading to usage tracking sites if needed.

 

Mark

The record is in the History panel of Lightroom recording all exports, so I don’t feel I need another pile of photos to store somewhere. I only upload very small files to a tracking site rather than a full size jpeg. 

[Allan Bell]

6 hours ago, sb photos said:

 

I keep the RAW and the their sidecar xmp files, and jpg's as uploaded. The jpg's take up very little space, and are filed so I can easily find and view them. They could be useful in the future and would save time if I had to recreate them. Sometimes I keep a limited number of RAW files that I haven't processed that may be more topical in the future. These days storage space is cheap.

 

The reason I keep Tiff files is that I may wish to reprocess that image for another site and obtain a better image from the Tiff rather than reprocessing a jpeg file.

 

Allan

 

[Cryptoprocta]

53 minutes ago, Allan Bell said:

 

The reason I keep Tiff files is that I may wish to reprocess that image for another site and obtain a better image from the Tiff rather than reprocessing a jpeg file.

 

Allan

 

I keep my 'intermediate Tiffs' for no particular reason*, but if you wanted to reprocess it, wouldn't you go back to the RAW file?

*Except that nowadays I usually keep the tiff with all layers (if relevant), so that might be what you are referring to.

[M.Chapman]

5 hours ago, Sally said:

The record is in the History panel of Lightroom recording all exports, so I don’t feel I need another pile of photos to store somewhere. I only upload very small files to a tracking site rather than a full size jpeg. 

Most of my final edits are done in PS, especially cloning and healing which I find much better in PS than LR. So my xmp files only contain a partial record of the processing.

 

Mark

[Allan Bell]

1 hour ago, M.Chapman said:

Most of my final edits are done in PS, especially cloning and healing which I find much better in PS than LR. So my xmp files only contain a partial record of the processing.

 

Mark

 

I agree that LR is not too good with cloning and healing. I can do a lot of it in LR but when It fails I go to PSE which I used to use in the old days. Much easier to control.

 

Allan

 

[Allan Bell]

4 hours ago, Cryptoprocta said:

I keep my 'intermediate Tiffs' for no particular reason*, but if you wanted to reprocess it, wouldn't you go back to the RAW file?

*Except that nowadays I usually keep the tiff with all layers (if relevant), so that might be what you are referring to.

 

Actually most of the work has been done getting the Tiff file. To process for elsewhere it is only a matter of nudging sliders rather than going through the whole rigmarole again.

 

Allan

 

[spacecadet]

7 hours ago, Sally said:

The record is in the History panel of Lightroom recording all exports, so I don’t feel I need another pile of photos to store somewhere. I only upload very small files to a tracking site rather than a full size jpeg. 

I suppose that's right- I keep jpegs, but if I actually wanted to find an image I'd look for it in LR anyway. Might as well re-export then.

If I ever need a spare 43GB I'll know where to look.

So if keeping them costs about £1 on a 2TB, keeping one of my 20MB RAWs costs a twentieth of a pee.

Edited January 28, 2022 by spacecadet

[MDM]

20 hours ago, Sally said:

I’m not sure why people are keeping their jpegs. I delete them. If I needed one, I’d just recreate it but I can’t think of a situation I have needed to do that. Keeping them just takes up more storage space. 

 

8 hours ago, Sally said:

The record is in the History panel of Lightroom recording all exports, so I don’t feel I need another pile of photos to store somewhere. I only upload very small files to a tracking site rather than a full size jpeg. 

 

This is fine if you do all your processing in Lightroom but the History panel does not travel to a new catalog so if your catalog ever corrupts you will lose the history unless you have the catalog backed up. The History is of limited value in any case as it only shows the steps you took but it can't be used in a single step to recreate the final raw images for conversion. Similarly any snapshots will not travel to a new catalog.

 

The xmp files are more important as they contain the final conversion data and are permanent so should be kept with the raw file. In other words, if you start a new catalog and import the raw files from a folder with their xmp files then they will open into the final state that you previously used for conversion. If working this way it is important to have the "Automatically write changes into XMP" option in the Catalog Prefs selected.

 

Like Mark and others, I do any spotting and perhaps further processing in Photoshop as it is far better than Lightroom for this and I always keep the files including any layers. However, in my case I use PSD rather than TIFF (this is another story - why do most people use TIFFs rather than PSDs?) and I export the JPEGs from the PSDs from Lightroom. I tend to keep the JPEGs anyway as they don't take up a lot of space and storage is cheap but it is not an issue really as long as I have the processed PSDs as well as the raws. 

 

 

Edited January 28, 2022 by MDM

[MDM]

6 hours ago, Allan Bell said:

 

The reason I keep Tiff files is that I may wish to reprocess that image for another site and obtain a better image from the Tiff rather than reprocessing a jpeg file.

 

Allan

 

 

I don't think you would notice the difference between reprocessing a JPEG and a TIFF unless you are doing a huge number of saves. The main reason for keeping a TIFF over a JPEG would be if you were keeping layers but in the case of layered files, PSD is far better than TIFF anyway.

 

5 hours ago, Cryptoprocta said:

I keep my 'intermediate Tiffs' for no particular reason*, but if you wanted to reprocess it, wouldn't you go back to the RAW file?

*Except that nowadays I usually keep the tiff with all layers (if relevant), so that might be what you are referring to.

 

Unless you don't use Photoshop then why TIFF rather than PSD for layered files? If using Photoshop then it handles PSDs, particularly layered PSDs, a lot better (faster) than it handles TIFFs.