In QC limbo

[MDM]

21 minutes ago, Martin L said:

Finding in-focus areas is pretty straightforward, working out if it is the 'right' thing in focus is very, very complicated.

Throw in fog. atmospherics, artistic intent...........been there, don't want to go back.

 

53 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

Indeed it's easy to detect areas of an image where edge contrast exceeds a certain level (I've written software algorithms to do exactly this when I was involved in automated visual inspection system design), and I imagine focus peaking overlays make use of this. But there are lots of images that, although perfectly in focus, don't contain high contrast edges. e.g. clouds in the sky, water ripples, intentional motion blur etc. I suppose that could be combined with some AI in an attempt to identify the image content and apply appropriate thresholds, but the false alarm rate might be quite high. That being said PS sky selection and replacement technology is very impressive. So maybe I've contradicted myself and you're right that automated QC is a realistic possibility.

 

Do we have any evidence that QC standards have changed? Or is it some contributors have made an occasional mistake, as has always happened?

 

Mark

 

 

 

I agree with you both. I wasn't saying that Alamy QC has actually got automated QC, just that it might not be completely impossible. Software that would scan an image and detect the proportion of the image in focus might act as a first indication that human checking could be warranted.

 

I have no idea what is going on in QC myself. I have not submitted anything in ages for various reasons. If I submit anything now I will be very careful to submit only very safe images - it is almost 10 years since I failed QC. There seems to be more complaints recently here from experienced contributors about failing QC but nobody has posted the failing images. It would be very interesting if people who are failing would post full size images somewhere such as Dropbox or Google Drive so we could see why they are failing. I suspect they might have somebody new working QC.

[MDM]

20 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

I suppose the thread has diverged from the original subject, namely that batches were, anecdotally, taking longer in QC than normal and that could I suppose still be down to staff shortages. I must say I have no mental image of the QC department, a few people at the office in Abingdon, a warehouse full of desks in the Philippines.... Either way it must be an increasing burden given the rate at which images are uploaded so a software solution might be attractive. I might have just encountered my first spot check, as all 5 star contributors experience. On the other hand it could be that all uploads are scanned by software, including 5 stars, and that can trigger a spot check. 

 

I think the mental image should be more the one or two man or woman (and their dogs?) rather than a QC factory in the Philippines. When we had lunch James A in Ely a couple of years ago (this week in fact), this came up and he did say that QC was a very small operation at that time. I had envisaged something a little different so found it surprising and interesting to hear this. This was just before the pandemic and also before PA took over. I wonder can they train dogs to sniff out SoLD images.

[Harry Harrison]

9 minutes ago, MDM said:

and he did say that QC was a very small operation at that time

Thanks, yes that is surprising considering the vast numbers of images being uploaded. I suppose many will be news, so won't be checked, and maybe a lot from 'partners', ditto.

[NYCat]

I will confess that I think my failure was my own fault. The sharpest part of the image was not the subject. I thought (hoped) the subject was "sharp enough". Nope. Hope doesn't do it.

 

Paulette

[Jill Morgan]

I had one of the fastest QC's ever. Uploaded late last night via ftp, went out this morning and when I came home they had passed.  Never received an email, so not sure exactly when they passed.  First upload in 6 months.  Now only a few hundred more images to slog through.

 

Jill

[Michael Ventura]

I had a QC fail a few months ago and it was absolutely justified.  I was shooting in a new fully electric vehicle made by Genesis and was traveling reasonably fast (I was a passenger) and I purposely used a fairly slow shutter speed to get some motion and streaks but there was too much blur and no single sharp point.  I was hoping the steering wheel would sharp enough but even that was a tad soft.  

[Ed Rooney]

8 hours ago, NYCat said:

The sharpest part of the image was not the subject. 

 

Paulette

 

I've had a fail like that, Paulette. 

 

[Tatiana]

I am glad that the deadline for checking my upload has finally ended and I received a positive response. Total from January 20 to February 4. More than 2 weeks. Submitted the next upload. I would really like it to go faster and also get the green light.

[Cal]

On 02/02/2022 at 07:23, M.Chapman said:

Watch out that PS doesn't fully respect the Mac resolution setting.

For example. If I set 2,560 x 1,440 in Mac OS Display Systems settings, a 1,000 pixel wide image displayed in PS is only 11.5cm wide on a 59.5cm wide 27" iMac display.

If PS was respecting the Display setting the image should be about 23cm wide. 

In general PS will display images at 50% of the size you would expect from the Mac OS Display Resolution settings. It's not ideal.

This behaviour can be overridden by setting PS to open in low resolution mode, but then it all looks a bit fuzzy, so I don't use this.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/open-in-low-resolution-photoshop-cc-2017/td-p/8805969

I just have to remember to check images at 200% in PS. 

 

Mark

 

that's because PS is displaying the image according to the actual pixel size, it isn't "pixel doubling" the image like Mac OS does with the rest of the GUI. When you set your resolution to 2560x1440 it's not actually set to that, it's set to 5K but just pixel doubled. Otherwise there would be no need for Macs to have a 5K display at all and so they'd just save money and half the amount of pixels. The reason they have so many pixels is because even with pixel doubling it allows the incredibly sharp rendering of text and visual content. Lightroom does the same as PS - going 1:1 on an image displays it at a 1:1 pixel ratio, and so the image appears significantly less "zoomed in" than it would on a 27K monitor with a true resolution of 2560x1440.

[M.Chapman]

37 minutes ago, Cal said:

 

that's because PS is displaying the image according to the actual pixel size, it isn't "pixel doubling" the image like Mac OS does with the rest of the GUI. When you set your resolution to 2560x1440 it's not actually set to that, it's set to 5K but just pixel doubled. Otherwise there would be no need for Macs to have a 5K display at all and so they'd just save money and half the amount of pixels. The reason they have so many pixels is because even with pixel doubling it allows the incredibly sharp rendering of text and visual content. Lightroom does the same as PS - going 1:1 on an image displays it at a 1:1 pixel ratio, and so the image appears significantly less "zoomed in" than it would on a 27K monitor with a true resolution of 2560x1440.

It's not quite that simple. The 1:1 PS display only happens when the system display resolution is set to 2560x1440 or 5120x2880. At other resolutions the result is a hybrid between PS 1:1 and some graphic chip rescaling which "modifies" the end result so the 1:1 is no longer maintained.

 

Mark

[Allan Bell]

3 hours ago, Tatiana said:

I am glad that the deadline for checking my upload has finally ended and I received a positive response. Total from January 20 to February 4. More than 2 weeks. Submitted the next upload. I would really like it to go faster and also get the green light.

 

Hope it doesn't happen to you but I have had the lowest QC rating since 2008.  Always have to wait two weeks at least for QC.

 

Allan

 

[Tatiana]

29 minutes ago, Allan Bell said:

 

Hope it doesn't happen to you but I have had the lowest QC rating since 2008.  Always have to wait two weeks at least for QC.

 

Allan

 

I wish you to improve your rating soon. And hopefully with my new camera I'll have less trouble with it.

[Jill Morgan]

2 minutes ago, Tatiana said:

I wish you to improve your rating soon. And hopefully with my new camera I'll have less trouble with it.

 

Hopefully your new camera does a good job, but it's the photographer that is to examine their images before they submit them and find the flaws to avoid the failures and subsequent long QC wait.  Check every image at 100% for artifacts, chromatic aberration, lack of focus, etc.  If your first camera was causing this, you should have caught it and not submitted the images.  Alamy expects their photographers to check for flaws before submitting.

 

Good luck with the new camera.

 

Jill

[M.Chapman]

21 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

It's not quite that simple. The 1:1 PS display only happens when the system display resolution is set to 2560x1440 or 5120x2880. At other resolutions the result is a hybrid between PS 1:1 and some graphic chip rescaling which "modifies" the end result so the 1:1 is no longer maintained.

 

Mark

To add a bit more info to this. When using a 27" iMac with a real 5,120 x 2,880 pixel screen the following happens.

 

MacOS display resolution set to emulate a 1,600 x 900 display

Photoshop 100% zoom uses 1.6x1.6 real screen pixels to display each pixel in the image

 

MacOS display resolution set to emulate a 2,048 x 1,152 display

Photoshop 100% zoom uses 1.25x1.25 real screen pixels to display each pixel in the image

 

MacOS display resolution set to emulate a 2,560 x 1,440 display (the default setting)

Photoshop 100% zoom uses 1 real screen pixel to display each pixel in the image

 

MacOS display resolution set to emulate a 2,880 x 1,620 display

Photoshop 100% zoom uses 0.8889x0.8889 real screen pixels to display each pixel in the image

 

MacOS display resolution set to emulate a 3,200 x 1,800 display

Photoshop 100% zoom uses 0.8x0.8 real screen pixels to display each pixel in the image

 

In all cases above Photoshop 100% zoom uses 0.5x0.5 emulated display pixels per pixel in the image

AND

Photoshop 200% zoom uses 1 emulated pixel per pixel in the image

 

Mark (hoping I haven't made any typos)

Edited February 5, 2022 by M.Chapman

[geogphotos]

Re : QC Limbo

 

I heard something or other about a global pandemic.....

[DorsetPhill]

On 01/02/2022 at 21:47, MDM said:

 

You may be setting yourself up as a hostage to fortune there Mark. I don't know anything about this but the technology to select an in-focus area has been present in Photoshop for some years now so I suspect it must be possible to automate this sort of thing. If it is not an automated process then either Alamy has moved the goalposts to a stricter setup or there is a newbie in QC who is failing images that would normally pass - e.g. images with out of focus areas but a main subject in focus

As above - I have had a few fails with bg out of focus but all good in the foreground. I was thinking just the same about focus areas.

[Simon]

On 20/02/2022 at 16:15, DorsetPhill said:

As above - I have had a few fails with bg out of focus but all good in the foreground. I was thinking just the same about focus areas.

I've just had 2 submissions fail on the same reason. Again I have 5 stars and this has NEVER happened before in 5+ years.  I'm happy with the pictures, so I reckon something has changed in Alamy.

[MDM]

On 20/02/2022 at 16:15, DorsetPhill said:

As above - I have had a few fails with bg out of focus but all good in the foreground. I was thinking just the same about focus areas.

 

2 hours ago, Simon said:

I've just had 2 submissions fail on the same reason. Again I have 5 stars and this has NEVER happened before in 5+ years.  I'm happy with the pictures, so I reckon something has changed in Alamy.

 

If this is a regular occurrence then something is wrong with the Alamy QC process as they would not want to fail images where the main subject is sharp and the background out of focus - a newbie or an automated system.

 

I suggest you contact customer relations to query it although Alamy must already be aware as I believe they do read these threads. It would be really interesting to see some of these images that are failing at full size if anyone would like to post them somewhere just to see what is happening. So far nobody has posted any of these failing images.

[Allan Bell]

2 minutes ago, Alexander Hog said:

Just wondering if anyone else is still waiting a few days in QC for the pictures to be passed It's the first time taking so long This will be the second day 

 

I regularly wait 14 days.

 

Allan

 

[Allan Bell]

Just now, Alexander Hog said:

I've never heard it taking that long I've usually had them passed by the next day normally Oh well will wait and see Thanks Alan

 

I do not know how many QC stars you have but I only have one. It has been like that ever since I joined Alamy back in 2008.

 

Allan

 

[Dave Richards]

21 hours ago, Alexander Hog said:

I've never heard it taking that long I've usually had them passed by the next day normally Oh well will wait and see Thanks Alan

Mine usually clear on the day following submission but I uploaded a batch of 51 on Tuesday which are still in QC, followed by a batch of 17 yesterday. Hoping they clear by close of business today.