Your submission has passed QC... But it is not. One image Soft or lacking definition?

[Henri Leduc]

I received an email yesterday seeing "Good news - you passed QC". But, when I go to my Image Manager all my submission has failed because of one image has being rejected for soft or lacking definition.

 

I have read the FAQ and I know this is  the way Alamy is working :

• If we find a problem with one image, your whole submission will fail 
• You’ll receive a pass or fail email and we’ll update the submission in AIM"

But there is thus an issue between their email and reality.

 

I'm new to Alamy. I looked through some post in this forum, but couldn't exactly find the answers. Please excuse me if I ask naive questions or questions that may have already been answered.

- This submission is blocked. I can't do anything. I suppose I have to leave it like it is and reupload a new submission without the failed image ?

- The failed image for SoLD is sharp from foreground to background and was accepted by other MS. The only thing I did was to upscale it with Topaz Gigapixel Ai. I looked at it at 100% same as all my other image and honestly I don't see any soft focus. Should I try to reupload it in a separate submission ? May be without the upscale ?

I attach a dropbox link to a 100% crop screen capture of this image

Thank you in advance for your kind responses and advises.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sqygktu2fpork4d/Herd of Guanacos grazing in the foothills of Torres del Paine.jpg?dl=0

Edited October 12, 2022 by Henri Leduc

[Sultanpepa]

I wouldn't say soft but in the process of upscaling I do think it has suffered from a lack of definition. I would accept it in the grass but I also see it in the animals. I never upscale anything for fear of this. Best not to if you can avoid it.

 

[Steve F]

Hi (salut?) Henri,

I like your images that have passed. 

 

On 12/10/2022 at 19:09, Henri Leduc said:

But there is thus an issue between their email and reality.

 

Agreed. I'm not sure why this is, although I suspect your account has been locked for the standard period for failing QC. I'm not sure how long accounts are locked for uploads these days, probably about a week. Wait a couple of working days and see if you get an email about failing QC. Otherwise, email:

contributors@alamy.com

 

 

On 12/10/2022 at 19:09, Henri Leduc said:

This submission is blocked. I can't do anything. I suppose I have to leave it like it is and reupload a new submission without the failed image ?

 

Yes, wait until it's unlocked and either re-edit the offending image or leave it out.

 

 

On 12/10/2022 at 19:09, Henri Leduc said:

was accepted by other MS

 

Alamy has higher standards and is technically not microstock (although that distinction is getting blurred).

 

 

On 12/10/2022 at 19:09, Henri Leduc said:

he only thing I did was to upscale it with Topaz Gigapixel Ai

 

I've had a look, thanks for providing a 100% crop. The image looks very blocky, the grass and particularly the animals, doesn't look normal at all. See 'Interpolation artifacts' and 'oversharpening' here:

https://www.alamy.com/contributors/alamy-how-to-pass-qc.pdf

 

Hope this helps.

Steve

 

Edited October 14, 2022 by Steve F
agree with MDM

[MDM]

It doesn't look soft to me, it looks oversharpened.  It would be more useful to see the full image that was submitted and a version before it was upsized. I wonder why Henri  upsized in any case - was the image below the minimum 17MB? 

[Henri Leduc]

3 hours ago, Sultanpepa said:

I wouldn't say soft but in the process of upscaling I do think it has suffered from a lack of definition. I would accept it in the grass but I also see it in the animals. I never upscale anything for fear of this. Best not to if you can avoid it.

 

Thank you for your advice. I usually can avoid this. I am with a Nikon D800E with 36Mb. With this image I cropped it a little because I didn't want to approach the animals too much but I'm still with a 4138 x 2328px. I will try a new submission without upscaling.

[Henri Leduc]

1 hour ago, Steve F said:

Hi (salut?) Henri,

I like your images that have passed. 

 

 

Agreed. I'm not sure why this is, although I suspect your account has been locked for the standard period for failing QC. I'm not sure how long accounts are locked for uploads these days, probably about a week. Wait a couple of working days and see if you get an email about failing QC. Otherwise, email:

contributors@alamy.com

 

 

 

Yes, wait until it's unlocked and either re-edit the offending image or leave it out.

 

 

 

Alamy has higher standards and is technically not microstock (although that distinction is getting blurred).

 

 

 

I've had a look, thanks for providing a 100% crop. The image looks very blocky, the grass and particularly the animals, doesn't look normal at all. See 'Interpolation artifacts' and 'oversharpening' here:

https://www.alamy.com/contributors/alamy-how-to-pass-qc.pdf

 

Hope this helps.

Steve

 

 

Thank you Steve for your very complete answer to my questions. Salut, Steve 😉 (I am indeed French speaking)

 

Submission was on the 7th of October, one week ago. I will send a mail to contributors@alamy.com to tell them the problem of the issue between their mail and my blocked submission.

 

Meanwhile I will make a new submission without the failed image and another submission only with the offending image without upscaling and reducing the amount of sharpening.

 

This failed image was accepted by 5 other MS and namely by Shutterstock, which has also very high standards, maybe even higher than Alamy. And it already had a sell on Shutterstock. But anyway, I think sometimes you don't have to look too much why an image isn't accepted. I mean, I'm not going to bother with this problem.

 

Thanks again for your help. Have a nice day.

 

[Henri Leduc]

51 minutes ago, MDM said:

It doesn't look soft to me, it looks oversharpened.  It would be more useful to see the full image that was submitted and a version before it was upsized. I wonder why Henri  upsized in any case - was the image below the minimum 17MB? 

 

Thank you for your comment and feedback on this image. I fact I don't need to upscale this image for MS. It happens that I am also trying to sell my images in print sites like Fineartamerica. To have the chance to sell a big print I'm submitting to those sites my images at a minimum of 5500 px on the large side. As I also need to have perfect files and to put keywords and descriptions, all the job already been done, I decided to submit also those images to a bunch of MS and macrostocks. That's the reason why this image was upscaled. As I said to Sultanpepa and to Steve, I will try a submission of this unique image without upscaling and reducing the amount of sharpening.

Thank you for you help. Regards.

[MDM]

42 minutes ago, Henri Leduc said:

 

Thank you for your comment and feedback on this image. I fact I don't need to upscale this image for MS. It happens that I am also trying to sell my images in print sites like Fineartamerica. To have the chance to sell a big print I'm submitting to those sites my images at a minimum of 5500 px on the large side. As I also need to have perfect files and to put keywords and descriptions, all the job already been done, I decided to submit also those images to a bunch of MS and macrostocks. That's the reason why this image was upscaled. As I said to Sultanpepa and to Steve, I will try a submission of this unique image without upscaling and reducing the amount of sharpening.

Thank you for you help. Regards.

 

If you need to sharpen a D800E file for Alamy anything beyond the basic Lightroom/ACR default if at all, then you are doing something wrong. I used a D800E for several years and the files do not need sharpening for Alamy if you are using decent lenses, avoid camera shake and are focusing properly. Downsize to 3000x2000 approx if in doubt and definitely do not upsize for Alamy. 

[sb photos]

14 hours ago, Henri Leduc said:

 

This failed image was accepted by 5 other MS and namely by Shutterstock, which has also very high standards, maybe even higher than Alamy. And it already had a sell on Shutterstock. But anyway, I think sometimes you don't have to look too much why an image isn't accepted. I mean, I'm not going to bother with this problem.

 

 

Good luck with your re submission. As I see you have have images on SS, note that there is a possibility that if you upload the same images to Alamy you could be competing against yourself if they are cheaper on SS.

Edited October 15, 2022 by sb photos

[Steve F]

16 hours ago, Henri Leduc said:

Thank you Steve for your very complete answer to my questions. Salut, Steve 😉 (I am indeed French speaking)

 

Meanwhile I will make a new submission without the failed image and another submission only with the offending image without upscaling and reducing the amount of sharpening.

 

 

Salut Henri,

Je t'en prie. Fait gaffe avec les soumissions, tu peux faire plusieurs uploads, but Alamy classes them all as a single upload for the purposes of QC. And if a photo in one upload fails, then all your other uploads will also fail. 

 

Personally, I tend to upload in small batches. I do one upload, wait (normally) 24 hours to pass QC and then I upload again.

 

Je te souhaite une bonne journee aussi.

Steve

 

p.s. minimum submission size to Alamy is 17MB uncompressed file size (the size of the image in an editing programme like Light Room), or a JPEG with pixel dimensions of at least 3000 x 2000.

Edited October 15, 2022 by Steve F

[gvallee]

13 hours ago, Steve F said:

 

Salut Henri,

Je t'en prie. Fait gaffe avec les soumissions, tu peux faire plusieurs uploads, but Alamy classes them all as a single upload for the purposes of QC. And if a photo in one upload fails, then all your other uploads will also fail. 

 

 

Tu m'as fait rire. You have a high level of fluency in French Steve, respect!

[Steve F]

7 hours ago, gvallee said:

 

Tu m'as fait rire. You have a high level of fluency in French Steve, respect!

 

Merci Gen. I try to keep my hand in so to speak. J'aurais essaye de tout faire en francais mais je ne voulais pas embeter le Forum!

[gvallee]

2 minutes ago, Steve F said:

 

Merci Gen. I try to keep my hand in so to speak. J'aurais essaye de tout faire en francais mais je ne voulais pas embeter le Forum!

 

Wow! Even the grammar is spot on. Conditional and all that jazz. I mentioned in another thread that after 38 years away, I was losing my oral French. 'Fais gaffe' is an expression I had forgotten. Hence the laughter and the respect. 

[Steve F]

20 minutes ago, gvallee said:

 

Wow! Even the grammar is spot on. Conditional and all that jazz. I mentioned in another thread that after 38 years away, I was losing my oral French. 'Fais gaffe' is an expression I had forgotten. Hence the laughter and the respect. 

 

Ha ha, thanks. I learned a lot of slang and colloquialisms. But my French gf at the time told me off for using it because it sounded weird as I wasn't fluent. Guess she had a point!

 

You'd catch me out if you used some weird subjunctive tense. I also have the urge to do some funny word orders now, but that's what over 10 years of learning German will do to you...

Edited October 16, 2022 by Steve F

[Henri Leduc]

On 14/10/2022 at 13:16, MDM said:

 

If you need to sharpen a D800E file for Alamy anything beyond the basic Lightroom/ACR default if at all, then you are doing something wrong. I used a D800E for several years and the files do not need sharpening for Alamy if you are using decent lenses, avoid camera shake and are focusing properly. Downsize to 3000x2000 approx if in doubt and definitely do not upsize for Alamy. 

 

Thank you for this good advice. The failed image was taken with a 17-35mm f2.8, at 25 mm, f13, 1/60s, iso 100. I have cropped it to a 16:9 because there was to much grass in the foreground. I still have a 4138 x 2328 px. I will downsize it to 2000 just in case and submit it again. I will keep you informed.

[spacecadet]

 

 

On 16/10/2022 at 08:16, gvallee said:

Fais gaffe' is an expression I had forgotten. Hence the laughter and the respect. 

Sans blague!

[Henri Leduc]

On 15/10/2022 at 03:12, sb photos said:

 

Good luck with your re submission. As I see you have have images on SS, note that there is a possibility that if you upload the same images to Alamy you could be competing against yourself if they are cheaper on SS.

 

Thank you. I will keep you informed about the re submission. I know it can be a problem to submit the same images to several agencies, but I think that the buyers generally have their preferred agencies and that they, generally, don't spend their time surfing all the MS sites. And if they are Googling, Alamy is usually better than others to put their images first.

[Henri Leduc]

On 15/10/2022 at 04:59, Steve F said:

 

Salut Henri,

Je t'en prie. Fait gaffe avec les soumissions, tu peux faire plusieurs uploads, but Alamy classes them all as a single upload for the purposes of QC. And if a photo in one upload fails, then all your other uploads will also fail. 

 

Personally, I tend to upload in small batches. I do one upload, wait (normally) 24 hours to pass QC and then I upload again.

 

Je te souhaite une bonne journee aussi.

Steve

 

p.s. minimum submission size to Alamy is 17MB uncompressed file size (the size of the image in an editing programme like Light Room), or a JPEG with pixel dimensions of at least 3000 x 2000.

 

Salut Steve,

Hé bien ton français est encore excellent ! Félicitations !

Submission is still blocked. That's now 10 days. It was a small badge. Only 13 images. I think I can now try a re submission from the 12 images that were blocked in QC and another one with only the failed file without excesive sharpening and downsizing it, just in case, to 3500 x 2000. I keep you informed about the results.

 

Je te souhaite une excellente journée et une trés bonne semaine.

[Henri Leduc]

Thank you to everyone who participated in this very nice conversation and who helped me with their good advice.

 

I will keep you posted on the results.

 

I wish you all an excellent day