Technical question for a first submission

[Faiz Dib]

Hello,
I just registered on Alamy and I submitted to their quality control these 3 photos (links below) which were all rejected for « soft or lacking definition".

 

I know that the "entrance exam" at Alamy isn't so easy and I may be fooling myself but I control my photos displayed at 100% in Photoshop and frankly I don't see how to enhance the sharpness of these photos without over sharpening them, or I urgently need to change my glasses!

 

Once again I may be fooling myself but maybe there's a more technical reason why my photos were rejected for « soft or lacking definition", let me explain!

 

I'm on a Mac with a 27' Retina 5K screen. When I open a photo in Photoshop, its display at 100% matches the resolution of my screen. To be sure I made a test with a photo of the same resolution as my screen, which is 5120x2880 px, displayed at 100% it occupies the whole screen. On the other hand, in a basic image viewer such as Preview or in a web browser, the 100% display in these softwares corresponds almost to the 200% display of Photoshop, and consequently the photo is blurred.

 

I conclude that Photoshop supports 5k but not necessarily all softwares and depending of the screen resolution and the software used, the display of a photo at 100% will not be the same.

Following this reasoning, if this is the case for Alamy's reviewers, a photo that for me is 100% sharp in Photoshop will not be so for them, because "their" 100% will perhaps correspond to 200% of my screen. I hope I'm making myself clear!

 

I am not a specialist and maybe my reasoning is wrong. Please give me your opinion on this question!

I’m French and I did my best to express myself in English, please be indulgent!

 

Sorry but the "Insert image from URL" button did not work for me, below are the links to my photos:

https://ibb.co/2gfc9Lq
https://ibb.co/0cHvByT

https://ibb.co/hD491t8

[M.Chapman]

On 08/11/2022 at 13:27, Faiz Dib said:

Hello,
I just registered on Alamy and I submitted to their quality control these 3 photos (links below) which were all rejected for « soft or lacking definition".

 

I know that the "entrance exam" at Alamy isn't so easy and I may be fooling myself but I control my photos displayed at 100% in Photoshop and frankly I don't see how to enhance the sharpness of these photos without over sharpening them, or I urgently need to change my glasses!

 

Once again I may be fooling myself but maybe there's a more technical reason why my photos were rejected for « soft or lacking definition", let me explain!

 

I'm on a Mac with a 27' Retina 5K screen. When I open a photo in Photoshop, its display at 100% matches the resolution of my screen. To be sure I made a test with a photo of the same resolution as my screen, which is 5120x2880 px, displayed at 100% it occupies the whole screen. On the other hand, in a basic image viewer such as Preview or in a web browser, the 100% display in these softwares corresponds almost to the 200% display of Photoshop, and consequently the photo is blurred.

 

I conclude that Photoshop supports 5k but not necessarily all softwares and depending of the screen resolution and the software used, the display of a photo at 100% will not be the same.

Following this reasoning, if this is the case for Alamy's reviewers, a photo that for me is 100% sharp in Photoshop will not be so for them, because "their" 100% will perhaps correspond to 200% of my screen. I hope I'm making myself clear!

 

I am not a specialist and maybe my reasoning is wrong. Please give me your opinion on this question!

I’m French and I did my best to express myself in English, please be indulgent!

 

Sorry but the "Insert image from URL" button did not work for me, below are the links to my photos:

https://ibb.co/2gfc9Lq
https://ibb.co/0cHvByT

https://ibb.co/hD491t8

 

If running on a Retina display, and viewing from a normal distance, you need to inspect images at 200% in Photoshop. (I'm also on a 27" iMac and using PS).

 

Mark

[M.Chapman]

Looking at your images I'm puzzled, have you upsized one of them?

The shot of the weeping willows is 7176 x 4866 pixels but was taken with a Fuji X-T2 (max resolution 6,000 x 4,000). The willow tree leaves at left hand side are soft. Don't upsize.

 

The shot of the bather and boats looks like it's had a more noise reduction than needed, the bather's hair has lost detail.

The shot of the grasshopper looks pretty good to me, although perhaps a little over-processed with a slightly "gritty" appearance

 

For you initial submission it's generally advised to pick something simple and relatively flat so that everything is in focus. Take photos between f/8-f/11 using a good lens (prime or excellent zoom) in good light, at low ISO possibly using a tripod. Shoot in RAW, and don't over process (e.g. process using LR or PS ACR default settings with no extra sharpening or noise reduction applied).

Inspect at 100% (200% on retina display) ensure no sensor dust spots, CA or fringing is present

If not 100% happy with sharpness, try downsizing to 3,000 x 2,000 before submitting.

 

Mark

 

Edited November 9, 2022 by M.Chapman

[spacecadet]

My first impression is over-sharpening. If these are OOC jpegs, these days they shouldn't look that plasticky

14 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

The shot of the grasshopper looks pretty good to me

That's the one I meant! At 100% I see aliasing and blocky artifacts almost as if it's been cropped then upsized.

The plastic look reminds me of my over-NRed images from when I was still shooting jpegs.

Edited November 10, 2022 by spacecadet

[Faiz Dib]

15 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

Looking at your images I'm puzzled, have you upsized one of them?

The shot of the weeping willows is 7176 x 4866 pixels but was taken with a Fuji X-T2 (max resolution 6,000 x 4,000). The willow tree leaves at left hand side are soft. Don't upsize.

 

The shot of the bather and boats looks like it's had a more noise reduction than needed, the bather's hair has lost detail.

The shot of the grasshopper looks pretty good to me, although perhaps a little over-processed with a slightly "gritty" appearance

 

For you initial submission it's generally advised to pick something simple and relatively flat so that everything is in focus. Take photos between f/8-f/11 using a good lens (prime or excellent zoom) in good light, at low ISO possibly using a tripod. Shoot in RAW, and don't over process (e.g. process using LR or PS ACR default settings with no extra sharpening or noise reduction applied).

Inspect at 100% (200% on retina display) ensure no sensor dust spots, CA or fringing is present

If not 100% happy with sharpness, try downsizing to 3,000 x 2,000 before submitting.

 

Mark

 

I upsized the shot of the weeping willow some time ago to print it, I should have taken the original file for my submission.

The fact is that I don't have very good eyesight and I often feel that my pictures aren't sharp enough. As a result I have a tendency to over edit my photos!

Thanks Mark, I will follow your advices for my next submission.

 

Faïz

[spacecadet]

Definitely lay off the sharpening- Alamy don't want any added at all, apart from RAW defaults (in jpeg you have no choice of course).

Can your eyesight be corrected fully? If so you may need new spectacles. I got some after a run of QC problems and they made quite a bit of difference, but the big one was going from jpeg to RAW.

You could just downsize to the minimum 3000x2000, but I'd want to fix the problem itself.

Edited November 10, 2022 by spacecadet

[Faiz Dib]

52 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

Definitely lay off the sharpening- Alamy don't want any added at all, apart from RAW defaults (in jpeg you have no choice of course).

Can your eyesight be corrected fully? If so you may need new spectacles. I got some after a run of QC problems and they made quite a bit of difference, but the big one was going from jpeg to RAW.

You could just downsize to the minimum 3000x2000, but I'd want to fix the problem itself.

My remark about glasses was mostly a joke but yes, it's been a long time since I had my eyesight checked and it could make a difference. Thanks for the advice.

I always shoot in RAW+jpeg and even though the jpegs from Fuji cameras are known to be very good I always use RAW files.

 

I'll follow your advices for my next submission, I will reduce my photos to the minimum accepted resolution and control them in Photoshop at 200% as Mark said... and no sharpening!

Faïz

[M.Chapman]

13 minutes ago, Faiz Dib said:

as Mark said... and no sharpening

The default level of sharpening applied by LR/PS/ACR during RAW develop operation is recommended. But no extra sharpening beyond this. If downsizing in PS, I suggest that Bicubic Sharper or Nearest Neighbour downsizing are NOT used. Use Bilinear or Auto.

 

Mark

[Faiz Dib]

1 hour ago, M.Chapman said:

The default level of sharpening applied by LR/PS/ACR during RAW develop operation is recommended. But no extra sharpening beyond this. If downsizing in PS, I suggest that Bicubic Sharper or Nearest Neighbour downsizing are NOT used. Use Bilinear or Auto.

 

Mark

ok, thanks!

[Betty LaRue]

I noticed this. The grasshopper’s eye is not what’s in sharp focus. Appears the leg is.  Whenever taking a picture of an insect, bird, dog, cat, etc (person) be sure to pinpoint focus on the eye. Otherwise, usually, the image fails in general, and in QC. So I would not submit this image no matter how you reprocess it because the focus isn’t where it should be.

I understand about the eyesight you mentioned. I had some failures for the same reason until I got it corrected.

[M.Chapman]

Wasn't there also an issue with processing RAW Fuji X-Trans sensor images in some versions of LR/PS? Not sure which version of LR/PS the OP is using.

 

Mark

[Harry Harrison]

14 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

Not sure which version of LR/PS the OP is using.

 

EXIF says Adobe Photoshop CC 2019 (Macintosh), I think that Adobe introduced 'Enhanced detail' to counter the 'worm' effect so it would be whenever they did that but it was before then I think. I don't see this problem in these in fact but I am confused by the apertures, 1/2000 sec @f2 & 200 iso on the willows, that's liable to be a bit soft I would have thought unless it's a cracking lens. The other two are at f1 (?) so maybe it's not a Fuji lens, and the bather is at 1600 iso & 1/250 sec suggesting quite a small aperture and yes, probably too much noise reduction to counter the iso setting.

 

Edit: This seems to be incorrect with respect to apertures as I got them from the the sharing site EXIF information so f11 not f1, & f2.8 not f2. Thanks Mark.

 

Edited November 11, 2022 by Harry Harrison

[M.Chapman]

Withdrawn

Edited November 10, 2022 by M.Chapman

[M.Chapman]

28 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

I am confused by the apertures, 1/2000 sec @f2 & 200 iso on the willows, that's liable to be a bit soft I would have thought unless it's a cracking lens. The other two are at f1 (?)

That's strange. My image browser (BreezeBrowser) and Photoshop CC says the Grasshopper and Bather with boats are at f/11 and the Willows are at f/2.8

 

Mmmm - is that where the problem lies? Is the Meta data corrupt/non-standard in some way? How are you viewing the Metadata?

 

Mark

[Harry Harrison]

2 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

How are you viewing the Metadata?

Then I imagine that your values are correct and the ones I saw are wrong, I was just looking at the EXIF display on his sharing site

[Faiz Dib]

22 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

I noticed this. The grasshopper’s eye is not what’s in sharp focus. Appears the leg is.  Whenever taking a picture of an insect, bird, dog, cat, etc (person) be sure to pinpoint focus on the eye. Otherwise, usually, the image fails in general, and in QC. So I would not submit this image no matter how you reprocess it because the focus isn’t where it should be.

I understand about the eyesight you mentioned. I had some failures for the same reason until I got it corrected.

You're right, the focus is not on the grasshopper's eye, but I took this picture on the fly, hoping that the grasshopper doesn't jump elsewhere.
And I think that the best would have been a macro lens.

Edited November 11, 2022 by Faiz Dib

[Faiz Dib]

21 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

Wasn't there also an issue with processing RAW Fuji X-Trans sensor images in some versions of LR/PS? Not sure which version of LR/PS the OP is using.

 

Mark

In Photoshop I work with Adobe Camera Raw 13.4 filter which supports X-Trans sensor files.

[Faiz Dib]

19 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

EXIF says Adobe Photoshop CC 2019 (Macintosh), I think that Adobe introduced 'Enhanced detail' to counter the 'worm' effect so it would be whenever they did that but it was before then I think. I don't see this problem in these in fact but I am confused by the apertures, 1/2000 sec @f2 & 200 iso on the willows, that's liable to be a bit soft I would have thought unless it's a cracking lens. The other two are at f1 (?) so maybe it's not a Fuji lens, and the bather is at 1600 iso & 1/250 sec suggesting quite a small aperture and yes, probably too much noise reduction to counter the iso setting.

 

Edit: This seems to be incorrect with respect to apertures as I got them from the the sharing site EXIF information so f11 not f1, & f2.8 not f2. Thanks Mark.

 

Here is the EXIF data, from the original RAW files:
- Willow tree: 1/2000 sec @ f/2.8 ISO 200 (lens: XF50-140 mm-cracking lens? I'm not sure what this means)
- Grasshopper : 1/250 sec @ f/11 ISO 200 (lens : XF60 mm)
- Bather: 1/250 sec @ f/11 ISO 1600 (lens: XF35 F1.4 mm). ISO 1600 is a setting error so I had to edit the picture a lot to recover highlights.

[Steve F]

19 minutes ago, Faiz Dib said:

cracking

 

British English - colloquially means 'great', 'amazing'

[Steve F]

41 minutes ago, Faiz Dib said:

ISO 1600 is a setting error so I had to edit the picture a lot to recover highlights

 

Hi Faiz,

Alamy QC will pay a lot of attention to your first submission. So don't submit any images with high ISO / lots of noise, don't upsize any images (a good rule of thumb moving forwards too). Images should be 'clean' and without a lot of manipulation, e.g. additional sharpening, which might cause problems.

 

See also:

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

 

Steve

Edited November 11, 2022 by Steve F

[Harry Harrison]

2 hours ago, Faiz Dib said:

Here is the EXIF data, from the original RAW files:
- Willow tree: 1/2000 sec @ f/2.8 ISO 200 (lens: XF50-140 mm-cracking lens? I'm not sure what this means)
- Grasshopper : 1/250 sec @ f/11 ISO 200 (lens : XF60 mm)
- Bather: 1/250 sec @ f/11 ISO 1600 (lens: XF35 F1.4 mm). ISO 1600 is a setting error so I had to edit the picture a lot to recover highlights.

Thanks Steve for the translation, 'cracking' wasn't the best choice of adjectives when describing a lens in fact. 

 

Thanks for the EXIF Faiz, I should have downloaded them and brought them into Lightroom to confirm. I was thinking that the (then) unknown lens was being used at f2 so wouldn't be at its best. Your XF50-140 is of course a very good lens but even so it won't be as good wide open as it would be stopped down a couple of stops, that might have something to do with it, and of course it shouldn't have been upsized. I think the others have got it right, 1600 iso is tricky to rescue when the scene didn't demand it but I love my 35mm f1.4. I trust that at just about any aperture. You were unlucky with the grasshopper, I suppose it was the fact that the eye isn't in focus and maybe that over-sharpening.

 

Don't be put off though, just play it safe to begin with!

[Harry Harrison]

2 hours ago, Faiz Dib said:

In Photoshop I work with Adobe Camera Raw 13.4 filter which supports X-Trans sensor files.

Some scenes, even with the X-T2, don't look good when processed in Lightroom when you zoom in, or at least not as good as they could be. It is often described as 'worms' but needn't be quite that obvious. For me it affects natural scenes with low contrast, so distant fields, woods, foliage etc. I don't know whether Camera RAW 13 is just better than my older version but it might be worth trying 'Enhance details' on certain images (now apparently called RAW details).

[Faiz Dib]

2 hours ago, Steve F said:

Images should be 'clean' and without a lot of manipulation

I am a contributor since September only for some stock photos (Shutterstock, Adobe stock and also 123rf but this one is not very satisfying). Shutterstock is also quite challenging but, unlike Alamy, a photo can be heavily edited and pass their QC.

Thank you Steve for your advices, I think I understood the difference between Alamy and other photo stocks, I will review my strategy and maybe also, as I said above, have my eyesight checked!

[Faiz Dib]

45 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Thanks Steve for the translation, 'cracking' wasn't the best choice of adjectives when describing a lens in fact. 

 

Thanks for the EXIF Faiz, I should have downloaded them and brought them into Lightroom to confirm. I was thinking that the (then) unknown lens was being used at f2 so wouldn't be at its best. Your XF50-140 is of course a very good lens but even so it won't be as good wide open as it would be stopped down a couple of stops, that might have something to do with it, and of course it shouldn't have been upsized. I think the others have got it right, 1600 iso is tricky to rescue when the scene didn't demand it but I love my 35mm f1.4. I trust that at just about any aperture. You were unlucky with the grasshopper, I suppose it was the fact that the eye isn't in focus and maybe that over-sharpening.

 

Don't be put off though, just play it safe to begin with!

I also like my 35mm f1.4. I also love the 60mm f2.4 with which I shot the grasshopper, it may deliver shots with outstanding sharpness but difficult to use with auto focus, it often misses the target.

Thank you for your encouragement harry, I think I got a little too excited for my first submission !

 

Faïz

Edited November 11, 2022 by Faiz Dib

[John Mitchell]

On 10/11/2022 at 05:42, M.Chapman said:

The default level of sharpening applied by LR/PS/ACR during RAW develop operation is recommended. But no extra sharpening beyond this. If downsizing in PS, I suggest that Bicubic Sharper or Nearest Neighbour downsizing are NOT used. Use Bilinear or Auto.

 

Mark

 

Why bilinear? I've always used "bicubic sharper" for downsizing without problems.

 

Alamy doesn't seem to mind a bit of extra sharpening these days. No?