How to see which image got rejected and why in a submission of several images

[Jan Juerges]

Hi Folks,

 

first of all, hello to everyone! I am quite new to selling images on stock sites with only a tiny portfolio yet.

My first submissions went through quite easily and fast, it only took about one day for each submission.
Yesterday i submitted several batches, from only one image in a submission, to about 5-6 per submission.

What i found weird was that the first submission yesterday had 3 images, from which 2 passed in about 3 minutes.
After that i uploaded more images in 5 submissions, sometimes containing 1 image, sometimes 3.
 

this morning i saw that the 3rd image in the 1st submission failed. And also all other submissions after that failed too.

I dont understand.

1. Did all submissions fail because of that one image that failed from the first submission yesterday?

2. How can 2 images of a 3-image-submission not fail, be on sale now, while the 3rd image fails although Alamy writes: if one image of the submission fails, all of that submission fails.

3. Does that mean, that one failing image in one submission leads to the failure of every submission happening after the initial submission prior to rejection or does it mean there were at least one failing image in every submission?

4. If a failing image only influences the other images in that submission, not other submissions after that, wouldnt it be smart to only include 1 imager per submission?

5. How can i see now which was the "faulty" image?

 

I hope i made myself clear enough... Please elaborate and tell me your thoughts.

Thanks in advance

Jan

[Nigel Kirby]

3. Does that mean, that one failing image in one submission leads to the failure of every submission happening after the initial submission prior to rejection

 

Yes

 

I would suggest in future you send in a small batch of images and wait until they have passed/ Failed until you understand why they are failing.

 

Nigel

[Jan Juerges]

Thank you Nigel. I will exercise myself in patience and will only submit 3-5 images.

Jan

[NYCat]

On 17/02/2023 at 07:58, Jan Juerges said:

5. How can i see now which was the "faulty" image?

 

 

Look in your Image Manager on the Dashboard. The faulty image will state the reason for the fail. Don't assume all the others are OK as they only need to find one to fail everything waiting for evaluation. Go over your images very carefully and pay particular attention to the fault they found.

 

Paulette

[Steve F]

Hi Jan,

Did you see this help on passing QC?

https://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/guidelines-for-submitting-images/?section=3&_gl=1*y14lyp*_ga*MjMwOTc1NjQ2LjE2MDU4Njg5ODk.*_ga_M5V9H9N7G8*MTY3Njg4NDE3Mi4xNzAwLjEuMTY3NjkxMDA4Mi4wLjAuMA..

 

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

 

Alamy only spot checks people's submissions. So they really want to encourage contributors to thoroughly check their work. Hence giving anyone with a QC failure a temporary period where they are unable to upload more images. 

 

Also, Alamy treats any images or multiple submissions after a QC check, as a single submission, for the purposes of the next QC check. So if one image fails, all submissions since the last QC check fail.

 

I would personally encourage you to get into the habit of passing QC all the time. Submitting 3 images at a time is going to be painful. I normally submit between 10-80 images at a time.

 

Good luck!

Steve

 

p.s. just put of curiosity, what failure reason did Alamy QC give in AIM (Alamy Image Manager)?

Edited February 20, 2023 by Steve F

[Jan Juerges]

Yes Steve, i hear you. I have to admit, there were some weird pixels in a night shot which i overlooked, that probably was the failing image. I will have to look more carefully and it teaches me that it means nothing that this image has been accepted at oth**beeeep***.

And you are right, if i want to hit the 1,000 images by next year...

Thanks,

Jan  

[Steve F]

Indeed. All agencies have different requirements. Alamy has relatively high technical standards, but in terms of subject, they will accept almost anything apart from glamour shots and too many repeat shots (and anything illegal obviously).

[Lindy]

A similar thing has happened to me ....

 

Since having my three test images approved, I haven't had any submissions rejected. However, a few days ago, I got around to submitting nine batches of images (covering a number of things including birds and a fairground) which I did over a period of several days. Just now, I received an email stating that one of the images had failed, why and, more importantly, which one it was. I looked at the image manager and all nine batches had been failed.

 

I tracked down the submission with that image in it but one thing that I noticed about all of the other submissions is that there was no identification of any failing image in any of the other eight submissions (backed up by the fact that only one image was ever identified in any email - for all nine to fail, I would have expected that I would have nine emails or at least an email with the identification of one image from each of the nine submissions). The single image that failed appeared in a batch in the middle of them so I can only presume that at least half of the images have passed.

 

It appears that whoever has the job of QC with literally thousands of images to assess each day has just decided that all of the nine submissions, even though they are different to each other, can be clumped together without inspecting them. Fail an image in one submission then claim that you have processed all nine submissions - easy work if you can get it and thanks for tainting my otherwise spotless reputation with nine fails of which at least potentially eight were not.

 

Has this sort of QC corner-cutting happened to anybody else? I used to work in QC and if any of us had done this, we would have been seriously reprimanded.

[M.Chapman]

If any inspected image in the QC queue fails, then all images awaiting QC are rejected, even if they are in different submissions. The onus is on the contributor to check all images before submission. See Steve's first post above.

 

Mark

Edited March 3, 2023 by M.Chapman

[Mr Standfast]

On 28/02/2023 at 16:50, Lindy said:

 

Has this sort of QC corner-cutting happened to anybody else? I used to work in QC and if any of us had done this, we would have been seriously reprimanded.

 

Lindy,

 

From the QC FAQ page on the blog:-

 

"Q. Why do you reject my whole submission if you find a problem with one of my images?
A. We receive over 100,000 images a day so it’s simply not possible for us to check every image. We check a small sample of your images and if all images in that sample are ok then we’ll pass the whole submission. If we find one failure then all images awaiting QC will fail.

We take the view that every image you submit should meet our QC standards so when we look at a random sample we expect it to represent the quality of all images submitted. Our top tip is to check all images at 100% (actual pixels) before you submit."

 

Every organisation will have it's own Quality Control protocols, in this instance it is apparent that Alamy has set out it's rules and has complied with them. Other organisations have different requirements and will operate differently.

 

 

 

 

[Rebecca Ore]

On 20/02/2023 at 09:05, Jan Juerges said:

Thank you Nigel. I will exercise myself in patience and will only submit 3-5 images.

Jan

 

You can submit more at one time, but do wait to have one batch approved before sending another batch.  I think 10-20 or 30 images per submission is fine, lower numbers if you still new at this. 

[Rebecca Ore]

7 minutes ago, Mr Standfast said:

Every organisation will have it's own Quality Control protocols, in this instance it is apparent that Alamy has set out it's rules and has complied with them. Other organisations have different requirements and will operate differently.

 

 

We're supposed to check our images and do our own quality control.  I like taking photos with dark shadows sometimes, and have to be very careful to eliminate noise in the shadows (LightRoom masking helps tremendously with this as does DXO Photo Lab for more general noise problems).  I've had one motion  blurred photo of a Violet Sabrewing Hummingbird that went in as a single submission and passed, so QC isn't stupidly picky. 

[Lindy]

With my original submissions, my first attempt resulted in one pass and two failures with the encouraging message that the one that didn't fail would probably pass if I resubmitted it. So, I resubmitted it along with two new ones and the new ones passed and the one from the first submission failed. So, I now had three images that had passed even though one of them had also failed so, I resubmitted the three that had passed (carefully renaming the files with their Alamy image file name and the submission that they passed in so that the pass status could be traced if anybody was really that interested) and, they all passed.

 

The only issues I have is that the approval process is so hit and miss - there is no objective scoring for the various criteria that might indicate that a fail might be marginal. In that way, we don't know if the image that failed would pass if resubmitted. The simple fact that I have had one image pass then fail (then pass again) demonstrates that the pass/fail decision is not a line over which an image passes or fails, it is a wide, grey area which can demonstrably result in either a pass or fail.

 

How close did a failed image get? Can't tell. Re-submit it and it might pass next time. Mine did in my original submissions.

[Lindy]

17 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

If any inspected image in the QC queue fails, then all images awaiting QC are rejected, even if they are in different submissions. The onus is on the contributor to check all images before submission. See Steve's first post above.

 

Mark

The problem in this case is that it was not the first submission. If what you say is true then it is logical that the five submissions that preceded the one with failed image in it would have all been passed. None were.

 

BTW, I'm resubmitting the submissions one at a time and they are all passing so far.

[Steve F]

35 minutes ago, Lindy said:

If what you say is true

Lindy, you've been told the same thing by multiple contributors. I assume you've read Mr Standfast's post above where Alamy confirm the same. Harping on about it is not going to change Alamy's QC process. Lots of us have been working with Alamy for years with no QC failures (1 in 8 years for me). I suggest you familiarise yourself with the QC links I provided above.

Stephen

Edited March 4, 2023 by Steve F

[M.Chapman]

3 hours ago, Lindy said:

The problem in this case is that it was not the first submission. If what you say is true then it is logical that the five submissions that preceded the one with failed image in it would have all been passed. None were

Alamy may check an image from any of the submissions you have in the queue awaiting QC (not necessarily from the earliest submission). If the image they check fails, all submissions awaiting QC are rejected.

 

Mark

[M.Chapman]

Lindy, you're right, there is a grey area. Marginal images may pass or fail. The QC inspectors are only human after all. But in my experience Alamy have pretty consistent QC standards - I've been able to identify why every image of mine they rejected was failed. The key to success is to avoid submitting marginal images.

 

Any other strategy (including resubmitting failed images without improving them) risks another QC fail and possible suspension of upload privileges. I had failures in my 1st, 2nd 16th and 52nd submissions and learnt my lesson the hard way. I've had no failures since (now at over 500 submissions).

 

Mark

 

 

Edited March 4, 2023 by M.Chapman

[Lindy]

6 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

If the image they check fails, all submissions awaiting QC are rejected.

You have identified the problem. 'Awaiting.' Five had already passed.

Much as  would love to continue with the dance, I am grateful for your collective sharing of your understanding of the situation.

[Mr Standfast]

21 minutes ago, Lindy said:

You have identified the problem. 'Awaiting.' Five had already passed.

Much as  would love to continue with the dance, I am grateful for your collective sharing of your understanding of the situation.

👍