QC rejection

[Roy Q]

Hello,

I have just had a batch rejected on the basis of the image below being soft or lacking definition. I was surprised by this as I had checked the image in detail (I don't have Lightroom or Photoshop, but use Apple Photos on a Mac Book Pro, and zoom in to maximum). I know checks are not carried out on every submission but it seems to me there are many softer (in the critical areas) images on Alamy, and I include some of mine in that.

 

With a view to avoiding this in future can anyone offer opinions on whether I need to invest in a better checking tool or method? Or is it possible my camera is borderline in terms of quality - it is an Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mk IV, which has a 20mp four thirds sensor - possibly on the small side for less than ideal conditions? Having said that most of my submissions have passed QC.

 

https://imgur.com/a/nJYyOZK  (f11, 1/200s)

 

Any help and advice appreciated.

 

Edited October 31, 2023 by Roy Q

[MDM]

If that is the image that failed and it hasn't been modified in uploading to that website, I can't see anything wrong with it and I'm looking at it on a 27" monitor. The signpost looks sharp and there is no noise worth mentioning. That said, Alamy QC don't usually get it wrong and it nearly always turns out that they were correct when people post original failed images here. Maybe I'm missing something?

 

Your camera is fine for Alamy purposes and, as long as you can examine images at full size, you can use Apple Photos app or anything else that does that. I would recommend an external monitor for judging sharpness if nothing else so even a cheap one would do fine. I have a 14" MacBook Pro but I can't really judge sharpness properly on it so I always use an external monitor when image editing. 

Edited October 31, 2023 by MDM

[Allan Bell]

1 hour ago, MDM said:

If that is the image that failed and it hasn't been modified in uploading to that website, I can't see anything wrong with it and I'm looking at it on a 27" monitor. The signpost looks sharp and there is no noise worth mentioning. That said, Alamy QC don't usually get it wrong and it nearly always turns out that they were correct when people post original failed images here. Maybe I'm missing something?

 

Your camera is fine for Alamy purposes and, as long as you can examine images at full size, you can use Apple Photos app or anything else that does that. I would recommend an external monitor for judging sharpness if nothing else so even a cheap one would do fine. I have a 14" MacBook Pro but I can't really judge sharpness properly on it so I always use an external monitor when image editing. 

 

I see the same as you Mick.

 

Allan

 

I have queried alamy QC on a couple of fails in the past and as far as I remember one of the fails was reinstated and past QC.

 

ITMA

 

[Steve F]

Image looks ok to me. Maybe query with QC as Allan says.

[Roy Q]

Thank you everyone for your replies, comments and suggestions. Just to confirm, the file uploaded to Imgur was definitely the same as uploaded to Alamy, and definitely the one which failed QC. 

 

Such experiences can be demoralising so I really appreciate people's reassurance that it is not me or my camera, though I will look into MDMs suggestion re hooking up the larger monitor (which I inherited from WFH in the pandemic before I retired and which is currently gathering dust!) to my 14" MacBook Pro, when I can fathom out the connection.

 

I probably won't challenge this one with Alamy, I'd rather move on and put my time into more submissions, but if it happens again I will.

 

Thanks all for your time.

Roy

[Steve F]

35 minutes ago, Roy Q said:

I probably won't challenge this one with Alamy, I'd rather move on and put my time into more submissions, but if it happens again I will.

 

 

Sound like a plan. Good luck!

[Martin L]

Roy

I would check the other images in the batch just in case they marked the wrong one as failed

[Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg]

IMO, you must query further to gain insight.

Don't challenge, rather ask for more information.

Is it possible the sharpest focus is on the right side signs?
Are the left edges of the left side signs OOF?

Its not QC's job to opine where to focus, but...

[wiskerke]

The cobwebs on the signs and the post are clearly visible. They are not the sort of sharp that comes out of Photoshop though. In ACR I would give it at least 15% sharpening more than it has now.

It could be QR thinks it's over-processed, which I think it is: a bit too much noise suppression going on. That could well be the culprit for giving the image a slightly smeared sort of sharpness.

I noticed there is no camera or lens metadata present in the file. QR maybe doesn't like that too much either. Does Apple Photos strip the Exif data?

 

wim

[Mr Standfast]

 

Morning Roy,

 

Nice pictures and good comments from m'learned colleagues.

 

First of all don't be dejected by a couple of QC fails in the first few 100 or so submissions, for most of us it was the first time we'd been scrutinised by a QC or a picture editor so we had to work out where the boundaries were. I had a lot of QC fails in my early years but eventually worked it out.  Confident you will work it out as well

 

Soft and lacking definition is sometimes used by QC as a catch all, some thing is not quite right but it is difficult to justify Alamy time to pin down. Might be focus, might be a bit over processed? I've looked at my sign post images to see if I'd used a large apperture to "sign post" what I was focusing on, but nothing was obvious.

 

Your comment, "I probably won't challenge this one with Alamy, I'd rather move on and put my time into more submissions, but if it happens again I will", makes far  more sense than the usual complants on the forum about QC fails.

 

I expect you've seen this.

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

 

Good luck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[StokeCreative]

Agree with everyone else other than the sky is a bit noisy/artefacts maybe?

Hugh

[Roy Q]

Thanks everyone that's given me plenty of food for thought. I've got the larger monitor linked up now, but basically it seems to be a case of getting to know the QC boundaries with Alamy a bit better through more experience.

[MDM]

19 hours ago, StokeCreative said:

Agree with everyone else other than the sky is a bit noisy/artefacts maybe?

Hugh

 

The sky is a little blotchy when viewed at high mag but there is no noise worth mentioning so I don't think that would merit a QC failure. 

 

1 hour ago, Roy Q said:

basically it seems to be a case of getting to know the QC boundaries with Alamy a bit better through more experience.

 

For that reason I would still advocate politely querying it with Alamy and pointing them to this thread as there are a lot of experienced contributors who are not seeing anything worth a QC fail. 

 

If you want to take your photography to the next level above editing in Apple Photos app, I would suggest taking out the Adobe Photography Plan subscription for about £10 a month. It's a bit of a steep learning curve initially if you have never used Lightroomand/or Photoshop but well worth it. As well, your 14" MacBook Pro has an XDR screen and is one of the few machines capable of the new and revolutionary HDR editing (not to be confused with HDR merging) which is really worth a look as the future of digital photography (some years away but it's coming).  You need the Adobe software to do HDR editing .

 

See the following links to learn more. 

 

Adobe HDR editing

Greg Benz

 

[Cal]

Looks mostly fine to me, with a small "but". There appears to be a "hint" of posterisation in the sky (unless it's just my eyes) - I find blue skies are VERY susceptible to this once you export to JPG because they simply lack the bandwidth to display it properly. I find this is especially true if the saturation has been bumped which it looks like it may have been here.

 

Counterintuitively, one way to combat posterisation/banding in blue skies on export is to actually add a small amount of artificial noise. This allows a gradient to more easily form and can overcome the limitations of 8 bit. Alamy aren't too obsessive about noise - I have been recently submitting scans from 35mm film which isn't known for its lack of grain and they pass. The takeaway from this is I'd try adding a very small amount (almost imperceptible) of fine noise in post and then possibly shrink the image as well to between 6 and 10 MP.