TRACHR Posted April 28, 2016 Share Posted April 28, 2016 Hi, I just joined alamy today so I apologize if I am asking this in the wrong location. I decided to become a contributor because I found a passion I didn't know I had, photography. I live on 10 acres and a couple foxes decided to set up a nest and have baby foxes. My fiance's parents loaned her a very nice lens for the camera they gave her awhile back, they are crazy about eagle photography so they have nice stuff, therefore me and my fiance have nice stuff, albeit 1 generation behind the camera her parents have. Anyway now that I found I love taking pictures I plan to do so a lot more now Now to the Question: They told me to take pictures in raw format which I was fine with because it gave us the best quality pictures. Now that I decided to contribute to alamy I have ran into a problem, I know I need to convert it to jpg so I am using photoshop for that. The problem is when I open the photo it's color is off from the original cr2 I originally looked at the cr2 photos in windows default photo program, the foxes in that program seem a little more red than the photoshop version. I have the photoshop conversion set to maxium quality but I seem to lose some color no matter what I do. Anyone know what I am doing wrong? The camra is a canon EOS Rebel T4i, doubt it matters but figured I would throw that in. The photoshop I am using is the current version as I installed the trial to mess with the photos, I plan on getting the photography plan from them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davey Towers Posted April 28, 2016 Share Posted April 28, 2016 Hi Trachr, firstly welcome to the Alamy family. I use a Canon 5DIII so I also have CR2 files as I shoot RAW. I use Lightroom to download my images from camera and Lightroom supports CR2 files. I save them as so. I do any editing on there and then edit in Photoshop. The CR2 files are automatically copied into TIFF files for Photoshop the when you save for web you change from TIFF to JPEG which Alamy uses. There shouldn't be any derogation of the image in so doing. I hope this helps. Regards, Davey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MDM Posted April 28, 2016 Share Posted April 28, 2016 Hi, I just joined alamy today so I apologize if I am asking this in the wrong location. I decided to become a contributor because I found a passion I didn't know I had, photography. I live on 10 acres and a couple foxes decided to set up a nest and have baby foxes. My fiance's parents loaned her a very nice lens for the camera they gave her awhile back, they are crazy about eagle photography so they have nice stuff, therefore me and my fiance have nice stuff, albeit 1 generation behind the camera her parents have. Anyway now that I found I love taking pictures I plan to do so a lot more now Now to the Question: They told me to take pictures in raw format which I was fine with because it gave us the best quality pictures. Now that I decided to contribute to alamy I have ran into a problem, I know I need to convert it to jpg so I am using photoshop for that. The problem is when I open the photo it's color is off from the original cr2 I originally looked at the cr2 photos in windows default photo program, the foxes in that program seem a little more red than the photoshop version. I have the photoshop conversion set to maxium quality but I seem to lose some color no matter what I do. Anyone know what I am doing wrong? The camra is a canon EOS Rebel T4i, doubt it matters but figured I would throw that in. The photoshop I am using is the current version as I installed the trial to mess with the photos, I plan on getting the photography plan from them. You have arrived at an amazing stage in your life - you have discovered a passion for photography and you could find it becomes a major and very fulfilling part of your life. But you are trying to fly before you can crawl. You need to learn photography first - it's not astrophysics but it does require some learning. Alamy is a professional agency - you don't have to be a professional photographer to submit images but you need to be able to submit images of a professional standard. I suggest taking some time to learn the rudiments before you even consider submitting images here and there are lots of resources and interactive websites for doing that. When you have reached a basic professional skill level, then you can think about sellling pictures. I'm saying this in the nicest possible way by the way. And I wish you lots of luck. Photography can be life consuming. The problem you are describing is related to colour management and is one of the more complex areas of digital photography but fortunately is easily overcome - use Lightroom instead of Photoshop for starters (much simpler colour management) and, if opening into Photoshop, make sure your working space is set to Adobe RGb or ProPhoto RGB. And you will need to calibrate your monitor either in software or hardware for consistent colour. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Limb Posted April 28, 2016 Share Posted April 28, 2016 Colour issues? Have you done a full calibration on your monitor? Essential when working in RAW in my mind, as you can be constantly changing the colour balance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted April 28, 2016 Share Posted April 28, 2016 OP the colour space in Windows is very different from that in processing software. RAWs are uncorrected and unsharpened. You cannot possibly make any QC decisions based on it. Owning a camera makes you a camera owner, not a photographer. It was always true; it's even truer now, here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jill Morgan Posted April 28, 2016 Share Posted April 28, 2016 I use the same camera and always shoot RAW. Matt is right, be sure to colour calibrate your monitor before doing any adjustments to your images. My first lot of images all ended up too dark when on Alamy as I hadn't calibrated my monitor. Now they all are fine. For RAW images you should be doing your adjustments in either Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom. They use sliders that are so easy to adjust and change. I only use Photoshop if I need to do cloning or remove ugly things such as telephone wire from an image. Or when I am doing posters and flyers. And I use PS to save my image from a RAW to a jpg for Alamy. Good luck. Jill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRACHR Posted April 28, 2016 Author Share Posted April 28, 2016 I'll give lightroom a try, thanks for the advice. And thank you for being so, Welcoming. Despite what some of you may think, I did not call myself a professional photographer simply because I own a camera. I am well aware I have a lot to learn and I have done a lot of research into things already, whether I study for a month or 10 years I still would have a lot to learn and I am aware of that. I also do not plan on submitting just anything here so don't worry I wont pollute this site with poor pictures, nor do I think that alamy would allow that. Most sites I've looked at said adobe was the way to go for converting, I foolishly assumed that meant adobe photoshop, I apologize for that. I used to do a lot of website design and photoshop was my goto program, I was wrong in assuming that it would be for this as well. Anyway think you for your help and advice, I just found it odd that the colors changed so much on conversion on the same monitor, seems like it would of at least stayed close. Hopefully lightroom will keep it closer to the original. Thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MDM Posted April 28, 2016 Share Posted April 28, 2016 I'll give lightroom a try, thanks for the advice. And thank you for being so, Welcoming. Despite what some of you may think, I did not call myself a professional photographer simply because I own a camera. I am well aware I have a lot to learn and I have done a lot of research into things already, whether I study for a month or 10 years I still would have a lot to learn and I am aware of that. I also do not plan on submitting just anything here so don't worry I wont pollute this site with poor pictures, nor do I think that alamy would allow that. Most sites I've looked at said adobe was the way to go for converting, I foolishly assumed that meant adobe photoshop, I apologize for that. I used to do a lot of website design and photoshop was my goto program, I was wrong in assuming that it would be for this as well. Anyway think you for your help and advice, I just found it odd that the colors changed so much on conversion on the same monitor, seems like it would of at least stayed close. Hopefully lightroom will keep it closer to the original. Thanks again. It was the way you phrased the question that made me think you were a beginner but no insult was intended in any way. The colours are changing because you are moving from a non-color managed program (Windows viewer) to a color-managed program (Photoshop). That is the whole reason for using color management - what you see on your monitor should be what I see on my monitor. Lightroom will take care of this without you doing anything but you should also calibrate your monitor from the outset rather than realise way down the line that everything is out in terms of colour and/or brightness. Photoshop is still the ultimate in image editing but Lightroom has usurped it for many of the tasks that used to be exclusively in the domain of Photoshop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRACHR Posted April 28, 2016 Author Share Posted April 28, 2016 I figured I should introduce myself but didn't want to get into my life story... I spent most the winter taking photos to learn on that my fiance would tell me what I did wrong, I may be somewhat new and finding how fun this is but she comes from a family whose father has been doing this most her life. She however never did the computer work, only the camera work. Up to this point I would look at my raw files and print the raw files, I never had any reason to really convert them since I have a decent printer and I didn't really do any tweaking on the photos. I'll admit now that I am playing with lightroom I should of done a bit of tweaking all along. My good monitor suffered an accident a few weeks back... kids, ugh.... so until I get a new one I can't trust my monitors colors so I printed off some of the stuff. Just having it do its auto tone control made the picture look completely different, I really like the original but it does look darker, now I honestly am not sure which I like more I probably am really attached to this last bunch because I must of spent half a day sitting and letting the foxes get used to me so I could get some up close pictures of them playing and whatnot, but if I decide to submit one or 2 of them should I do tone control and make them brighter or leave them as is? I read somewhere on here that it is best to leave a lot of the editing to whomever wants the pictures. The argument against that I suppose is that they need to look good enough to draw interest so I guess that will be a fine line that everyone has to walk. I assume that due to my using my older monitor that what I print is close to what it actually looks like if I had a better monitor atm. I do have a nice printer so other than the astounding cost of ink I don't have to worry too much about it. Thanks again for your advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MDM Posted April 28, 2016 Share Posted April 28, 2016 I still suggest you just relax in terms of submitting to Alamy and really enjoy the photography journey. Unless you get some really exceptional fox pictures, you are unlikely to sell them here given the sort of competition there is and, even if you do, the momney you would get is not likely to be life-changing. If you want to post some fox pictures for comment, then you could always use Photobucket or the like - they need to be posted at full size for any meaningful appraisal. Talking of foxes and this is strange, I had a fox walk up my garden on Sunday last, have a look and a sniff around, eye up some pigeons and then depart. It was a really beautiful animal and very close for a minute or so. My first thought was to get my camera but it would have been gone before I had a tele lens on it. It didn't see me. I live in suburbia and I have never before seen a fox in this city. It was a remarkable experience. Oh and I'm sick of Foxes - I'm a Spurs fan - somebody will understand this I'm sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRACHR Posted April 28, 2016 Author Share Posted April 28, 2016 This is actually my future father in laws idea, he is very accomplished but with eagles and the like, hes been published to a bunch of magazines which I cant remember. 3 or 4 of my pictures he said are better than hes seen in a very long time Mainly because I was probably 10-15 ft from the foxes and they could care less about me. The mother walked to about 10 ft of me and just sat down, and the babies started playing. It was amazing, 6 foxes that close to me, 5 babies and 1 mother. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted April 29, 2016 Share Posted April 29, 2016 Good for you. I have some charming images of foxes taken in my garden too, but I haven't submitted them because there are already 25,731 images of foxes on Alamy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 29, 2016 Share Posted April 29, 2016 I would suggest spending some time on Julieanne's site - offical Adobe training. All aspects of PS and LR are in there on video. http://blogs.adobe.com/jkost/photoshop-training-videos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jill Morgan Posted April 29, 2016 Share Posted April 29, 2016 Good for you. I have some charming images of foxes taken in my garden too, but I haven't submitted them because there are already 25,731 images of foxes on Alamy. Always remember that it doesn't matter how many images there are of the foxes. If you have a decent ranking your images will show up in the first few pages. How many follow your doesn't matter. I've sold the CN tower a couple of times and there are thousands of it. Jill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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