Steve Teare Posted March 10, 2017 Share Posted March 10, 2017 Hi everyone, I'm a newbie to Alamy and this is my first post here. However I'm not asking a question, as such, but recounting something I discovered. I did look for a solution here (on this forum) but didn't find it, so maybe this post will be helpful to someone that has a similar issue to my own. So - my starting point is that I had noticed that looking at my images on Alamy as a client would, they seemed to have an over-saturated look to them that was not representative of the colour balance as I had set it in Photoshop/ACR. By way of background, I shoot to Nikon raw (.nef) with an sRGB colour space, do any colour balance adjustment in ACR and export to jpeg using the 'Export as' dialog in Photoshop CC. What I was doing: In the 'Export as' dialog I was selecting 'Embed Color Profile'. I was leaving 'Convert to sRGB' de-selected because my files were already sRGB and my view is that converting something to something it already is is a recipe for degrading it. I embedded the color profile because I noticed that the preview shown didn't look right (it looked over-saturated) unless I did. Anyway - I emailed the contributor support email, who I have to say, have been consistently and remarkably helpful and swift in response. I was told that their upload process ignores any embedded ICC profile, which is something worth knowing. They also told me that there was no need to 'Convert to sRGB'. However - I had, in the interim, done some tests of my own. What I discovered is that, if I have 'Embed Color Profile' de-selected, then selecting 'Convert to sRGB' resulted in output jpegs whose colours matched the Photoshop/raw file, whereas having 'Convert to sRGB' de-selected resulted in over-saturated jpegs, like the ones I was seeing on Alamy. ...so I am going to re-upload my images. Luckily there's not many of them! If you think I have something wrong here - feel free to tell me! Or if there is a better way of working - same applies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M.Chapman Posted March 13, 2017 Share Posted March 13, 2017 I believe most Alamy contributors submit in AdobeRGB (I seem to recall Alamy used to recommend it). My submitted jpegs are AdobeRGB with profile embedded. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Betty LaRue Posted March 13, 2017 Share Posted March 13, 2017 I always submit Adobe RGB. I believe Alamy converts the thumbnails to sRGB so they will show well, but just nearly everyone I have ever read on this forum submits RGB. Take a look at mine, the link under my name, and see if they look oversaturated. Betty Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wiskerke Posted March 13, 2017 Share Posted March 13, 2017 Old but still valid: http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html wim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Nacke Posted March 14, 2017 Share Posted March 14, 2017 My entire workflow, for Alamy as well as others and all of my clients for commercial work is in aRGB. The only time I would finish a JPEG in sRGB would be if I was making the image to size for posting on the web. Almost any client, I.E. publication or web site can do their own conversion to sRGB once they have the full sized image reduced to size. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Teare Posted March 14, 2017 Author Share Posted March 14, 2017 Thanks for all the input. I used to work in aRGB but then switched to sRGB as my output was mostly for web. I somehow had the idea that Alamy preferred sRGB but support have told me they had no preference. They also told me they ignored embedded profiles and that was part of the point of my note, because I was relying on the embedded profile to get my colours right and, since that was getting stripped / ignored, they weren't (right). M. Chapman: Thanks - although support were clear that they ignored embedded profiles... Betty LaRue: Thanks, I never meant to imply that other peoples images were over-saturated, just that a process I had followed, expecting to get a good result, did not give me the result I expected. wiskerke: Thanks I'll give that a thorough read. Chuck Nacke: Thanks - seems pretty unanimous that aRGB is the way to go... Great to have your help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Betty LaRue Posted March 15, 2017 Share Posted March 15, 2017 Thanks for all the input. I used to work in aRGB but then switched to sRGB as my output was mostly for web. I somehow had the idea that Alamy preferred sRGB but support have told me they had no preference. They also told me they ignored embedded profiles and that was part of the point of my note, because I was relying on the embedded profile to get my colours right and, since that was getting stripped / ignored, they weren't (right). M. Chapman: Thanks - although support were clear that they ignored embedded profiles... Betty LaRue: Thanks, I never meant to imply that other peoples images were over-saturated, just that a process I had followed, expecting to get a good result, did not give me the result I expected. wiskerke: Thanks I'll give that a thorough read. Chuck Nacke: Thanks - seems pretty unanimous that aRGB is the way to go... Great to have your help! Sorry, I never meant I thought YOU thought others' images were oversaturated, I just wanted you to evaluate my RGB images to see that they weren't. Although if anyone cranks up the saturation when developing in RGB, one can see some quite gaudy results. I wish you success. Betty Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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