Batch sizes

[Jill Morgan]

I was wondering if any of you have a general rule on the size of the batches you send at once.

 

Do you send a whole shoot at once, or do you limit each batch upload to x number of photos?

 

 

[Martin P Wilson]

I upload as soon as I have a few ready (Usually 1-15) from an edit session - usually determined by need for a cup of tea or other break ( I do a process & upload run when I need a breather). I may have multiple such batches queued.

 

I will sometime hang fire on uploading if:

• I have some experimental images that I am not sure about how QC will respond (that siad I have not had a failure in 2 years or more)
• I have changed my processing software or changed my workflow (often go hand in hand) and need QC reassurance I have not broken my own quality control
• I am frustrated with Alamy and not sure if I can be  bothered

[JJ Gutierrez]

I have uploaded from one or two images to close to a hundred at once, it all depends.  I try to upload images in a certain way that lets me keyword them in batches, sometimes I succeed and sometimes dont.

[Stokie]

Lowest 7 Highest 63.

 

To be precise!

 

John.

[Robert M Estall]

depends quite a bit on your broadband connection. Speed and consistency are both issues. If you are out in a rural area like my Suffolk village I get a speed test count of about 375  upload direction (as opposed to 6500 download) and the ride is a little bumpy sometimes, so I opt for batches of 15 to 20. If you had fibre optic I guess batches of 50 would be OK. I've heard some doing 100 at a time.

 

Try it & see how it pans out. Dealing with  a corrupted upload file is easier to deal with on a modest batch. reported experiences vary

[Phil Robinson]

I tend to do 10 minimum, 30 max. Uploading 30 corresponds roughly to the time needed to get from unground coffee beans to a finished cup.

If I'm editing loads I will upload a small batch first to get my foot in the QC queue (QCQ?). Assuming you have to wait 24 hrs for them to pass, rather than leaving it three days and uploading 200 all at once, it's better to start the process and keep uploading smallish batches, as when the first lot pass (hopefully) all later submissions awaiting QC will go through with them, even if they were only uploaded a few minutes ago.

[dov makabaw]

Last month I uploaded one batch of 304 and one of 434. Went through QC without problem.

 

IMO it is better to upload each shoot in total subject to your workflow needs. I have had the impression that Alamy QC check a proportion of each batch. Thus the smaller the batch the larger the likely sample. This is just my impression as my images always seem to sail through QC once I got the hang of it.

 

I tend to upload in the evening or overnight to minimise the disruption.

 

Hope that helps - good luck

 

dov

[John Morrison]

To ensure a speedy throughput of images, I generally have a few pix queued up for Alamy upload. As soon as a batched is QC'd, I try to upload a few... just to 'keep my place in the queue'. 

 

Apart from that, I upload pix as soon as I have a few ready... which may be  one, two, three... or 100.

[losdemas]

To date, anywhere between 1 & 40 at a time.  Martin's comments above go for me too!

[Duncan_Andison]

I normally upload 3-6 times a month ranging from 50 - 350 a time. I normally hold back until I have at least 150 to send. 

[spacecadet]

A camera folder at a time, usually. Biggest ever 120 but none over about 50 this year. Depends where I've been.

My spreadsheet says average submission  26, median 21

Upload time isn't significant since we got fibre. About 8 files/minute.

[John Mitchell]

This summer I've been uploading a batch of 20-30 new images every week. I'm slow and so is my Internet connection. The largest batch that I've ever uploaded at one time was probably about 35 files.

[Bryan]

Not sure that it matters how many you upload at a time. I will often make additional uploads while waiting for a previous batch to be processed. As often as not they all appear ready for my attention at the same time.

 

As has been suggested, you can get some limited efficiency improvement in key wording if you upload all from a particular shoot at one time.

[Jill Morgan]

Thanks for the input. I have done small batches so far (12 more are ready to hit sale and 2 batches (total 18) are in that 24 hour processing grind. My broadband upload speed is on the slow side, so I don't want to do too many at once in case of upload errors.  Had one upload error in my last batch that cleared.

[CandyAppleRed Images]

Checking back I have not had an upload error now since May 2011, about 55 submissions. Not sure if that is luck or decent broadband! I just make sure that the browser session is completely separate from anything else I am doing on the internet so that I don't close it by mistake (the once I did this accounts for the batch of 1 below  )

 

Again sizes vary and are between 1 and 57, with an average of around 30. I do try and keep them largely to the same shoot if I can for ease of bulk keywording, but usually a few strays end up in there as well.

[Richard Baker]

I don't think in terms of a 'batch' because I upload whenever I have anything I think could potentially sell immediately - loathing the idea that material remains on my hard drive and not in someone's Basket. So an upload can be anything from 1 to, as with our recent holiday, 100+ at any one time.

 

Rgds,

Richard.