Failed submissions - non-discrimination

[spacecadet]

High-res scans can pass QC but they usually need a lot of spotting work, I'm told.

However, as we've mentioned, if your images are unusual or unrepeatable, as opposed to just old, Alamy may grant access to the archival route which bypasses QC.

 

[Darkstar]

On ‎19‎/‎11‎/‎2017 at 08:20, Colblimp said:

 

1) File name doesn't matter, only captions and tags are important.

 

2) You can delete any image you want to but it takes 180 days to disappear off the system.

 

3) No.  Submitting the same image 5 times but in different colours would be classed as too many similars.

 

4) No.  You can add all the keywords to the same image, they'll still be searchable under the 'plant botany' and 'philosophy' subjects.

 

HI Colblimp - one quick question on Item 3. Say I have uploaded 100 shots in colour - can I upload the same shots in black and white after processing through Lightroom (book arrived today)? or will they say that they are duplicates?

 

cheers

 

David

[mickfly]

36 minutes ago, Darkstar said:

 

HI Colblimp - one quick question on Item 3. Say I have uploaded 100 shots in colour - can I upload the same shots in black and white after processing through Lightroom (book arrived today)? or will they say that they are duplicates?

 

cheers

 

David

The client can convert to mono, and any other way they like. It seems there are very few non archive sales of B/W.

 

[spacecadet]

There's no check on similars across subs.

[hdh]

but too many similars may also hurt your ranking, aka CTR 

[MDM]

21 minutes ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

Have we got some new people doing QC?

Just had my first failure for: Poor exposure

Image is of hundreds of starlings sitting on a telephone line in fading winter light

My file correctly exposed slightly to the right (as I always do)

 

Disappointed

 

Perhaps post a high res version of the image (Dropbox is a good place). I think it would be interesting to start a separate thread for failed images especially if the goalposts have moved recently. It is not clear that that is the case although it did seem like there were a few odd failures some weeks ago. However, the last person who reported a surprise failure (over CA) actually got a response on here stating that they had re-examined the image and it did indeed have failure-inducing CA.

 

 

[Alamy]

1 hour ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

Have we got some new people doing QC?

Just had my first failure for: Poor exposure

Image is of hundreds of starlings sitting on a telephone line in fading winter light

My file correctly exposed slightly to the right (as I always do)

 

Disappointed

 

We've responded to your email with a screen grab of the histogram showing very clearly an error in the exposure.

 

The goalposts certainly have not been moved - it would make no sense for us to do this without informing our contributors.

 

We hope the clarification via email proves useful and helps with future submissions.

 

Cheers

 

Alamy

[Southmind]

2 hours ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

Have we got some new people doing QC?

Just had my first failure for: Poor exposure

Image is of hundreds of starlings sitting on a telephone line in fading winter light

My file correctly exposed slightly to the right (as I always do)

 

Disappointed

 

As it is your first failure, did you think to calibrate your monitor ?  

[mickfly]

Could you post the histogram, please?

 

[MDM]

43 minutes ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

All you need to know is that a white point of less than 243 will fail QC, hope that helps

 

Not really. There are an awful lot of images on Alamy where the white point is a lot lower than 243 so it would be interesting to see your picture. Needless to say, there are an awful lot of images where the tonal range in the scene does not cover the range from black to white.

 

It's great that Alamy are actually responding to the claims of incorrect failure in this thread so it would be really good if the contributors who made the claims actually posted the failed images. I don't see why this should be a problem at all as it would be very helpful to others.

[Alex Ramsay]

On 11/20/2017 at 07:30, Darkstar said:

HI again

 

Yes you have once more identified things I could do to improve - all good advice. My original strategy was to get 500 fully searchable shots online to have some sort of presence and then refine them as you are suggesting. Some of my shots do have the animal and Latin classification name and others I still have to do. I will work through them over time.

 

I have been lucky to travel all over the shop as you say, but my Achilles Heel has been the cameras. The Sony is unacceptable to Alamy, the Canon is a little better and the Nikon is fine. The Mamiya 6x7 is 'slides only' so even if I had each of them scanned, Alamy would not accept them presumably because the Mamiya is a non-DLSR medium format camera and the pixels would therefore be artificially generated by a line scanner?

 

I do have an electronic slide scanner and thousands of slides - for example the Oman stuff is all Kodak slides from a non-digital camera (Yashica) but Alamy proscription would make them upload non grata!

 

Anecdote:

 

I do have one awful claim to fame. I ran a print and packshot studio for commercial leaflets, posters for several years with umbrella lights and a PMT camera for knock-downs. I used AppleMacs and Quark Xpress and did national exhibition typesetting demos for Apple. I was one of the first people in UK to have a laser printer (it cost me £4,400 at the time!!!)  I also did some portrait work (Bay City Rollers (ha!). A man came into the studio and explained that he had developed a special disposal garment for NHS surgeons - head to toe cover - and that the Americans were interested too. Could I please do the packshots for him so that he could show them to the Americans. I did all the work, he paid me. Then I read that he had been found murdered face down in a swamp in Florida! He had been conned by gangsters big time.

 

How about all of you - do you have any dodgy (but true) stories  like that?

 

cheers and all the best

 

David

 

 

I have a lot of scans from an RB67 on Alamy, not generally a problem though depending on your scanner and software you may have to look out for 'pepper grain'

 

Alex

[John Mitchell]

4 hours ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

Image is of hundreds of starlings sitting on a telephone line in fading winter light

My file correctly exposed slightly to the right (as I always do)

 

 

 

I have images that sound similar to this that I don't bother submitting because when I set the points to Alamy specs, it completely destroys the look of the image.

[Rick Lewis]

8 hours ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

All you need to know is that a white point of less than 243 will fail QC, hope that helps

 

O.K., I admit this might be a really dumb question, as I admit to being terribly handicapped with anything technical, but, how does one check the White Point Value (number) in Lightroom CC Classic? 

 

That is what I use 99.8% of the time to fully edit my images and I have no idea how to get that value.

 

Rick

[Darkstar]

Now that I am taking notice of images online to see who shot them or stocked them,  It seems that different photo agencies have very different standards.  Have a look at this shot if you scroll down in the main article to the image of an explosion of autumn leaves near a post box. There is some rubbish in the leaf pile and also the whole shot seems out of focus. Does anyone know who PA is? I wonder if Alamy would have failed this shot?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42069508

 

cheers

 

David

[Martin Carlsson]

4 hours ago, Rick Lewis said:

 

O.K., I admit this might be a really dumb question, as I admit to being terribly handicapped with anything technical, but, how does one check the White Point Value (number) in Lightroom CC Classic? 

 

That is what I use 99.8% of the time to fully edit my images and I have no idea how to get that value.

 

Rick

 

AFAIK there isn't the same range system (0-255) in LR, but it is instead using a percentage system. You can hover over any point and you get the % of the three RGB channels for that point under the histogram i.e. pure black will be 0% on all three channels and pure white will be 100% on all three channels. You can also switch on/off shadow/highlight clipping on the triangles in the top left and top right of the histogram.

[hdh]

1 hour ago, Darkstar said:

Now that I am taking notice of images online to see who shot them or stocked them,  It seems that different photo agencies have very different standards.  Have a look at this shot if you scroll down in the main article to the image of an explosion of autumn leaves near a post box. There is some rubbish in the leaf pile and also the whole shot seems out of focus. Does anyone know who PA is? I wonder if Alamy would have failed this shot?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42069508

 

cheers

 

David

That one is coming from Getty - it also has focus on the foreground leaves.

Dont know how it looks in 100% but most probably the shot will have passed Alamy QC. 

[MDM]

7 hours ago, Rick Lewis said:

 

O.K., I admit this might be a really dumb question, as I admit to being terribly handicapped with anything technical, but, how does one check the White Point Value (number) in Lightroom CC Classic? 

 

That is what I use 99.8% of the time to fully edit my images and I have no idea how to get that value.

 

Rick

 

2 hours ago, Martin Carlsson said:

 

AFAIK there isn't the same range system (0-255) in LR, but it is instead using a percentage system. You can hover over any point and you get the % of the three RGB channels for that point under the histogram i.e. pure black will be 0% on all three channels and pure white will be 100% on all three channels. You can also switch on/off shadow/highlight clipping on the triangles in the top left and top right of the histogram.

 

First of all I don't think there is a need to have a precise white point of 243, 243, 243 or anything else when submitting pics to Alamy. I think this is just an approximation and a way of saying that processed images should have a good tonal range and be properly exposed (whatever that means precisely). For one thing, many images do not have a full tonal range in the scene in any case. I think an image would have to be pretty dark and flat before it would be failed for incorrect exposure. 

 

In relation to Lightroom, you can and should use the histogram to get a visual clue about the tonal range in an image. What a lot of people don't realise is that you can manipulate different areas of an image by dragging different parts of the histogram. So if you click in the far right, you can drag out the white point. You can also use highlight and shadow clipping (the little triangles at the top corners of the histogram as a visual clue of what is being clipped in the image and you get further clues by holding down the alt key when dragging the sliders (excellent description in the aforementioned Martin Evening book).

 

If you want actual numbers, then use the eyedropper tool at the top left of the Basic box. This gives you percentage numbers (100 is white, 0 is black). If you hit the s key in the Develop module, you will go into soft proofing mode so you get the colour numbers in the standard form for specific output devices, different printers/papers or color spaces (AdobeRGB,  sRGB etc). This is an amazing part of Lightroom that seems to be very little used but is really worth exploring. For one thing, it shows what you are missing when you convert to sRGB or even AdobeRGB (Lightroom uses a much bigger color space than either).

 

But for the purpose of submitting to Alamy, a quick visual check of the histogram should be more than adequate.  Also the histogram is an excellent tool for determining if your monitor brightness is in the correct ballpark. If your image looks right on screen but the histogram is over to the left, then your monitor is set too bright (the most common error).

 

 

 

 

 

 

[imageplotter]

5 hours ago, Darkstar said:

Now that I am taking notice of images online to see who shot them or stocked them,  It seems that different photo agencies have very different standards.  Have a look at this shot if you scroll down in the main article to the image of an explosion of autumn leaves near a post box. There is some rubbish in the leaf pile and also the whole shot seems out of focus. Does anyone know who PA is? I wonder if Alamy would have failed this shot?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42069508

 

cheers

 

David

 

PA=Press Association, a large news agency/wire, so news image standards apply, which means they can have imperfections. Agree it's not a great image and was probably grabbed by someone needing content in a hurry.

[Rick Lewis]

5 hours ago, MDM said:

 

 

First of all I don't think there is a need to have a precise white point of 243, 243, 243 or anything else when submitting pics to Alamy. I think this is just an approximation and a way of saying that processed images should have a good tonal range and be properly exposed (whatever that means precisely). For one thing, many images do not have a full tonal range in the scene in any case. I think an image would have to be pretty dark and flat before it would be failed for incorrect exposure. 

 

In relation to Lightroom, you can and should use the histogram to get a visual clue about the tonal range in an image. What a lot of people don't realise is that you can manipulate different areas of an image by dragging different parts of the histogram. So if you click in the far right, you can drag out the white point. You can also use highlight and shadow clipping (the little triangles at the top corners of the histogram as a visual clue of what is being clipped in the image and you get further clues by holding down the alt key when dragging the sliders (excellent description in the aforementioned Martin Evening book).

 

If you want actual numbers, then use the eyedropper tool at the top left of the Basic box. This gives you percentage numbers (100 is white, 0 is black). If you hit the s key in the Develop module, you will go into soft proofing mode so you get the colour numbers in the standard form for specific output devices, different printers/papers or color spaces (AdobeRGB,  sRGB etc). This is an amazing part of Lightroom that seems to be very little used but is really worth exploring. For one thing, it shows what you are missing when you convert to sRGB or even AdobeRGB (Lightroom uses a much bigger color space than either).

 

But for the purpose of submitting to Alamy, a quick visual check of the histogram should be more than adequate.  Also the histogram is an excellent tool for determining if your monitor brightness is in the correct ballpark. If your image looks right on screen but the histogram is over to the left, then your monitor is set too bright (the most common error).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for all the info.  You are correct on your assumption that many don't know about some of the very basics of Lr.  I actually have given a beginners class in Lr use to our local camera club members.  I was amazed at how many people had no idea what they were doing and were actually afraid to use Lr.   I'm quite aware of the processing power, and how to adjust my images in Lr but was curious as to how we would even know the White Point value using Lr, (as apparently stated by Alamy in the failure response).  I just needed verification of my guess that one cannot come up with a specific value, other than the 0-100% value, in Lr.  I didn't think there was a way but, like I said, I'm not that technically savvy.  :-)  One thing I really love about Lr is how easy one can adjust images using the histogram as a guide.  I would be lost without it.

 

I think many contributors have not set the "gamma" (brightness) to 100 on their monitors, through calibration tools, as Alamy suggests.  This would solve many issues with dull images or images looking underexposed.  I have found the default brightness settings (gamma value) is very bright on new monitors.  Perhaps this is one issue the OP has/had.  Just a thought.

 

Rick

 

 

[Darkstar]

The above conversation is very helpful as I study (wade through) my Lightroom book. I understand that gamma calibration tools are quite expensive. Is there a trick for setting your monitor without paying a fortune?

[spacecadet]

I just use the internal calibration tool (win7). I checked it after a suggestion here that some of my images were a bit dark, and hey presto, fixed.

[Darkstar]

Awesome - done - thanks! It also calibrated text visibility and darkened down the white a shade.

[spacecadet]

1 minute ago, Darkstar said:

Awesome - done - thanks! It also calibrated text visibility and darkened down the white a shade.

FWIW most of your images, on page 1 at least, seem fine- maybe a few blown skies which won't recur now you've turned it down.

Remember to re-do it now and again, or if one of us suggests your images are a bit off!

[MDM]

1 hour ago, Darkstar said:

The above conversation is very helpful as I study (wade through) my Lightroom book. I understand that gamma calibration tools are quite expensive. Is there a trick for setting your monitor without paying a fortune?

 

Screen brightness is only one aspect of calibration. Colour is just as important and much more difficult to get right although you may never even be aware that your monitor colour is off if you don't print your own stuff. You can buy a basic hardware calibrator for £79 X-Rite Colormunki Smile and a very good one for £179 X-Rite i1 Display PRO. To me that is not at all expensive considering you are using a very expensive camera. To complete the colour calibration package, it is very well worth investing in a gray card which can be used to colour balance when taking a set of pictures and synchronising them in Lightroom later. I find my D800 cameras give consistently cool auto white balance which always needs correcting later.
 Now is the time to think about this just as you are learning and refining your technique, not way down the line when you find you have a lot of images that you wish you had colour corrected in the first place.
 

 

 

[MDM]

1 hour ago, spacecadet said:

I just use the internal calibration tool (win7). I checked it after a suggestion here that some of my images were a bit dark, and hey presto, fixed.

 

It is not possible to categorically state that your screen calibration is off as it could be your camera white balance but a lot of your recent images from Seville look incredibly yellow - something is definitely off there - a lot of them look like they were shot under tungsten lighting. Spanish people do not have yellow skin. A lot of other images on your first few pages also have very strong yellow casts. Believe me, a hardware calibrator and a gray card are well worth the small investment.