Any tips to improve CTR rate and ranking for newbies?

[MandyD]

hi everyone, just as the title suggests.

[Allan Bell]

 

Hi Mandy, Can I start with some good news. You have some good, well processed images in your port. BUT you also have a lot of images which to me appear to be too dark and in need of re-processing. Generally these darker images will not be seen easily by buyers and they will be passed over.

Also there are a lot of similars, particularly later images, which drags your CTR down.

 

Sorry to be so negative but if you wish to compete with others here you need to raise your game.

 

Remove as many similars as possible. Re-process darker/dull/flat images and you will be getting there. (Eg: look at your image KXA8RC Appia Way Park Rome then look at F076TD from another contributor to see the sort of bright/colourful image you are aiming for.)

 

I have not looked into your tagging maybe others will help out with this.

 

Allan

 

 

[MandyD]

1 minute ago, Allan Bell said:

 

Hi Mandy, Can I start with some good news. You have some good, well processed images in your port. BUT you also have a lot of images which to me appear to be too dark and in need of re-processing. Generally these darker images will not be seen easily by buyers and they will be passed over.

Also there are a lot of similars, particularly later images, which drags your CTR down.

 

Sorry to be so negative but if you wish to compete with others here you need to raise your game.

 

Remove as many similars as possible. Re-process darker/dull/flat images and you will be getting there. (Eg: look at your image KXA8RC Appia Way Park Rome then look at F076TD from another contributor to see the sort of bright/colourful image you are aiming for.)

 

I have not looked into your tagging maybe others will help out with this.

 

Allan

 

 

 

Thanks, I was wondering about that myself. When I edit my photos at home they look right, but then when I upload them at work (way faster wifi), they look abit on the dark side. I have also been going through and deleting alot of the similiar ones as I build up my numbers...you will see culling of the old stuff as newer sets appear. I was editing last night and find myself being more selective now already. This forum is great and very constructive so far. I hope to have good news to share with the rest of you soon as well. This year I am just going to focus on building up my portfolio...I have 200,000 frames in my archive, so that's my focus. I will definitely start picking through my existing ones at lunches and making a list on which ones need to be lightened up. I am also focusing on the right tags rather then "good discoverablity", I want to be in the right searches, not every search.

[M.Chapman]

5 minutes ago, MandyD said:

hi everyone, just as the title suggests.

 

Avoid too many similars. (They will hurt your Alamy rank)

 

You may want to look at selective lightening of some of your images or not including them in your portfolio. For example M4X862 and others taken on the same dull day in Tivoli. If you apply some masking and lightening in LR or PSE to the buildings, the pictures will become more saleable (depending on any other contributors images you may be competing with). Try to ensure the main subject of the picture has a good tonal range. For tourist attraction shots, good weather, sunshine and blue skies help.

 

If you're finding yor images look significantly lighter/darker on different monitors get your display(s) calibrated. Alternatively compare your images on Alamy with those of contributors who come high up in the search results to see the difference and make adjustments accordingly.

 

Mark

 

 

 

 

[MandyD]

6 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

 

Avoid too many similars. (They will hurt your Alamy rank)

 

You may want to look at selective lightening of some of your images or not including them in your portfolio. For example M4X862 and others taken on the same dull day in Tivoli. If you apply some masking and lightening in LR or PSE to the buildings, the pictures will become more saleable (depending on any other contributors images you may be competing with). Try to ensure the main subject of the picture has a good tonal range. For tourist attraction shots, good weather, sunshine and blue skies help.

 

If you're finding yor images look significantly lighter/darker on different monitors get your display(s) calibrated. Alternatively compare your images on Alamy with those of contributors who come high up in the search results to see the difference and make adjustments accordingly.

 

Mark

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks, and what I thought at this point...and since I am just getting started, easier to learn this now. I am looking through the ones I just need to keytag on my work monitor and they all look way too dark....so back in the editing queue they go

[Rico]

Also, calibrate your monitor with something like Spyder5Elite. Make sure your monitor is warmed up for at least 30 minutes before you start editing.

It worked for me

[MandyD]

So now I have 385 files pending deletion including 59 to re-edit due to darkness. It's the engineer in me...I'm process oriented. Would rather nail it down at the start! Thanks guys.

[MandyD]

Just now, Rico said:

Also, calibrate your monitor with something like Spyder5Elite. Make sure your monitor is warmed up for at least 30 minutes before you start editing.

It worked for me

 

Thanks, I am going to look into my stuff at home for sure. Reviewing everything in my office here and I just deleted a bunch (similiars and too dark) and pulled a bunch to re - edit....also went through what I have in the work flow and made some changes there too....thank goodness for portable hard drives.

[Colin Woods]

1 hour ago, MandyD said:

When I edit my photos at home they look right, but then when I upload them at work (way faster wifi), they look abit on the dark side.

 

Get that monitor calibrated straight away. And keep mining this forum for info, people here are very open and generous with their information.

[MandyD]

24 minutes ago, Colin Woods said:

 

Get that monitor calibrated straight away. And keep mining this forum for info, people here are very open and generous with their information.

 

Yes I am seeing that for sure! I love Quebec City...was there in March of 2016...it was grey the entire time..most of my photos looks like they are in black and white from that trip.

[Colin Woods]

March is a bit variable with the weather. Come back in August or September. Blue skies, and sunny with the occasional spectacular storm.

Yes it rained, in the happy circumstance of us being under cover drinking a beer watching people getting drenched as if from a hose.

[MDM]

It may not just be that you have your monitor set too bright although that is likely but I'm guessing you are also underexposing a lot of your shots, in some cases because you are allowing the sky to influence your metering. 

[MandyD]

1 hour ago, MDM said:

It may not just be that you have your monitor set too bright although that is likely but I'm guessing you are also underexposing a lot of your shots, in some cases because you are allowing the sky to influence your metering. 

I took a look of my originals on my work monitor....some are for sure, but not these ones. I am going to calibrate and see what happens.

[MDM]

8 hours ago, MDM said:

It may not just be that you have your monitor set too bright although that is likely but I'm guessing you are also underexposing a lot of your shots, in some cases because you are allowing the sky to influence your metering. 

 

7 hours ago, MandyD said:

I took a look of my originals on my work monitor....some are for sure, but not these ones. I am going to calibrate and see what happens.

 

First thing to do is to check the RAW histograms (you are shooting raw?). These will tell you all you need to know about exposure as they are independent of the monitor. Post a few raws on dropbox if you want an informed opinion as it is impossible to tell how much you have processed your Alamy jpegs. Because of the inconsistency in brightness levels between a lot of your images, I am guessing underexposure is a major problem in many images. Otherwise why would you have some looking normal and others very dark on the same monitor? Also it is clear in some images that you are allowing the sky to influence your exposures as the sky looks more or less ok if a little dark in some and the land way too dark. 

[Rico]

16 minutes ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

You don't need to calibrate your monitor, as has been said, drop the brightness on your monitor (I have mine set at 40%) and check your histogram, simple and cheap!

If the monitor appears too dark after lowering the brightness, go out of the room and come back an hour later, your eyes would have adapted by then.

I have to respectively disagree. Like Geoff said, there is a lot more to it than just monitor brightness.

Here is a good link to see what your monitor looks like, compared to industry standards.

https://www.imaging-resource.com/ARTS/MONCAL/CALIBRATE.HTM

Rick

[Reimar]

I'm pretty sure a monitor "factory calibrated" to 100% sRGB just means the monitor can theoretically reproduce all the colors in the sRGB gamut.  That is not the same as color calibration.  The color balance may still be off out of the box and will certainly change over time.  Regular (monthly) use of a hardware calibrator is essential for accurate results. 

[MDM]

 

 

 

1 hour ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

 

5 hours ago, MDM said:

I am going to calibrate and see what happens.

 

 

You don't need to calibrate your monitor, as has been said, drop the brightness on your monitor (I have mine set at 40%) and check your histogram, simple and cheap!

If the monitor appears too dark after lowering the brightness, go out of the room and come back an hour later, your eyes would have adapted by then.

 

 

54 minutes ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

Maybe you have misunderstood me, I fully expect anyone to be uploading images to Alamy to have a half decent monitor, my one for example comes factory calibrated to 99% aRGB  and  100% to sRGB standards. But the brightness was set way too high. 

 

 

You have misquoted me up there. It was Mandy who said that not me. Perhaps you could correct the quote please.

 

And of course you have to calibrate and profile your monitor for colour and luminance. You clearly don't understand the concept of colour management at all yet you are talking as if you are an expert. The idea is that what you see on your monitor will be what I see on my monitor if you send me a file generated by a fully colour managed workflow. In practice this ideal is never really reached but it is far better than doing nothing.

 

You are talking it seems about the colour gamut of the monitor in your second post. The manufacturers provide a generic monitor profile which you need to load on startup - depends on the OS you are using how this is done. That deals with the colour but it is usually out and it is far better to perform hardware calibration and profiling yourself at a specific luminance. As you found out most monitors are set far too bright as well.

 

The best way to learn about colour management is to do your own printing on a decent inkjet printer (and get a good book on the subject). Then you would realise how important it is and stop telling people that it is unnecessary which is so from the truth.

 

 

 

 

[MDM]

6 minutes ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

I didn't say was an expert, clearly you are.

 

I didn't say you were an expert either but you were giving some seriously bad advice saying that you "You don't need to calibrate your monitor" which I feel needs to be corrected. I'm not an expert in that I could not stand examination of colour management theory by a real expert but I know how to use it in practice from years of experience. As I said if you ever tried to print your own images, then you would see the real need for full colour management from monitor calibration to printer profiling. If all you ever do is see your images on a screen or have them printed in a lab that does colour correction, then you may never realise how important it is.

 

23 minutes ago, GS-Images said:

 

I admit I was surprised that you wrote that when I read the quote! That's a compliment, if it isn't obvious.     I fully agree with all you wrote.

 

Geoff.

 

Thanks. I was surprised to see myself saying such a thing .

[Reimar]

Here is another site that gives an assessment of LCD monitor quality:

 

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

 

WARNING: Both the above site, and the one recommended by Rico, will not work if you have a high rez monitor set to a display size >100%.  I have my 32" 4K monitor set to 150% in order to be able to read text.  For example, with this 150% setting, the gamma test in Rico's link is wrong.  The center block is too dark.  Only when I temporarily reset the display to 100% will this test show that my monitor gamma is indeed exactly 2.2 as specified during calibration.

[MDM]

17 minutes ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

Look the only serious problem the OP has is underexposing images, a quick fix is to lower the brightness on the monitor!!! 

And I have been printing my own images just fine for years thanks.

And what I see is what I get

You can't tell too much from looking at Alamy images about the colour of the OP's images but that doesn't mean they shouldn't do monitor calibration. Clearly the main issue here is luminance although I still think exposure is a major problem for the OP.

 

As for printing without colour management well if that is true then it looks like you have found the Goldilocks Zone. What good luck or perhaps you are missing something. One man's just fine is another man's xxxx (whatever noun you like).

[MDM]

7 minutes ago, GS-Images said:

 

Maybe you're just lucky that your monitor and computer match well. The OP may not be so lucky. Simply adjusting brightness is not the way to do it. You can do things however you like of course, but it's not good to give others that advice when it is wrong. I'm speaking as someone who knows about electronics calibration (as an ex Electronics Calibration Engineer) and who fully understands tolerances, how electronics work together, why they vary and drift, as well as understanding photography (but I don't know much about colour profiles).

 

Geoff.

 

Profiles are just files that describe a particular device so that the calibration is standardised across devices. I don't think you need to understand the profiles (I don't), just how to use them in practice and how to set the colour space for the raw conversion and Photoshop Colour Prefs for PS users. Lightroom makes things very simple as it does its colour management behind the scenes. If printing you need to use a printer profile for the particular paper and printer. All the major paper manufacturers provide generic profiles and many (e.g. Permajet) also offer a free printer profiling. 

[MandyD]

Thanks guys...definitely a monitor issue, but some exposure problems as well. I have a big archive of all my frames so I can go back and look to see in my original RAW files when I started "going dark," when I switched cameras, monitors, etc....made some tweaks and am definitely learning, which is what I am trying to achieve here. Just interested to see what I can do and to do something with my photos other then have them sit on a hard drive somewhere. Have started to look at which searches I appear in, and deleting some keytags. Went through and culled alot of similars and am being more selective in what I am posting. Went from 37 good shots from my snowboarding set down to 4, etc. I'm here to learn and just to see what happens. This year is about me building my portfolio, and hopefully I will get a few sales from that as well to fund some travel here and there and the odd new lens.

 

As well, I am not an experienced editor, and this is all very new to me. I am an engineer working as a lawyer...my creativity has been pounded down to nothing and stuffed in a tiny box  . I'm here to learn, and I may not have the best equipment for it...all part of learning and evolving.

[MDM]

8 minutes ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

That's just common sense surely!? 

I have profiles for all of my papers when using my canon pro series printer 

 

I agree. No need for the puzzled look. Colour management is common sense. So surely then it is common sense to also calibrate your monitor as the first part of that workflow and certainly not advise people that it is unnecessary to do so which is why I disagreed with you in the first place. Looks like this is going to be never ending. 

 

 

[MDM]

25 minutes ago, MandyD said:

Thanks guys...definitely a monitor issue, but some exposure problems as well. I have a big archive of all my frames so I can go back and look to see in my original RAW files when I started "going dark," when I switched cameras, monitors, etc....made some tweaks and am definitely learning, which is what I am trying to achieve here. Just interested to see what I can do and to do something with my photos other then have them sit on a hard drive somewhere. Have started to look at which searches I appear in, and deleting some keytags. Went through and culled alot of similars and am being more selective in what I am posting. Went from 37 good shots from my snowboarding set down to 4, etc. I'm here to learn and just to see what happens. This year is about me building my portfolio, and hopefully I will get a few sales from that as well to fund some travel here and there and the odd new lens.

 

As well, I am not an experienced editor, and this is all very new to me. I am an engineer working as a lawyer...my creativity has been pounded down to nothing and stuffed in a tiny box  . I'm here to learn, and I may not have the best equipment for it...all part of learning and evolving.

 

Great attitude. Enjoy the journey.

[MandyD]

36 minutes ago, MDM said:

 

Great attitude. Enjoy the journey.

thanks..have to say, I really like looking at everyone's work...gives me lots of ideas. Starting to see Alamy pop up here on alot more local things. Never really saw that or noticed before. I really do enjoy the process and learning...I am just a nerd like that .