Alamy acceptance

gwocni

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Hi Guys

Just got my Alamy acceptance through. :) I just wondered if there were any pitfalls that I should be aware of that you may have come across or maybe some Dos and Don'ts so I can do it at least half right. :lol:

Thanks in advance
David.
 
Well done you - afraid I can't offer any comments apart from that! I gather they have very high standards - hope you sell loads!
 
Congrats. Gonna give us a link to your accepted pics?
 
Yea, will do when I can find them. :lol: :lol:

p.s. I'm sure I will already have posted them here anyhow!
 
Don't think I am at a high enough standard yet....maybe one day!

Any shots we can see that you sent?

I'm sure you, as I, have half a dozen shots at least of "high enough standard" to start with and then it doesn't really matter how long it takes to build on that does it? (I have stacks of crappy one's too though.:lol: )
 
Wow, congratulations.
It's always good being accepted for something. It makes all the hard work worth while. The next 'high' will be when you start selling with them.
 
Well done, as for advice.... do not send or upload too many shots at one time, wait for the first batch to be checked for quality control and then send more. If 1 image fails then they reject all the images waiting. Check all your imgs at 100% for dust or interloping artifarctals ( I think thats the technical term for them) and if you cant sort them then dont send them.
 
Congrats! :D It's great isn't it.

Gary, they don't have a blanket rejection policy anymore. They just reject the image if they find any, unless it becomes a recurring problem, or they find the same problem with more than one image (Or so their help thingies told me).
I think it's because they're gearing towards introducing AlamyUpload for everyone.
 
Thanks for the comments guys. It seems it takes a day or so to put the pix "up" so a little while longer to wait. :lol:
For those of you contemplating doing this just go ahead, my pix are definately ordinary..... They can only say no and besides if I can do it so can you. I would not have had (a) The ba11s (b) The technology (c) The nuance without this forum. As an absolutly new digitog (new word?) at the start of the year any and all info I have came from here directly or from links given here, I am genuinely grateful for that. Long may it last too coz the learning doesn't stop. :rules:

Thanks again
David.
 
Alamy havent been rejecting the full submission on finding faults (unless its your approval one) for over 1.5 years. I send a full DVD at a time with about 350 images on them, only had 51 rejected out of 35,000 ish. Of which all passed on resubmission, 90% of them being Alamy not being able to open the image, most of the time an Alamy problem, not mine.

Good advice is clean every image at 100%, dont submit images which are very soft / lacking definition, if using a MAC save in PC byte format.

I always sharpen a little on conversion from RAW to TIFF, to just give it a little, Do all your keywords and description fields before sending them in as it saves loads of time, and when Alamy have them up for you to licence its just a 2 min job not hours.
 
well done guys :thumbs:
 
The only thing that comes to mind that you wont have already found out is levels. I sent in a shot a while back that was of a mango growing on the tree. It was lovely and soft with nothing really close to back or white in the shot, just soft pastel tones across the whole frame. They rejected it because the levels hadn't been "pulled in" to the edges of the histogram. I changed it and re-submitted which they were fine with but the shot was pretty much ruined as all the soft tones were lost to high contrast.

They insist on no more than 5% between the edge of the histogram and black/white values.
 
The only thing that comes to mind that you wont have already found out is levels. I sent in a shot a while back that was of a mango growing on the tree. It was lovely and soft with nothing really close to back or white in the shot, just soft pastel tones across the whole frame. They rejected it because the levels hadn't been "pulled in" to the edges of the histogram. I changed it and re-submitted which they were fine with but the shot was pretty much ruined as all the soft tones were lost to high contrast.

They insist on no more than 5% between the edge of the histogram and black/white values.


Do they have that in writing anywhere?
Thats a particularly silly rule. Surely it's dependant on each individual image? OK I'll accept that *alot* of images wil consist of a range of tones that will have their peaks within the 5% tolerance at either end..but *every* image?
 
Do they have that in writing anywhere?

I didn't see it if they do.... and I printed off all the documents I could find relating to any aspect of becomming a contributor, so I could make sure I read them properly.
 
Do they have that in writing anywhere?
Thats a particularly silly rule. Surely it's dependant on each individual image? OK I'll accept that *alot* of images wil consist of a range of tones that will have their peaks within the 5% tolerance at either end..but *every* image?

Marcel Yes they do

" With very few exceptions, we expect the black point of your images to be 0 and white to be 255. However, we will accept images where they are within 5% of this, i.e. Black at level 12 or below, white at Level 243 or above. " Extract from Alamy Submission Criteria.

on Alamy site goto.

Home > Contributors > Prepare Images

Under "We reject Images for"

18. Poor Exposure.

Its very rare to get one rejected for this out of approx 35,000 i have had none rejected for this (only 51 rejected total)
 
Alamy havent been rejecting the full submission on finding faults (unless its your approval one) for over 1.5 years.

snip

Not sure if we are talking about the same thing, but quite a lot of editorial photographers on the EPUK list have said that recently their submissions are being rejected if just one image has some kind of fault.

Many of them are actively looking elsewhere for agents and some are considering using / already moved to Digial Railroad http://www.digitalrailroad.net.

There is quite an interesting article on Alamy here http://SPAM/26btgq for those that contribute. I don't , so don't really have an axe to grind.
 
How's everyone getting on with the new Alamy on-line upload facility? I just uploaded 3 folders with ten shots in each - a reasonably quick and trouble free exercise except on checking the submissions they've only received 9 shots in one of the folders. I have no way of knowing which one until the images are posted for sale. :thinking:

I dunno whether to just upload the whole folder again or whether it would cause duplication problems? .....Mark?? (mho)

That apart, much better than burning CDs and long overdue!
 
Well AlamyUpload was enabled on my account last month and I got round to using it the other day.

Seamless. I uploaded 15 shots and they uploaded no problems.
Just hope they pass muster now :p
 
Still not enabled on my account! That maybe cod I haven't sent anything past my initial QC yet. I just haven't had the time to sort through my images. Perhaps I should make it a TO DO this month whilst work is annoyingly quiet....
 
I hadn't either Gandhi.

Theyre enabling it on all accounts few by few at the moment, and I think they're hoping for a full rollout by the end of August, IIRC.
 
cool beans. I'll start trolling through the 50 odd Gb of images I have lying around for stuff sharp enough to pass muster then!
 
Braver than me, I have a serious collection available but cannot get my head around all the technical issues. Someone setting up to prepare images for Alamy could make serious money!
I read recently complaints about those who had uploaded large collections of single subjects not featuring high as they felt they should in search results. The BFP conducted some enquiries on behalf of members and concluded that the way Alamy search results operate and return is in such a way to ensure all (aas far as possible) feature in results.
So, for example, if you have a huge collection of images of say 'Tony Benn' for example, better to submit no more than a dozen and increase the base variety of your subjects to stand a better chance of featuring in results. It seems, ultimately, it is also down to Keywords, so think very carefully and creatively about the search terms picture buyers are likely to use when looking for your collections.
Now, any tips on preparing images for Alamy? Like where to start?? :):thinking::bonk:
 
Braver than me, I have a serious collection available but cannot get my head around all the technical issues. Someone setting up to prepare images for Alamy could make serious money!r

mho (Mark) on this board does just that. :)
 
Aha! Thank you CT, I will be in touch with Mark this week.:clap:
 
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