Alamy First Submission

SimonTALM

SimonTALM

Linford Christie
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Simon
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I have been considering making some of my photos available for sale through a stock photography site. Having looked about for ages I finally decided that I would give Alamy a go (I signed up months ago) - partly as I noticed that there is an increasing number of people on here who do just that.

After a day of carefully checking that my chosen 4 "test" photos were in perfect shape (no dust, no chromatic abrasion, perfect focus and over 48MB uncompressed) about 30 minutes ago I just uploaded them to go through QC. I now have to sit and wait.

According the site it could take upto 24 days to complete this process which seems like an age - I rather hoping that this is a worst case scenario and it will be faster.

Those who've done gone through this recently how long did it really take and did you pass first time?
 
I'm not a big fan of those stock image sites. Quite a lot of photographers have had their work WITHOUT permisson put on a stock site and being sold.

Have a read of this

Thats why I'm not a big fan of stock photography sites. Hope it all works out thou
 
cherryrig said:
I'm not a big fan of those stock image sites. Quite a lot of photographers have had their work WITHOUT permisson put on a stock site and being sold.

Have a read of this

Thats why I'm not a big fan of stock photography sites. Hope it all works out thou
Click to expand...

Read of what???
 
10 :eek: You paniced me there - just checked

Send us 4 images if it is your first “test” submission and as many as you like once your test has passed Quality Control (QC).
Click to expand...

It must have changed, perhaps they got fed up of checking 10, I would imagine that if you can get 4 though you'll get 10 through so it's a time thing for them.

Not sold any in a year :(, I suppose it is a numbers game with only 10 images the chances of a buyer selecting 1 of yours must be quite low.

I'm guessing the key to successful stock is shooting lots of good images that buyers want and then tagging them correctly so that they can find them. I suppose the obvious question is how can we identify what people want. Anyone any clues?
 
SimonTALM said:
Not sold any in a year :(, I suppose it is a numbers game with only 10 images the chances of a buyer selecting 1 of yours must be quite low.
Click to expand...

Maybe my pics are just crap :D

But your right you need hundreds on to sell well, or 1 that is so well tagged it gets hits all the time. Reading my tag search figures - as in how often the pics have been looked at is depressing.
 
I uploaded a bunch of images to Alamy a week ago and they were up and ready for keywording in about 48 hour. As your shots are your first submission to Alamy, they may take a tad longer.

With all due respect to Cherryrig, don’t let his/her comments put you off. All the big time picture agencies, like Alamy, will look after your interests. I would say that if you want to make money from photography and you have the abilities to create images that people will buy, then you aren’t going to sell ‘em if they are just sitting at home on your PC.

Good luck with QC
 
Sam-D said:
With all due respect to Cherryrig, don’t let his/her comments put you off.
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I'm not - I would have liked to read the article they refer to; I am confused as to the origin of their dislike of stock when Cherryrig has a Flickr page :thinking:

Thanks for your comments though, I am very much of the same mind. Fingers crossed they get QC'd soon.
 
it is certainly known that images have been lifted from flickr and used without permission...from a stock site if it was found to be used beyond the conditions of sale I suspect the ramifications would be potentially severe.
 
Well I've just checked and all 4 failed :eek:

Apparently all of them are soft and lacking definition and 3 of them show interpolation artifacts

I'll try and get round to posting some 100% crops tomorrow - bit late now but it seems like I've clearly got to improve my pp!!

Can anyone who has put stuff on Alamy post a 100% crop of a successful image so that I can have something to aim for? Thanks
 
I believe since they reduced it to 4 images, and Alamy online has gone member-wide, theyve gone even stricter.
Don't be disheartened Simon, have another crack at sorting them out.

What are you using to upsize them to the minimum size?
 
How much post-processing is allowed?

Also, they state they need JPEG and uncompressed files. Does this mean they need a JPEG of the image as well as a TIFF of the image? What's the best way to resize to the minimum 48MB?
 
Marcel said:
I believe since they reduced it to 4 images, and Alamy online has gone member-wide, theyve gone even stricter.
Don't be disheartened Simon, have another crack at sorting them out.

What are you using to upsize them to the minimum size?
Click to expand...

I'm not disheartend, although I will admit to being a bit disapointed - I see this as feedback rather than failure and it's a challenge now :nuts: :D

I used CS2 "image size" to upsize them. From what I can remember I used a single resize figure of 131%, using the standard option - though I can't remember if this was Bicubic or Bilinear ATM. My PC is back at the hotel room so I can go check tonight.

What methods do others use to upsize and what is considered the best way?
 
Sorry to hear your test images didn’t get through.

You should be using Photshop’s ‘Bicubic Smoother’ for upsizing. A company called Onone Software do a program called ‘Genuine Fractals’, which is reckoned by some as being the best method for upsizing, however, you really shouldn’t need it. If Photoshop cannot do it then you have a problem. I have never had any rejects from Alamy due to softness, lack of definition, or interpolation artefacts and I always use Photshop’s ‘Bicubic Smoother’ for upsizing.
Post an image here, or PM it to me and I would be happy to check it out for you.
 
Sam-D said:
Sorry to hear your test images didn’t get through.

You should be using Photshop’s ‘Bicubic Smoother’ for upsizing. A company called Onone Software do a program called ‘Genuine Fractals’, which is reckoned by some as being the best method for upsizing, however, you really shouldn’t need it. If Photoshop cannot do it then you have a problem. I have never had any rejects from Alamy due to softness, lack of definition, or interpolation artefacts and I always use Photshop’s ‘Bicubic Smoother’ for upsizing.
Post an image here, or PM it to me and I would be happy to check it out for you.
Click to expand...

Cheers - Just checked and I had used Bicubic but not Bicubic Smoother, I will try again and see if there is a difference
 
there was a test ran by some mag or other last year and it show no diffrence between genuine fractals and photoshop CS3 for up sizing
 
SimonTALM said:
Can anyone who has put stuff on Alamy post a 100% crop of a successful image so that I can have something to aim for? Thanks
Click to expand...

I've only put the 4 origional submissions up and all 4 passed. Im going to make a determined effort of getting a LOT more up there this year though. Going to aim for about 1000 a year at least. One of the ones I submitted was;

800x600 version of full image (Full image upscaled to 5228x3500)
clematisstamensmallvz0.jpg

100% crop
clematisstamencropkm3.jpg


The others were of a similar (Or very slightly lower) standard of sharpness and detail. Hope that helps and good luck next time. :)


mho said:
there was a test ran by some mag or other last year and it show no diffrence between genuine fractals and photoshop CS3 for up sizing
Click to expand...

I came to the same result from my own tests. Infact I found it easier and faster to get a decent result from CS3.
 
They say no sharpening... is it possible to get good definition with no sharpeneing whatsoever?
 
In their FAQ section, they state they reject images for Excessive Sharpening, for which they say:

"The image appears “edgy” or unsightly artifacts are visible. Sharpening should be applied only once and this is best done at the repro stage."

So sharpening is allowed?
 
I can't remember what the exact wording is, but the sharpening question was asked (once again) at the last Alamy contributers meeting, and the response was something to the effect that they understand that for most images, a moderate amount of sharpening is required unless you are shooting in jpeg. But you should not do excessive sharpining.

This basically means do your input sharpeining, and your intermediate sharpining after NR (should be ok to do contrast enhancement), but don't do output sharpeining step.

As for stock agencies, there are stock agencies and then there are stock agencies. If you are selling through one of the intermediate agencies like Alamy (of one of the top agencies like Getty or Corbis), then you can be assured that it is in their best interests to protect your interests and IP. But you should also remember that Alamy, unlike Getty or Corbis, does not have an editorial staff, and so you need to speciallize a little to ensure that your images get seen more (other things you can do comes from research into how Alamy rank works).
 
To see any realistic return from agencies like Alamy you will need thousands of images rather than hundreds, there are exceptions but these are few and far between. Another agency which I have had a fair amount of success with is photographers direct, they take 20% of the sale price and picture buyers let you know what images they are looking for. I get an e-mail everyday with requests for images.
As for the image quality with Alamy..... well im sure sometimes some people are just having a bad day. The problem is if you send 20 images and they pick on the 1 that isn't perfect they reject the whole lot.
 
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