No, I still don't consider myself good enough for stock, but I keep thinking about something.

 

On most stock sites it says "no sharpening". I don't understand how you can have a perfectly sharp shot without sharpening, as isn't there a level a diffusing that happens to remove a form of noise with digital cameras which causes the picture to be slightly unsharp?

 

Just wondering, as it's always seemed a silly rule to me.  And what about in camera sharpening?

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TBPITW 13-14th Sept 08

I would suggest that for most stock - you wouldn't be shooting Jpeg -so the in camera sharpening becomes irelavent.

And when they say no sharpening, they mean exactly that - they will sharpen to suit what they want the image for.

But this is just a guess!

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Mark

Digital Photo Group
My Website

Ne nuntium necare

I only know about Alamy cos thats the only one I've tried and, yes, my test submission was rejected on grounds of softness.

They do say if you shoot jpegs that you should turn off the in camera sharpening.

It was a bit of a wake call for me cos I didn't exactly use a bargain basement lens, the Oly 11-22mm which is renowned as being pretty sharp and I spent ages very carefully editing them as subtly as possible. I was expecting to be rejected first go but I didn't think it would be on the basis of sharpness.

Their justification is that as anglefire says their customers sharpen depending on what they use their image for and sharpening on sharpening is a big no-no.

It also means that you have to use top quality kit from start to finish and, in Alamy's case you have to upsize the files (unless you've got a 1Ds) which introduces softness. I use the bicubic resampling in Elements and apparently genuine Fractals is in a different league for this, both quality and price wise...So its the software's fault, noit poor photography, no sirree...

So I feel your pain.

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BPitW 9-10 June 2007.
My website My flickr

It also means that you have to use top quality kit from start to finish and, in Alamy's case you have to upsize the files (unless you've got a 1Ds) which introduces softness. I use the bicubic resampling in Elements and apparently genuine Fractals is in a different league for this, both quality and price wise...So its the software's fault, noit poor photography, no sirree...

I've looked into this, alot, cause I was gonna submit to Alamy, but I'm too lazy to read through all the crap they have on the site.

You dont have to save the JPG so its 48mb.
Thats what confuses people.
The JPG can be 573kb, but once opened in Photoshop, it has to be 48mb.
Uncompressed, so basically a 8bit TIF file.
The JPG size doesnt matter at all, its a 48mb uncompressed size they want.


As for sharpening, alot of it is because the stock agencies know most people dont know how to sharpen images properly. Thats what I've been told.
Its not so much so they can do it for their buyers requirements, though that does play a part. Its more cause people normally over do it without realising it.

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The all new Matt Harris Photography
DCM Gallery

mattharrisuk:

You dont have to save the JPG so its 48mb.
Thats what confuses people.
The JPG can be 573kb, but once opened in Photoshop, it has to be 48mb.
Uncompressed, so basically a 8bit TIF file.

Well, Alamy say its got to be a high quality jpeg save at 10 or higher so the compressed size tends to be around 5-8MB depending on the subject matter. But yeah, the compressed/uncompressed thing does confuse quite a lot of people.

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BPitW 9-10 June 2007.
My website My flickr

I dont think they could have writen the submission rules any worse personally.
It confused the hell out of me the first time, second, and every time I read it after that, hence my googling.
I gave up in the end. I cant be arsed with upsizing.
Crestock and Fotolia accepted my images like 90% of my images on my test submissions.
Alamy's loss

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The all new Matt Harris Photography
DCM Gallery

Thanks guys, I still don't feel up to submitting, but I now understand it a tad better.

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TBPITW 13-14th Sept 08

mattharrisuk:

I dont think they could have writen the submission rules any worse personally.
It confused the hell out of me the first time, second, and every time I read it after that, hence my googling.
I gave up in the end. I cant be arsed with upsizing.
Crestock and Fotolia accepted my images like 90% of my images on my test submissions.
Alamy's loss

 

I agree

I came across (well actually, they emailed me???) Crestock teh other day.  I haven't got around to asking or searching about them but am always a little suspicious when someone emails me out of teh blue.

How are you finding them Matt?

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Crestock... they're a bit of a pain if I'm honest.
It took them like, over a month to review my test submissions, and the ones they denied they didnt give an excuse to.
Where as Fotolia got round to it in a few days, and gave me full blown excuses, and they were genuinely helpful and not just "its crap", they gave proper excuses.

I still submit to Crestock, but after I've submitted to Fotolia.

Their upload systems a bit crap too.

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The all new Matt Harris Photography
DCM Gallery

"can't be arsed with upsizing"????? You've got a decent website, not too shabby at HDR, why can't you do a 2 second size conversion??

Open image, open resize box, enter longest side to 5030 pixels, bicubic smoother go!

hey presto 48.3 MB tif file. How hard can it be?

To date my best sale on Alamy was nearly $400. Best on Fotolia /istock - $2.

Webby

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My DC Mag Gallery.

You people geuinely underestimate my lazyness.

I use GF anyways. Which takes quite a bit longer then Photoshops bicubic.
Plus this computers gettin' a bit old now.


I might look into it, but with the website and such at the moment, I'm pretty much worked out.
I doubt I'd get accepted to Alamy anyways.

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The all new Matt Harris Photography
DCM Gallery