Alamy Rejection Question - DPChallenge Forums

Pentax DA 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 AF

03/29/2006 08:15:54 PM · #1

I'm new to this and still learning so I hope someone can help.

I sent my disk to Alamy and it was rejected. The problem seems to be
"images with badly degraded image detail". They were shot with a Rebel in JPEG, converted to .tif and bumped to 48+MB in Genuine Fractals. Photoshop Elements 4 is my base program. Prior to using GF I looked at them at 100% and made any corrections for dust etc. (Very Minimal Corrections), did no cropping or sharpening.

I guess I could have used GF incorrectly or something I just don't know what I did or how to fix it or do it right.

Anyone out there initially have this problem and could you explain how you corrected it.

ANY help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

faidoi

Pentax K10D

03/29/2006 08:17:40 PM · #2

Post a shot or a portion of a shot at 100%.

Message edited by author 2006-03-29 20:18:02.

03/29/2006 08:21:35 PM · #3

Did you look at them at 100% after GF? Did they look good to you then? Yeah, post a 100% crop of an area maybe...

Doug

03/29/2006 08:35:19 PM · #4

Give me a few minutes to cut a section out at 100% and I'll post it. I did check them at 100% but in all honesty I believe I did it before as I was under the belief that GF would be the last step and no changes were to be made after. (Don't know where I got that belief).

Hope to get the crops up in the next few minutes.

Thanks

Pentax DA 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 AF

03/29/2006 08:56:13 PM · #5

Here are two,

The first is of my brothers bird. I went to 100% while it was in the 48mb tif file, cropped the size of my computer screen then saved as a jpeg.

The second was processed the same way and is a distant shot of the US Flag

faidoi

Pentax K10D

03/29/2006 09:02:34 PM · #6

Originally posted by Baron152:

Here are two,

The first is of my brothers bird. I went to 100% while it was in the 48mb tif file, cropped the size of my computer screen then saved as a jpeg.

The second was processed the same way and is a distant shot of the US Flag

Message edited by author 2006-03-29 21:03:17.

03/29/2006 09:17:15 PM · #7

Lets try again

#1

03/29/2006 09:18:48 PM · #8

Thanks for everyones patience but i learn more when I have to work through it.

Anyway these are crops from two of the rejected photos.

03/29/2006 09:23:45 PM · #9

I just had time for a quick look, but they both look a little soft and/or out of focus to me. At least from my memory of looking at my upsizes at 100%, but it's been many weeks... I'll go look at some of mine, but I don't think I can post any here, as I'm not a paying member.

Then again maybe I'm just remembering mine with a "selective memory" and mine were just as soft...

Perhaps the softness is because you resaved it as a jpeg? Alamy wants tiffs, which wouldn't get compressed again...but I don't know if that's it or not.

Doug

03/29/2006 09:44:46 PM · #10

Originally posted by dswebb:

Thanks Doug,

I guess thats what I am looking for, any noted differences from what you know is being accepted and what you see in mine. Part of the problem is I have no reference.

Also correct me if I am wrong but I was under the impression that softness, focus, content, etc don't have a lot to do with it. I thought it was technical only. (I do realize that softness, content focus, etc will keep you from making sales)

Thanks for your time

03/29/2006 10:19:39 PM · #11

I went and cut some pieces out of 2 of my files they've accepted. Resaved them as jpg (hope that didn't degrade them too much) and posted them on a website I own. If you go to:

//www.sybadragons.com/example1.jpg

and

//www.sybadragons.com/example2.jpg

you should be able to see them. Maybe that'll at least give you another data point.

Let me know if you can't get to them for some reason.

Doug

[ edit ]
Oh, and I do think they look for things like sharpness, focus, dust, noise, etc. in the review. Just not at every image they say (after your first acceptance set that is). And from my experience, they are less picky than the micro site I belong to. They also say do NOT sharpen your pictures before sending, as their clients want to sharpen to their tastes, not yours. So mine are unsharpened either before or after upsizing. I use resize pro from fredmiranda to do the upsizing in photoshop.

Message edited by author 2006-03-29 22:22:18.

03/29/2006 10:33:15 PM · #12

Thank you for taking the time to help. I see where maine may be a bit softer, maybe that is waht they are talking about. The "badly degraded image detail" comment was specifically aimed at the birds eye image.

I guess I'm still a little cionfused at what exactly they mean. It sure would help if they could say something like "The area in the upper left corner shows ***** and **** and this is unacceptible." or something to that effect.

Thanks again

Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D

03/29/2006 11:05:38 PM · #13

Originally posted by Baron152:

How big did you upsize those things, the files are horrible.

deapee

Kodak V803

03/29/2006 11:12:01 PM · #14

What lens did you take the pictures with? The quality of those looks like a sub-par optics type thing....like the results I used to get with a Canon 75-300 f/4-5.6 or even the 18-55 kit lens.

I'm not trying to bash those lenses, believe me, they serve their purposes, but they're definately not made for huge upscaling and pixel-peeping at 100% crops...good luck.

oOWonderBreadOo

Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM

03/29/2006 11:29:10 PM · #15

accepted... I use the interpolation method.

03/30/2006 01:06:35 AM · #16

Originally posted by deapee:

The Flag was the Canon 70-300 IS USM and I do believe the bird was the Sigma 28-80 both were upped to right at 48MB.

Are those lenses really that bad. Could you please post a crop of what you send. Maybe the problem is that I have no reference. For being upped so big, I thought they looked good.

03/30/2006 01:11:26 AM · #17

100% crop

This was a film scan though.

oOWonderBreadOo

Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM

03/30/2006 01:17:34 AM · #18

Brent is that film or digital? my film is way worse than the digital files. Just got a new scanner tho, so we'll see :0)

03/30/2006 01:26:43 AM · #19

Originally posted by oOWonderBreadOo:

Brent is that film or digital? my film is way worse than the digital files. Just got a new scanner tho, so we'll see :0)

That's a scan from a grainy negative.

03/30/2006 01:31:08 AM · #20

If my problem seems to be my lenses, does anyone think that the 30d I just got will improve things enough to make a difference or do you think I need L glass. (An expense I really can't afford right now)

03/30/2006 01:33:28 AM · #21

Originally posted by Baron152:

You might not need L lenses, but you might need to upgrade your glass a little.

Canon usually has 3 levels of a lens. Like the 50mm. It has 1.0,1.4,1.8 versions. Just at least get teh middle version, but I hear the 50 1.8 isn't too bad.

ganders

Tamron SP AF 28-75mm f/2.8 XR Di for Canon

03/30/2006 03:43:44 AM · #22

Originally posted by Baron152:

Also correct me if I am wrong but I was under the impression that softness, focus, content, etc don't have a lot to do with it. I thought it was technical only.

Softness and focus ARE the technical details they're QCing; both those crops look quite soft and 'muddy'. The bird does seem to have quite degraded image detail, although I can't quite put my finger on what might have caused it. There's no real feather detail, it looks almost smoothed or over-NeatImaged or something.

Just to ask the stupid question, when you say you "upsized to 48mb tiff", how big exactly did you make them (in pixels)? When they refer to "48mb 8-bit tiff" that translates to a 16mp image - is it possible they're just massively oversized (as Brent suggested)?

Originally posted by Brent_Ward:

You might not need L lenses, but you might need to upgrade your glass a little.

I don't think it's a particular lens issue; we've had plenty of stuff accepted taken on our old D70 with the kit lens (ok, that's quite a nice one) and the ultra-cheap Nikon 70-300 which is most definitely NOT a top-quality lens.

On the 20D, we've had stuff with the Sigma 18-125 and with the same 70-300IS mentioned.

Thanks for the crop of the film scan Brent; we're starting to work through some of our old film stuff and I wasn't sure how far I needed to go to address the film grain - that helps a lot.

tryals15

Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II

Carl Zeiss Planar T 50mm f/1.7

03/30/2006 04:12:17 AM · #23

I've had everything I submitted accepted...

I use a 10D with decent glass, and resize in photoshop in one fell-swoop (300dpi, 5400p on the long side, bicubic).

Your images look muddy (as noted before) Could it be that you are cropping your images before resizing? I dunno.. Here is one of mine that was accepted:

full image

100% crop