Alamy & submission requirements

[photoguy6405]

Signed up for Alamy. Followed the direction of the wonderful people here for upsizing my photos, etc. Got them uploaded to Alamy. No problem. Failed the initial QC test. They singled out one image and the reason they gave was "Soft or lacking definition". Now, I know that when they reject one, they reject all. I understand that. My questions are...

- Did they review one, then stop?

- Did they review them all and only found fault with one? The other three were not mentioned in the e-mail nor did they have comments one way or another on the website.

- If they reviewed them all, and only found fault with one (which I'm presuming is the case), would it be a good idea for me to resubmit the same three 'good' shots and one replacement?

Thanks.

p.s.: For anyone who's interested, my review took 4 days.

[Dennis_Hammer]

Log into My Alamy and click track submissions I don't think they reject a whole group unless they are all the same subject with little differences in the composition and technical issues.

[photoguy6405]

On the Alamy website, under 'Prepare Images', it says...

- If it’s your test submission, we check all 4 images and they must all pass QC for your submission to be accepted. Please do not submit any additional images until your initial test has passed QC.

- We will give you failure reasons for all images which do not meet our QC criteria .

I also posted the same question in Alamy's forum.

[ChrisRabior]

For the initial QC, they check 100% of the four images. They want to make sure all of them meet specs, and if even one fails, then the application fails. You need 4/4 to pass to be accepted (which is much easier than the 10/10 that it used to be).

Once you're accepted, if you submit 10 images and even one has a flaw, they reject the entire group of 10, regardless of whether the other 9 were flawless or not.

The same goes for if you submit 100000000 images. If any of the ones that they review has a flaw, they assume (and rightly so) that you weren't doing a good enough job sorting, and to ensure that they keep you honest in reviewing your own images for flaws, they reject the entire batch.

The number of images they spot check I'm sure is directly related to the number of rejections you've had in the past, whether or not it's a resubmitted batch, and how many images you have for them to review.

If you get an image rejected for dust or something equipment related, you should fix the problem (if it's just a quick photoshop fix), check all the other images in that series that 'might' have the same flaw, fix those, and resubmit. If it's a major problem, you're probably best just discarding it and moving on.

Alamy's contributer help section has everything you could possibly ever need to know about submitting, rejections, image quality, what they want, what they'll reject, etc.
http://www.alamy.com/contributors/default.asp

[ChrisRabior]

Straight from Alamy's contributer info (emphasis added):

Test submissions

If it’s your test submission, we check all 4 images and they must all pass QC for your submission to be accepted. Please do not submit any additional images until your initial test has passed QC.
We will give you failure reasons for all images which do not meet our QC criteria
Avoid rejection by checking your images at 100% with software such as Photoshop

Ongoing submissions
Once you’ve passed your QC test we only check a sample of images in each subsequent submission.
A submission is defined as any group of media that are awaiting QC at the same time (they will all have the status “Awaiting QC”).
If we fail one image, we will reject all images in all media awaiting QC.
Media grouped together as a submission will be QC’d together and will have the same QC date in “Track submissions”.
We will indicate the media which contains the failed image, with an information icon in Track submissions.
Avoid rejection by always checking your images at 100% looking for all possible QC failure reasons.




Note: If you submitted a ton of images in multiple batches of uploads, and Alamy starts their review process and fails one of those images, only the images in batches that were tracking as "Awaiting QC" will fail. The batches that are still listed as "Processing" won't be affected by the failure. That is what is meant by 'submission'.

They'll give you the reason your submission failed by labeling what was wrong with the image(s) that noticeably had problems. They leave it up to you to go back through the images, remove or fix the problematic images, and resubmit.

[photoguy6405]

Chris,
I appreciate your help, and have already read those same pages, and had even quoted part of the same quotes above in post #3... but none of this addresses my specific question.

Can I safely resubmit the three images that passed and replaced the one that failed with a different/better image? Or, sould I do four completely new images?

[AB8ND]

Alamy reviews a sample from your batch then if it passes they all pass, if it fails the batch fails. Sometimes they will tell you to resubmit the others. I believe they do review them all on the initial batch.

Jack

[slappy sam]

Chris,
I appreciate your help, and have already read those same pages, and had even quoted part of the same quotes above in post #3... but none of this addresses my specific question.

Can I safely resubmit the three images that passed and replaced the one that failed with a different/better image? Or, sould I do four completely new images?
Yes. Those 3 images should be good.

I got 2/4 rejected in my first thing, took the two good ones and submitted two other good ones, got accepted.

[Anke]

As a regular Alamy contributor I can say that when you do pass, the rule that says that if one fails they all fail doesn't actually happen.
Sometimes one of mine will fail in a batch of 10 and the other 9 still go through happily. Although this failure is usually for image size rather than anything else.
Big tip is to upload in many small batches rather than one big one, that way if some fail they won't bring the whole upload down, just a small part and the rest will get through.

[ChrisRabior]

It's up to you. If it's a minor problem, like I said before, then you can do whatever photoshopping needs to be done, and resubmit. If it's a major flaw, dump it and upload something different.

[jbimages]

Chris,


Can I safely resubmit the three images that passed and replaced the one that failed with a different/better image? Or, sould I do four completely new images?


yes. It worked for my initial submission many moons ago

[photoguy6405]

I was getting varying information, so I decided to submit four entirely new images. Two failed this time. One, while a beautiful photo, was a sunset shot with a silhouette and had some noise, so in hindsight that was a bad choice on my part.

So, I took two of the three that passed from the 1st submittal, and the two that passed from the 2nd submittal, and resubmitted. Supposedly, all four have already been deemed good. We shall see.

The second review took only two days, btw.

[photoguy6405]

For anyone who's interested, this third review took only two days, also. The two that passed from each submission, when grouped together as four, all passed again, so now I have been accepted by Alamy.

My concern had been that maybe they wouldn't be consistent in their judging from one submission to the next, but my experience matches what a few others told me and it appears that they are consistent.

Thank you to all who chimed in to help.

[jcw122]

Quick question so I don't have to start a thread....do you have to submit all the 4 initial images in 1 batch, or can they be 1 images in 4 batches?

[photoguy6405]

I submitted all of mine in one batch. I also read someplce on the Alamy forum that the initial submission must be as a group of four, or else it will get rejected for that.

[jcw122]

Ah darn, gotta fix that then.

[jasonlprice]

As a regular Alamy contributor I can say that when you do pass, the rule that says that if one fails they all fail doesn't actually happen.
Sometimes one of mine will fail in a batch of 10 and the other 9 still go through happily. Although this failure is usually for image size rather than anything else.
Big tip is to upload in many small batches rather than one big one, that way if some fail they won't bring the whole upload down, just a small part and the rest will get through.


It is good to hear this from a regular....I've been submitting large batches and haven't had any fail yet, but I was under the impression that all of the batches that haven't passed would be failed if one photo in one batch failed. I think that is the way it used to be before the "quick turnaround" QC policy.

[Anke]

It is good to hear this from a regular....I've been submitting large batches and haven't had any fail yet, but I was under the impression that all of the batches that haven't passed would be failed if one photo in one batch failed. I think that is the way it used to be before the "quick turnaround" QC policy.

Thanks. I've uploaded in quite large numbers recently and use a macro to do the resizing of the images and sometimes cropped images don't quite get big enough so Alamy rejects them, the others go through though. I even had one batch that 2 out of 8 failed and it still went through.
These failures are all only size though, any exposure errors or similar might fail the whole batch.

[SlowBlink]

One thing puzzles me. Alamy says don't sharpen your images so how do you get past the aa filter softness?

[Anke]

One thing puzzles me. Alamy says don't sharpen your images so how do you get past the aa filter softness?

Softness is probably their word for OOF or possibly not enough DOF.

[SlowBlink]

Ahh, thanks. I checked other threads and someone mentioned they got away with a little sharpening but I'm thinking it's not worth the risk. The good shots are sharp enough for print usually anyway.