MicrostockGroup

I also find it nonsense - I don't know why they do it like this...
 

Just buy Canon 5D Mark II and you will not be upsizing anymore.

Agree it's weird, but it's often done for Getty, and presumably other macros too.

I make 3D graphics, so picture resolution is more a problem of time than of hardware for me. So far my pictures are between 3000 and 4000 pixels wide. I could make new renders for all of my pictures, but this would take ages because some are quite complex. And it will keep me from new creative work as well.

I guess I will make new renders for my first approval batch and then switch to upscaling and see if they accept it.

Maybe I am wrong, but I thought working on the file and upsizing it while it was a tiff before saving as a jpg created a better photo. If the customer or anyone upsized after it was saved as a jpg, some quality was lost.

Fine. So let people upload TIFFs then, and Alamy can upsize/downsize with their own high-buck software, on their servers, to whatever the users want, at the time they purchase the file. 

Either Alamy is just way behind the curve and running on autopilot, or they like the idea of leaving a few pointless hoops in place, to discourage the riff-raff.   

Or, they live in a cold climate and enjoy all the heat given off by their massive storage systems and saturated network cables.



 

I just compared a file in different formats. As a JPEG it's 3MB. As a 8-bit TIFF it's 60MB. 16-bit would probably be 120MB. Not real upload-friendly.

So if Alamy (and Getty who does upsizing too) are behind the curve, what's the new standard?

50mb has been the standard in macro agencies for many years, one of the reasons that Alamy and others require a file of that size is because any inherent flaws will be highlighted even more, if a file is good enough at 50mb then it is good enough for any of the proposed uses or size a buyer may have, and as pointed out this dates back to the age of film.

Some microstock agencies do the exact opposite which from a buyers point of view is a down side, how many times have you seen (or done it yourself) an image rejected only to be resubmitted at a smaller size and then accepted, when a buyer buys a maximum size of that image the agencies upsize it, so the buyer is getting an upsized version of a file that wasn't good enough at the native resolution, from an Alamy (and other macro agencies) they know that whatever file size they buy will be of a suitable quality for their intended usage.

@Stockastic - A few years ago you did submit your files to Alamy as tiffs by CD, although they did still need to be 48mb, jpeg submissions only came by with the advent of their upload system.

Most of this is irrelevant now or will be soon because most peoples cameras are capable of a native file size big enough to suit the minimum requirements.

I honestly have always wondered why they just don't upsize on the site's server end, like most other agencies do.  That would be a lot simpler for everyone. Thankfully higher megapixel camera bodies solve this problem In the meantime I have a sweet droplet I made to upsize.  Haven't uploaded to Alamy in forever.  I need to give that place some more attention soon.

I think he meant better to upsize at the tiff stage and then convert to jpg, rather than have to resize a jpg at the agency (or after download).  Less artifacts that way !  Better to leave as is though really ;-)

Exactly,

You can easily print a 4 feet by 6 feet billboard with only 12mpx. Highway billboards, even if they are the 8 feet by 12 feet, you watch them at minimum 30 feets of distance. That's approximatively like watching the image at 50% in photoshop.

Upsizing was used back when the best cameras were 6mpx. Dinosaur habit

LOL That's why they need to stop doing this it's almost embarassing