Yes, they are converting over to 100% FTP.  The following is a message I received this morning attached to a confirmation that they had received my latest CD submission.

As you now have AlamyUpload enabled on your account we ask that you send your next submission to us online. We will shortly only be accepting online submissions. Simply go to "My Alamy" and click on the "Upload Images" link in your account to send us your images.

No more $2.70 international mail charges to submit a CD.   

Wonderful!!

Its not FTP its an activeX plugin similar to some of the microstock ones. Quite nice as you can upload files or folders and it shows you the percentage progress, just don't navigate from that page/browser tab.

I only uploaded a few files about 30 or so but it worked fine and they were even reviewed far quicker than the 5 week wait.

I even received a cheque at the beginning of the month finally.

great news! so that will make the whole process a lot faster.I am just about apply to alamy but as far as I know first application is  still in the same way,sendin cd's dvd's. if you are approved then you are able to upload photos on line.

this a little off the topic but I'd like to know if you upload same files that you also upload to micros,is it allowed and how good idea is it?
one more thing I 'd like to know ,are they only paying by cheque or do they have paypal as an option.
cheers

I started at Alamy three weeks ago. First application can be done online and I was approved within 2 weeks

Olga

Quote from: stokfoto on August 14, 2007, 16:17

this a little off the topic but I'd like to know if you upload same files that you also upload to micros,is it allowed and how good idea is it?

A very bad idea in my view. If a customer buys an image for a high price at Alamy, only to discover later that it's available for a dollar or two at a micro, he will probably not be happy. I wouldn't have been, and I wouldn't even consider buying from your portfolio at Alamy again.

I agree with that but there is one thing though. by uploading same files  to a macro site you offer your files as RM not only RF (which is mostly not available on micro sites)so that should mean you are giving a different buying option to the buyers.and to my point of view this  should be the main point of considering such a thing.

and one other thing ,I remember reading  some articles  saying many  macro photographers started to think micros were more profitable(this is just according to what I read and remember not my own experience since I don2t have it with macros)and if you choose your best file to upload only to macros this might mean you are limiting commercial possibilities of your work.(having said that I am well aware of price licensing and commissions difference between the two)
so I am still trying to find out a middle wayin order to  to keep might profit as high as possible without upsetting the buyers.

btw if your first application can be done online than it's fantastic news:)

Don't think so, I submitted my "first application" by cd and got rejected for size (thought they required 40mb). Then I got an email stating the FTP was activated and submitted my "second application" via the site.

Quote from: stokfoto on August 15, 2007, 07:57

Quote from: epixx on August 15, 2007, 01:22

Quote from: stokfoto on August 14, 2007, 16:17

this a little off the topic but I'd like to know if you upload same files that you also upload to micros,is it allowed and how good idea is it?

A very bad idea in my view. If a customer buys an image for a high price at Alamy, only to discover later that it's available for a dollar or two at a micro, he will probably not be happy. I wouldn't have been, and I wouldn't even consider buying from your portfolio at Alamy again.

I agree with that but there is one thing though. by uploading same files  to a macro site you offer your files as RM not only RF (which is mostly not available on micro sites)so that should mean you are giving a different buying option to the buyers.and to my point of view this  should be the main point of considering such a thing.

You can't submit an RF image that's on a micro and put it as RM on Alamy or anywhere else. The image is either RF or RM.

you are right.sorry I got confused with the terms.RF and RM just opposites and can't go together.what  I was tryign to say you may offer exclusive rights of the image (like exclusive buy out that FT used offer,full ownership that DT offers.)

after all I guess it depends on your marketing strategies,which photo of your to put in a macro and which one to micros.now I am convinced that it certainly isn't good idea to shuffle things and you have to be certain which files go to micros and which goes macros.

thank you all for your help
much appreciated.

You need at least a 6mp camera 8 mp would be better and you need to upsize to about 3455 x 5150 which would be a 50.5 meg uncompressed TIFF (mimimum is 48 meg) but we can send JPEGS now  .

If they still wanted TIFFS the online upload would be fairly pointless (2 photos per hour with my broadband).

Payment is by cheque
British pounds, US Dollars, euros or other currencies?
I know my cheque came direct from their bank so you might be able to get cheques in quite a wide range of currencies

They charge $8 for a cheque and there was another charge for the currency conversion so much for the 65/35 split.

Payment also by direct bank transfer but you have to give them your bank details (scary!)

no paypal as far as I know.

For those of you who moan about having to wait a week for payment from Microstock beware Alamy make you wait (I was told up to 10 weeks) after you clear the $250 barrier as they give their clients 30 days credit.

For example I sold a photo in September 2006 another in April 2007 which brought me over the magic number but it was early August before a cheque arrived though strangely the first of my June sales was cleared in time so was also included.

Total sales five photos  from an entirely RM portfolio of about 2,600

If the photo is of a popular subject I usually send to the micros.  If in doubt search the Alamy site. As remember as a Newbie your Alamy index will be low so your photos will go to the back and their is only one search criteria no searching by contributor, age, Dls etc.

You need at least a 6mp camera 8 mp would be better and you need to upsize to about 3455 x 5150 which would be a 50.5 meg uncompressed TIFF (mimimum is 48 meg) but we can send JPEGS now  .

That's confusing.  If you save an upsized image at 5150x3455 in TIFF format in order to make it 50megs (which is what I once tried with a Canon 10D image) , how in the world would you meet their 48mg minimum if you saved it in JPG form?   Since JPG is compressed, how would that fly with their minimum file size?

JPEG is compressed. When you have a JPEG image open in Photoshop it tells you the uncompressed size in the bottom left-side corner.  If your camera is 6MP it'll be 48MB uncompressed.

Thankfully you can upload it uncompressed!

No it won't... I shoot with a 8MP EOS 20D and still have to upsize it by 144% to meet the minimum requirements. With this i end up with a image that's roughly 5000x3350 pixels which in fact is 16,75 MegaPixels. So that's more or less you're minimum requirements. But there are things that people normally confuse, is that the demand an uncompressed size of 48 MegaBYTES, which means 16,75 MegaPIXELS. And the file shouldn't be bigger than 25 MegaBYTES in a compressed form (actuakky my files, saved in Photoshop JPEG 12 vary from as little as 2 MegaBYTES to as much as 17 MegaBYTES, until now...)

Regards

Francisco Leit�o

i still don't get why they don't just say how many pixels they want, because the image size depends a lot on if there is dark or white or colored pixels in the image.