Hello,

I have started with microstock shortly, and got 10-20 pictures online with Fotolia and Dreamstime and sold 6 (that's cool!).
They liked mostly my landscapes, but now I'd like to put more stock oriented things... and here I am really bad at isolating them.
I have this picture of an old key, I guess it's stock-oriented.
It was rejected because of techincal problems at Fotolia (Dreamstime still in the queue), and I am sure it's because of my bad isolation skills, it is the second time I am doing that, and it took hours and hours and hours. How do you guys do that? I like the quick selection in cs4, and i use that onOne Mask plugin...but many times the quick mask is not doing what i want, and the onOne thing is also quite cumbersome... is there something better?

Here is the photo. It was against a green background, and since the metal reflects the green got a bit tirening to isolate...
http://simsisworld.at/public/key.jpg
(please don't kill me immediately, i have never done this before.....)

Simone

The key is looking more or less fine, but the individual chains are not !!! The ultimate PS tool for best extraction is doing it right in the camera. Everything else is time consuming. Lots of designer professionals tend to use the pen tool in combination with other selection tools.

My advice would be to try and isolate it in the camera.

Hello ljupco,

thanks for your quick answer!
I guess you mean putting it in front of a suitable background that is already white?

The chain was actually hard to isolate...

Thanks!
Simone

Quote from: simsi on October 16, 2009, 10:53
Hello ljupco,

thanks for your quick answer!
I guess you mean putting it in front of a suitable background that is already white?

The chain was actually hard to isolate...

Thanks!
Simone

No, I meant isolating it in camera using lights like described in this tutorial: http://www.zarias.com/?p=71

That's the best way and the easiest at the same time. Here's an image of mine, shot in this way that had only minor tweaks in post production.

Hope this helps

That chain and that key do not go together, if you want to do a shot of the key isolated then fine, add that chain and I hazard a pretty good guess you'll kill off any potential sales.

great, i will try to put only the key :-).

thanks for your page for the isolating technique!

Simone 

Here is a read with some valid points http://blog.photoshelter.com/school/2008/07/silo.html

And this too http://blog.photoshelter.com/school/2008/06/lighting-the-silo.html

Interesting links, except nobody uses the term 'silo' the common reference used the world over for objects on a plain background is 'cut out' but then Photoshelter specialised in not having a clue about the stock photo industry.

RT, I have not heard the term silo either...typically isolated or cut out or over white is used.

Thanks for posting that tutorial, ljupco. Looks like a great studio set up.

To the OP, the white balance on the hand is off, you've got chromatic aberration (purple fringing) all over the place, and the isolation is pretty poor work.  As mentioned, shoot it correctly to start with and you'll avoid these issues.

Agree with the others.  I had FITS trying to isolate until I learned how to shoot images properly in the first place by following a similar tutorial to the one posted by Ljupco. 

Believe me, even if you master isolating objects like your key perfectly, if it takes hours to do, you will never get sales anywhere close to compensating for that time.  The most I would ever spend in post processing an image is 20 minutes or so and that is only for one that has huge sales potential.

For basic objects/food/people shots, do it with lighting in camera and then just clean up a little with the dodge tool.

Yes, pen tool for isolation. Then select inverse, feather by 1 and use the paint bucket with a 255 white.

If you are lucky, you can sometimes use selection tool. But some tweaks are needed much of times to make the selection look natural, like the smooth selection. Note that isolation for hairs is different though.

wow so cool all the things i can learn here. :-)) i have to say i don't do all this primarily for the money... i like it and i found out it makes my photography improve. that's great!
thank you so much!

Quote from: RT on October 16, 2009, 12:40
Interesting links, except nobody uses the term 'silo' the common reference used the world over for objects on a plain background is 'cut out' but then Photoshelter specialised in not having a clue about the stock photo industry.

While I agree, the same discussion came up on Alamy. Search for "silo" and you won't just find farms. For some reason the word has become a slang version of isolated. I don't know why or where and neither did anyone else. Cutout, cut-out and isolated are good enough for me, but now we have silo? 

Found this, which may explain how silo is leaking into photography. "Each application tends to become a "silo" isolated from all the others. Even when given a web front end, it is still locked into a specific set of scripts and HTML pages." Computer speak!

Quote from: RacePhoto on October 17, 2009, 08:28


While I agree, the same discussion came up on Alamy. Search for "silo" and you won't just find farms. For some reason the word has become a slang version of isolated.

Photoshelter gathered a lot of information about the stock industry before starting their stock agency, but then they jumbled it all up and made a complete b*lls up before going bust, a lot of the info they put out was correct but not in the way they said it. 'silo' is a Corbis term for 'cut outs' but on Getty it is meaningless (except for farm buildings) whereas 'cut out' means what is does on every agency around the world including Corbis.

A lot of folk on Alamy unfortunately bought into the Photoshelter waffle which I imagine is why they added silo to their object shots, they then spent a fair amount of time bleating when Photoshelter failed.

'Solo' would make more sense wouldn't it? 

Makes sense, computer-speak transferred over to Photoshelter. Photoshelter left the market... and now we have a poor language usage hangover. 

Quote from: RT on October 17, 2009, 09:13

Quote from: RacePhoto on October 17, 2009, 08:28


While I agree, the same discussion came up on Alamy. Search for "silo" and you won't just find farms. For some reason the word has become a slang version of isolated.

Photoshelter gathered a lot of information about the stock industry before starting their stock agency, but then they jumbled it all up and made a complete b*lls up before going bust, a lot of the info they put out was correct but not in the way they said it. 'silo' is a Corbis term for 'cut outs' but on Getty it is meaningless (except for farm buildings) whereas 'cut out' means what is does on every agency around the world including Corbis.

A lot of folk on Alamy unfortunately bought into the Photoshelter waffle which I imagine is why they added silo to their object shots, they then spent a fair amount of time bleating when Photoshelter failed.

'Solo' would make more sense wouldn't it? 

 
I can't believe, my key photo was accepted at Dreamstime... they seem to have low isolation requirements....!

Quote from: simsi on October 20, 2009, 13:21

I can't believe, my key photo was accepted at Dreamstime... they seem to have low isolation requirements....!

Don't worry. Sometimes things like that happen. Photos we think that would never pass the inspection, don't get rejected and vice versa. Try to improve your technique for your own benefit.

Quote from: ljupco on October 20, 2009, 14:53

Don't worry. Sometimes things like that happen. Photos we think that would never pass the inspection, don't get rejected and vice versa. Try to improve your technique for your own benefit.

^^ emphasis added by me.  I really agree.  It will benefit you ITLR to have better technique and only upload quality images. 

It is not necessarily a good thing for you if you have a poorly edited image accepted.  A customer may buy it based on the thumbnail and then be upset when they download it and see the problems.  Customers will come back again and again to your portfolio if they like your quality, but if they download a bad image they will probably write you off for good.

yes....i was thinking the same before.
thanks for all your tips, you are great people.
i am improving my technique a lot here, that's the best about it all.

Quote from: simsi on October 20, 2009, 18:50
yes....i was thinking the same before.
thanks for all your tips, you are great people.
i am improving my technique a lot here, that's the best about it all.

Here's a quick one that illustrates how to use the pen tool to isolate in Photoshop.

http://www.all-things-photography.com/how-to-isolate-objects-in-photoshop.html

thank you!

Quote from: RacePhoto on October 21, 2009, 06:24Here's a quick one that illustrates how to use the pen tool to isolate in Photoshop.
http://www.all-things-photography.com/how-to-isolate-objects-in-photoshop.html

Why he uses the pen tool, and then he converts the area to a selection, when he could use the selection tool immediately?

A feather of 2px is much too soft and it wouldn't pass Istock. Currently I'm using 0.5px and I rarely get rejections for feathering any more. That used to be different when I used 1px.

I also didn't like the replace color tool for the whitish areas since it's linear. Dodging 8% (non-linear) would be much better and save some parts of the ropes that got bleached out by the tool. Since the ropes against the blown out sky are full of fringe (like the chains on the OP's image), I would also totally desaturate the ropes. The OP should also do it with the chains.

Quote from: lisafx on October 16, 2009, 14:56
 

The most I would ever spend in post processing an image is 20 minutes or so and that is only for one that has huge sales potential.

Wow,  I sure have been wasting my time, that is a very usefull feedback Lisa.
It makes me reconsider if my aproach to micro is going to take me anyware.
(Sorry if I'm going of topic, but time spent on files is relevant when considering isolations)

My goal is to improve my photography skills so that my post-processing takes about 1 minute for each photo: open, touch up spots, add metadata, save, done. I'm getting there. I am particularly happy when isolated objects are totally isolated in the shoot. No pen tool required.