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Messages - Tomboy2290
151
« on: June 28, 2007, 17:30 »
My sales have increased too, which is very nice, but I have found that at least one of my older images has lost its keywords  I guess I'm gonna have to get busy and check my whole portfolio now ... But how do you fix the keywords?  ?
152
« on: March 06, 2007, 02:00 »
Its a no go here for me, can't submit for a couple of hours now, I'm in Aus ....
153
« on: March 01, 2007, 17:29 »
... but um ... I'm not that much of a cabbage head thanks.
Okay ... sorry ... just trying to be helpful. 
It's difficult to know how much people know on a forum like this. I guess you're probably a lot more expert than me.
Yeah, sorry here too, about being snappy, I was just being a cranky pot. Thanks for trying to help out 
154
« on: March 01, 2007, 17:08 »
I'm going crazy trying to get my isolations accepted at iStock.
All of a sudden I'm getting rejected for jagged edges. I think one of the reviewers there is checking the isolations with zero tolerance. Thats plain silly. Even the very cleanest of isolations, once they are compressed, will show slight jagginess at 100% with zero tolerance, so I think its impossible to upload a jpeg-ed isolation that would be clean enough under those conditions.
I have the same problem and no solution. I'd posted a topic on IS forum - no response.
On SS forum I had some responses but no real solution. Here's a link to SS forum topic:
http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16004
Thank you, thank you, at last someone understands what I'm talking about! And its not just me!
155
« on: March 01, 2007, 03:21 »
As I explained, the isolations were perfect at 0 tolerance before I compressed them, but when I reopened them and checked them at 100% the jaggies where there (only one or two pixels at random around the object). No one as yet has been able to provide an explanation as to why that is happening, and i can still only assume it is the compression/decompression of certain colours.
Haven't you explained it yourself here? Compression could well be the problem. The compression formula looks for edges. It does this because large areas of the same colour (like the white background) can be saved with minimal bits - it only has to specify 'same' ... 'same' ... 'same' ... for pixel after pixel ... until it gets to an edge.
Are you working in JPEG and saving in JPEG?
What happens if you work in TIFF, which doesn't compress, and then only save as a JEPG as the very last step before submitting?
erm um der How does that help? once compressed with jpeg even once the damage is done isn't it??? So when its opened again ..... anyways, if I'm not mistaken, when you open a file that has been compressed with any algorithm - jpeg or zip or tiff (which is still compression BTW tho lossless) or whatever, it decompresses to memory and is then a BITMAP, so any work done to it is done on it as a BITMAP then when you save it as a jpeg it is compressed again. I get your point about compressing and re compressing multiple times but um ... I'm not that much of a cabbage head thanks. This whole thing has come full circle so I refer back to my original post and still say that whoever is reviewing isolations that have been jpged and expecting them to pick out clean with a 0 tolerance is just expecting the impossible, now if we could upload files in TIFF or PNG format that would solve it ... Oh well I'm over it ... moving on ... thanks people
156
« on: February 28, 2007, 21:14 »
Thanks for the link. Amazing. But I think this illustrates my point. I'm a photographer. This kind of talent is for the graphic designer to develop. It's their JOB and they get paid for it. I would rather spend the extra time it takes to produce an image like this (which may or may not sell a few extra times) taking more photos. 
The problem with this thought process is the designer is thinking "Why should I have to isolate this guy's work? There's plenty of others out there that are already isolated. They don't pay me to do his work. I'll just buy from someone else." Unless there's an ugly, cluttered background to start with, isolating is fairly simple and straightforward. There's a couple of different ways to proceed, depending on what the background is to begin with. I personally prefer to get as close as I can in the camera, and then use the white eyedropper in levels. If the background is too dark, I'll use the magic wand with a tolerance between 1 and 5 percent. Color the selection white (or black). Then zoom in and clean up any jaggies with the blur tool or I may need to spot hand color with the paint brush. Then blur all the edges and I'm done. There are several other ways to go as well. Some take longer than others, but if you want an isolation, that's what you need to do. Using this, I've yet to have an isolation rejected at IS (or elsewhere for that matter). Wish I could say that about some of my other images. 
If you read my previous posts you should understand that I do LOTS of isolation work and the method I use is very similar to yours. The problem is not that I don't want to do isolation work, the problem is how much time I want to spend doing it. I have not had many isolations rejected at iStock or anywhere else until this week when I had three photos from the same batch rejected for jaggies. As I explained, the isolations were perfect at 0 tolerance before I compressed them, but when I reopened them and checked them at 100% the jaggies where there (only one or two pixels at random around the object). No one as yet has been able to provide an explanation as to why that is happening, and i can still only assume it is the compression/decompression of certain colours. Nor has anyone commented on why an isolation should be rejected when at a tolerance of 8-10 it cuts out perfectly .... and a clipping mask can be made then by anyone in a blink! PS check some of your j-peged work with a 0 tolerance and tell me what happens
157
« on: February 28, 2007, 16:23 »
Tom, if you are still interested, i recomend you this tutorial: http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/AdvancedMasking.mov
Remember is not just because is what they want, it's for you, what you learn from this has no price.
Thanks for the link. Amazing. But I think this illustrates my point. I'm a photographer. This kind of talent is for the graphic designer to develop. It's their JOB and they get paid for it. I would rather spend the extra time it takes to produce an image like this (which may or may not sell a few extra times) taking more photos.
158
« on: February 27, 2007, 18:35 »
I'm not sure if this will help but it helped me. I noticed this happening to me some times but I never could figure out why. Since I had never heard of a clipping path before reading the iStock article on it last year I figured I might be missing a step. I went back to that article, found here - http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=89, and started following all the steps outlined there. When I do that I get no jaggies. I'm guessing I was just missing a step somewhere in my haste before. Try it and let us know how it goes. If I'm telling you something you already know, please accept my apologies. It just helped me.
No apologies needed. It's so nice of you to take the time to help me out. Appreciate it very much. Thanks! I have read that article, cos they put that link in the reject notice, (nice of them) and I have re-done one of the pics rejected using this method and incorporating a clipping path just to see what happens. BUT, while I was doing that, I started to wonder something. Just how much should I be doing for the small commissions involved here. Strictly speaking, I am a photographer. I provide raw materials for designers, do I not? So why am I doing their job for them? I don't think I'm getting enough out of this to warrant my extra time, not to mention the skills involved. Anyways its all part of the learning curve. Thanks again.
159
« on: February 27, 2007, 02:35 »
Hi people, thanks for the responses. In answer to your questions; I do mainly isolation work and have dozens and dozens of isolation shots on iStock and other sites. They sell extremely well. I shoot my subjects on and against white and edit in PS by selecting with the pen tool and then adjusting the levels of the background to pure white. I have not been saving clipping paths in my files as some sites don't support it, and I figure anyone can make a clipping path around a cleanly isolated object with one click, right? Any way I had some shots of lemons rejected at iStock for jagginess, so I figured maybe I'd been sloppy and re-edited the pics so that one click on 0 zero tolerance picked them lemons out cleanly, and then saved them as j-peg. But I was a little suspicious, cause its not like me to be that sloppy, so I reopened the files and checked them at one hundred percent. The jaggies were there again, even though when saved the isolation had been perfect! I assume something is going on during the compression. Maybe something to do with the yellow against the white? The jaggies are undetectable by my eye, just a few pixels a tad off white, but enough to not pass the zero tolerance test, with a tolerance of 10 it cuts out just fine. I'm thinking if I start saving clipping paths with the files this might get them accepted more readily at iStock? Any insights into this much appreciated! Thanks
160
« on: February 26, 2007, 19:52 »
I'm going crazy trying to get my isolations accepted at iStock. All of a sudden I'm getting rejected for jagged edges. I think one of the reviewers there is checking the isolations with zero tolerance. Thats plain silly. Even the very cleanest of isolations, once they are compressed, will show slight jagginess at 100% with zero tolerance, so I think its impossible to upload a jpeg-ed isolation that would be clean enough under those conditions. Oh and that rejection reason of over filtering on images that haven't been filtered just boils my blood Just my little venting for the day .. needed that.
161
« on: February 26, 2007, 19:41 »
Despite the goings on at SS I've had my best month there ever. I've been cautious about uploading though and have only added a couple of images a week over past few weeks. Hopefully they will get things together soon and if they do it right, things should be better than ever there. Here's fingers crossed. PS: be careful what you post on the forums there, I think they are a tad cranky and are locking threads for the lamest reasons 
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