Lifestyle stock photography...

Is there anything more completely artless in the stock photography world than lifestyle? Probably not, particularly when documenting something as completely commercial as people moving home.

So here we have Son and Charlie moving house...

Happy Christmas!

Well not sure looking at this....

My wife is a costume maker - theatrical and period - and often gets to make something a little unusual.

So this is me, (yo,ho, ho), and don't I look miserable.... It's on the way to Alamy and is already on Photoconnect and MyLoupe. The photographer? My 13 year old son Wendel. Didn't he do well!

On the cheap (or why I don't own Photoshop)

If you've just read my workflow details in the post below then you are probably asking 'Why no Photoshop?'

Why do photographers go out and spend £600 on Photoshop and then use only 1% of the available functionality when for the functions that they do use there is far cheaper software that does it better?

That's a question that I used to ask 2 years ago. Now Photoshop has caught up with the other software in the areas most important to me but still why pay £600?

OK - I could buy 'Elements' but somehow it upsets my Windows system.

If radical adjustments are necessary I take them on in Capture One LE (£65) - and working with curves on selective areas of an image I carry through in Paint Shop Pro (£70). Two years ago it was the British Journal of Photography that rated PSP's resizing feature (vital to Alamy submissions) equal to or better than Photoshop or Genuine Fractals (much better than the latter). The speed of saving LZW TIFFs was also much better - key elements in my workflow.

But Paint Shop Pro minces IPTC data - hence the addition of ACDSee (£30).

And what about the free Irfanview????

So photographers, unless you are among the few who use the truly advanced features, stop subsidising all those Graphic Professionals who tend to use the true power of Photoshop. Since acquiring Macromedia, Adobe is becoming a monopoly in the imaging marketplace. Apple users - stop vilifying Microsoft while spending thousands on Adobe - at least Uncle Bill gives mega-millions to deserving charities.

And the final Adobe insult is of course the Bridge - RF images on tap for designers too lazy to look for Photoconnect or Alamy or the many independents out there.

So before buying the next upgrade just think for a moment - there are alternatives out there.

Stock photography workflow...

If you have time to spare then you can fill it very quickly if you have a less than organised approach to selling your images. Everyone is different but if your aim is to make a living from photography then you have to focus on the techniques that will save you time. Capturing the image may take 1/250th second but everything that follows can be a pain in the butt.

I am building improvements into photoconnect to fit my way of working. Although I may not use the same camera or software as others, the principles of this workflow will I am sure be used my many photographers who submit images to multiple online agencies.

1. Take pic with no sharpening and normall no other fancy settings on the camera
   
2. Capture in RAW & fix histogram etc if necessary using Capture One.
   
3. Convert to 16 bit TIFF using Capture One
4. The original RAW file is retained and backed up
5. Resize unsharpened on camera original for Alamy using Paint Shop Pro (no sharpening!)
6. Save as LZW TIFF
7. Use Image Info Toolkit to add captions and keywords
8. Send images into Alamy & retain files as originals for other uses & backup
9. For MyLoupe I resize Alamy images to 72% and 48% in ACDSee (which retains all IPTC data) and save as 8% compressed JPEG
10. Upload to MyLoupe 6 images at a time (10 never works!)
    
11. For Photoconnect resize Alamy images to 11% and sharpen so display looks good on web
    
12. Load to photoconnect
13. One click to keywords on photoconnect
14. Link in photoconnect image to Alamy for that instant download effect

The only time that keywording is done is once at step 7.

If you do steps 8 to 11 in Paint Shop Pro then you lose the keywords. It MAY be OK to resize in Photoshop depending on what version you have - if you lose your keywords then you have to look at alternatives.