The raw truth
I have been an avid reader of your magazine for some time. Your tips and lessons have proved to be invaluable to me. Then I read your ‘Making cash with your Nikon’ feature in N-photo 91 and thought I would try my luck. I had a few photos that I’d been playing around with and thought I would upload a couple to a stock library and see how things turned out.
First problem was pixel size was too small; no problem, go back into Photoshop and increase the pixel size. Problem solved. Second problem was figuring out the description and keywords. My wife is a glass artist, and sells online, so she was able to help me with this – you do need to get your words right to get the hits. So description and words sorted I then uploaded my shots and sat back to wait for the money to roll in.
Then I had a look at the photos as they appeared in their pending box and was horrified at the quality. So I started to look at their requirements about JPEG compression artefacts and how this affects data loss. I thought I had edited photos that I shot in Raw and then uploaded them as JPEGS. So I went back to the originals and – would you believe it? – they were shot in JPEG! This was because they were taken when we were out with friends who wanted me to email photos to them. Now I know what an idiot I am, I now rename my files to make it easy to see, with JPEG or RAW in the filename. I’m sure there is a better way, but I am a newbie. But the next ones will earn me the millions I’m sure.
Eric Robson it can be a pain converting raw images to JPEGS that you want to share quickly, so why not shoot raw and JPEG together? that way you can email the JPEGS, but have the raw data to work on for images that you want to take further!