In Part 3 of this series the intention is to offer some strategies for fixing the problems highlighted in Part 2 so that you can start earning money selling your photographs through Internet Microstock Agencies.

Part 1 passed on some ideas about what to think about when taking photographs for use in Microstock.

It might be worth having a look back at Part 2 if you are unfamiliar with any of the rejection reasons referred to below.

The solutions offered here require at least a cursory knowledge of how to drive your photo editing software. The idea is to give direction on what to concentrate on when fixing for the Microstock Agencies. You will need to refer to your software's manual for specifics if you are not sure where to find the various tools mentioned here.

There is no getting away from the fact that to get your images past the Stock Agency inspectors you are going to need some sort of photo editing software and there is also no getting away from the fact that Photoshop is the industry standard, unfortunately it is prohibitively expensive.

Most of the simple tips I am offering here do not need the sophistication of the full version of Photoshop, in fact a free program that comes from the light side of software development: GNU (it gets darker the nearer you get to Microsoft) is all that you will need to fix the basic issues highlighted here.

The program is called Gimp, which is a slightly unfortunate name which stands for:
GNU Image Manipulation Program

A windows version can be downloaded from here it is about 15Mb in size.

Any other software will do as long as it allows you to manipulate the 'levels' of colour, contrast and brightness. Obviously there are other things that you need, such as cropping, rotation and resizing and beyond the basics there are any number of tools that are useful.

The one thing I would reiterate though is : Try to get your photograph right in the camera because it will save you a lot of time on the computer.

The first step to fixing any image is to make a copy and then work only on the copy.

If you make any mistakes or end up over processing and for whatever reason you do not like the end result, you can then always go back to the original and start again.

The chances are that as you get to understand what the stock agencies want, you may be able to go back to a failed image and rescue it by re-editing the original (after copying it again).

So I will say it again, make a copy before you start.

But don't stop there, it is worth making a copy after each editing stage, just in case the next stage does not work, you can always delete all of the intermediate files (but not the original) when you have finished.

After making a copy the next thing to do is to remove anything from the edges of your photograph that detracts from the main subject.

Do not be too enthusiastic, sometimes an area of empty sky can be a good thing as it leaves room for a designer to put copy text. There is also the fact that the larger the photograph that you submit to some agencies, the more you can potentially earn from it. But from the point of view of this article, the larger the remaining photograph after cropping, the more scope you have to use down-sizing as a solution to some of the other problems you might have (see below).

However, after taking the above into account, this is a good time to get rid of the extraneous persons head that might have crept into one corner or a dark area to one side that might be difficult to add light to. What to keep in and what to crop out has to be a matter of personal choice and experience.

Down-sizing is when you use software to reduce the overall image size (measured in Megapixels) of your photograph. So If you take a photo at 10.2 Mp it might sometimes be worth down-sizing it to 4 Mp (the minimum size generally accepted by the agencies).

It might sound strange, but the best advice I can give for getting problematical photographs accepted, is to down-size them .

It is true, that all of the major agencies, except Shutterstock, offer prices based on the size of the end customer download and if you do not supply the maximum image size, you are limiting your potential income. However, it is also true that if your photograph does not get accepted you are not going to get any income at all.

Down-sizing can go some way to fixing

• Focus
• Digital Artifacts
• Purple Fringing
  

Thinking about it the reason is obvious; there are less pixels to show up as problems. By taking photographs at the maximum resolution of your camera and then down-sizing you are maximising the potential of your equipment, which as you are only just starting out at making money from photography, is probably not up there with the quality of the full professionals.

Down-sizing is not a magic bullet, but it can help with some less than perfect images. Take a look at the following results of full sized fragments of a photograph with problems which was then down-sized.

Both of the above images are 500 pixel square fragments of the same original photograph viewed at 100% resolution. The second fragment is part of an image file that has been down-sized to produce a total image size of 4 Mp.

All of the problems with the first fragment (focus, artifacts, slight fringing) are still there in the second, only they are not so noticeable. The image inspector will work over all of your submission at 100% so this will be the same view of the fragment that they will get, The second fragment might get passed (it is still too dark) but the first would be rejected for focus, if nothing else.

What ever software you are using to fix your photograph seek out the levels tool and have a look at the histogram graph of the light levels in your image. If the graph is bunched over to one side or the other you have white balance problems. In practice if the graph is bunched like the two examples to the right, you ought to be able to see that you have problems without a graph. The order that this information is displayed depends on your software, but one describes an over exposed image and the other an underexposed.

It is very possible that the images that caused these histograms are beyond saving, certainly they would require considerable work, beyond the scope of the basic techniques described here.

The image inspectors will look at the histogram before they do any close inspection of the photograph, they are looking for something like the third graph to the right.
Note that there is a reasonably smooth progression from the edges to the centre and non of the spikes reach the top of the box. Spikes hitting the top of the graph and flattening out indicates clipping and a loss of detail.

First of all don't bother trying to fix your white balance before you have finished cropping and down-sizing because you might well have to do it all over again and fiddling about with the white balance is quite destructive (of course you always have the original to go back to, because you made that copy).

To the right is the histogram as shown in the levels tool of the winding gear image fragment from the above down-sizing example.
This is a photoshop graph, but the Gimp levels tool is basically the same, unfortunately, it reverses the logic with light to the left and dark to right but the idea is the same.

As was suggested earlier, the image is too dark and the histogram confirms this by having an empty area to the right (highlight) and a small amount of clipping over to the left (shadow).

A lot the problems can be fixed by simply moving the sliders so that there is no longer any empty area to the right. For this image the right slider is dragged to the left until it meets the histogram and the change is confirmed.

After the above change the histogram now looks like this and the image fragment like this (see right).

The histogram now fills the whole box, however, the clipping problem on the left is still there, which is probably why there are still areas of the image that are too dark.

My tool of preference at this point would be Photoshop's Shadow/Highlight adjustment, a wonderful tool for this sort of work which allows you to lighten or darken the mid tones without changing the whole image. However the same effect can be achieved with a standard levels tool

To get the right look to the image, fiddle about with the midtone slider in the middle of the levels graph and also with the output levels. Probably only minimal changes are required, particularily as you will start to get artifacts appearing if you attempt to add too much light.

The top image to the right shows the levels tool after making the changes, the second image is the histogram after the levels changes are confirmed and third, the final image fragment, ready to be submitted to the agency.

Note that a fair amount more detail has appeared in the dark areas.

The answer to small aberrations or things you do not want in your Photograph is to clone them out.

The clone tool is common to most photo editing programs. It takes an area of pixels from one place and clones them into another location.

This sounds simple, but it can require a steady hand if the area needing editing is surrounded by other details that you do not want to lose. The best strategy to employ is to work at a 200% zoom, use donor areas from as close to the offending element as possible and to use as small a donor set of pixels as your patience can stand. Work around the area you are replacing moving into the centre.

An alternative to cloning is to use a spot blur tool, or smudge. Sometimes you need to obscure rather than replace. This might be the case with the features of someone in the middle distance for whom you do not have a signed release form.

The images to the right are a sort of before and after example set. However to avoid the same copyright issues that the cloning is meant to solve, I have pixelated the areas on the before shot that have been cloned out on the after shot.

Any fringing left over after down-sizing will probably need removing. Unfortunately this is not simple and how you do it will depend of the software you have.

I will give a Photoshop solution here, however if you are using Gimp, there is a plugin available at the Gimp Plugin Registry. This looks like it may be an easier way than following Photoshop solution.

This solution is fairly destructive and depending how much fringing you are suffering from might effect the overall image so much that it is not worth continuing.

1. Open the image in Photoshop.
2. Create a new layer copy.
3. Blend this using the colour blend mode (or color if you prefer).
4. Apply the Gaussian Blur Filter until the fringing disappears or your image becomes so washed out as to be useless.
5. Merge the two layers back into one and save the image.