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AlamyUpload roll-out

Permalink Comments (12)6 July 2007 at 11:24 by Pippa Greig
Posted under News

A British post box lying on the ground with postmans trolley - Image AAXX61 © Liz Boyd
© Liz Boyd AlamyUpload testing is finished! We’ve tested the system with a group of over 500 Alamy Contributors and are happy with the way the it is working. Many thanks to all of you who helped us with the testing and in particular to those of you who took the time to complete our questionnaire. Your feedback was very useful to us and helped us to fix a few minor problems. We’re now confident that AlamyUpload works for systems outlined in our technical spec.

We will now begin rolling out AlamyUpload to all contributors and this roll-out will take a few months. Our roll out strategy is designed to be fair and to ensure we get a good variety of contributors, based on location, submission behaviour and other criteria.

We ask that you be patient as we will not be enabling AlamyUpload on request.

AlamyUpload will be enabled on all contributors’ accounts as quickly as possible whilst at the same time ensuring that we are able to cope with large numbers of online submissions. If the system continues to cope well with incoming images, we will add more and more users. You’ll get an e-mail from us as soon as you are able to use AlamyUpload.

You may like to discuss your experiences of AlamyUpload on our Contributor forum.

In response to the feedback we’ve received, we’d like to clarify a few points:

  1. The time taken to upload images will depend on the speed of your connection, and may also depend on your location.
  2. If you have problems with your internet connection it is possible that your upload may terminate before all images have been uploaded. You will then have to click “retry” to continue with the upload.
  3. If you click on a hyperlink on the upload page whilst uploading, your upload will terminate. You can however open up a new browser window or use other applications on your machine.
  4. You can upload multiple images in each upload session and each session will be given a unique media reference.
  5. After uploading your images, their status will be shown as “Processing” in "Track Submissions" within My Alamy. They will then enter the queue for QC. The time taken from images being uploaded to being assessed by QC can be up to 25 working days.
  6. We will continue to treat all images which reach QC at the same time as one submission, so all media Awaiting QC will be assessed together.
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Add your own commentComments (12)

  1. 06 July 2007 at 23:31 inga spence

    Have tried three times to upload 34 jpgs. .. 1st time 3 files uploaded, 2nd x 6 files & 3rd x 8 files.. Shows as these few uploaded and the rest "Upload failed" . Also the message "Cannot connect to Alamy" appears at the same time ..I am using Windows XP Internet Explorer 7...
    It takes approx. 10 minutes to send one file ..
    I have tried turning my screen saver off which does not help ...
    Also went into my "device mgr." to make sure that the "power save" is not checked...
    ps. after conversing with another Alamy contributer ... he e mailed me this page... thanks... inga spence
    fotoinga@hughes.net

  2. 08 July 2007 at 13:28 Adam Seward

    I have had the same problems with the Upload system. After uploading a few pictures it fails and I have to manually retry the connection - and I have to do this several times to get through a batch of only 30 or 40 pictures. It would be useful if Alamy could have an 'auto-retry' feature. At the moment it is much more efficient for me to post on DVD/CD.

  3. 10 July 2007 at 15:04 Jim laws

    As a first go using Upload, I meticulously revised my workflow from .tif/CD to .jpg's which were saved in a folder which I then selected for uploading. I only sent 5 images in order to test workflow and Upload and it worked perfectly. Each image took about 5 mins to upload from my location, so around 25 mins for the folder. I'm no expert on this, but does the quantity of images being uploaded at any one time cause problems? From my point of view, I'll gradually increase submission quantities and see if I get any adverse effects.

  4. 11 July 2007 at 04:01 Ryan mcginnis

    Okay, it works, and it worked great -- but now it's disabled. Hopefully you guys will update us as to status of this new service.

  5. 11 July 2007 at 04:01 Ryan mcginnis

    Okay, it works, and it worked great -- but now it's disabled. Hopefully you guys will update us as to status of this new service.

  6. 11 July 2007 at 19:56 Roel Meyer

    Without any trouble I just uploaded 54 images while working on that pc to prepare other images. It took about 3 minutes per image of about 10 MB each.
    In my opinion it works very well. I am very happy with this new service as it means I don’t have to wait until I have enough images to fill a DVD. And it has the additional advantage of saving the money for the DVD, package and postage. Great!!

  7. 16 July 2007 at 10:39 Deryck Dillon

    Has worked really well for me , best done in batches of around 15 images. But will this option further increase the rate of images going onto the site, further diluting sales opportunities?Is it the time for Alamy to revisit its editorial policy?

  8. 17 July 2007 at 01:03 Jeff Greenberg

    Has anyone successfully sent a large batch, say, 100+ or even 500+ at a time? Details appreciated.

  9. 18 July 2007 at 18:02 Nitish Naharas

    Is it possible for you to give us an estimated schedule for the remaining contributors to be enabled? I hope and am sure you have a timetable for the enablement. That would at the least tell us if one should not hope for the enabling of upload any time soon.

  10. 20 July 2007 at 12:57 paul negri

    I sent a bach of fifty pix without any problems. Easy and smooth.
    You have done a good job guys!

  11. 26 July 2007 at 18:57 Olaf briel

    Just got enabled for AlamyUpload and sent the first 10 images.

    It looks like the Alamy Java Applet is much slower than regular FTP Upload programs like Filezilla.

    Is this a temporary bug? Or is it done intentionally for balancing the load on Alamys servers?

  12. 02 August 2007 at 00:48 Ralph Thompson

    Just tried the Upload system a couple of times and works flawlessly. Love it. As a result, I have been inspired to scan a few of my 4x5 nighttime shots to the size required by Alamy. Anything that speeds up the throughput and helps sell more images, without reducing quality is a plus me.

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