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48 hour turnaround

Permalink Comments (21)25 June 2008 at 12:30 by Alan Capel - Head of Content
Posted under News

A still from the 1982 film 48 Hours -Image A13P7Y © Photos 12
© Photos 12At our contributor event in 2007 we announced that we were aiming to drastically reduce the time it was taking for us to process your images through the Alamy system. Earlier this year we released a number of development and process changes designed to address this very issue.

This improved system has been in place for some time now but we wanted to see a significant improvement over time before formally announcing it.

We have been delighted with the results. Previously, at worst we were taking up to 5 weeks to move images through our upload and QC processes. The average time from receiving a submission to getting a decision on QC and making the images available to keyword is now less than 48 hours. These improvements along with the introduction of Alamy Upload have hopefully revolutionised how you submit and how quickly you can get your images up on the site.

Contrary to urban myth we have done this without lowering or raising the bar on Quality Control. We still assess images using the same criteria and submissions will still pass or fail based on the same standards.

We appreciate that "Processing Errors' can occassionally still hold submissions up, so we have also been working on changes to our software which will ensure that these are greatly reduced. Where errors are valid (e.g.the image may be in the wrong file format) they will be dealt with swiftly and will not hold up the 'good' images. We will make an announcement on the blog when we have also seen an improvement in this area.

Improving the turnaround time for all contributors was a priority for us during the first half of the year and we are now looking forward to completing the other projects on our target list for 2008. We stand by the upcoming list of projects we announced in November 07 and have already undertaken a considerable amount of work on many of these inititaives. So be sure to keep an eye on announcements as they appear on the blog.

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Add your own commentComments (21)

  1. 25 June 2008 at 12:40 Ilan Rosen

    This is great

    With all the QC problems I have had in the past two weeks this short turn around has been great. Can correct and re upload in 24 hours and see results almost immediately

    Waiting for further positive improvements

    Ilan

  2. 25 June 2008 at 12:56 Pearl bucknall

    I find the combination of upload and 48 hour turnaround absolutely fantastic and think Alamy should be congratulated on this achievement. Having small numbers of images going through at any one time makes the keywording a little more manageable / less tedious (emphasis on LITTLE) so any further improvements in this area as well would be most welcome.

  3. 25 June 2008 at 14:02 KT

    "Where errors are valid (e.g.the image may be in the wrong file format) they will be dealt with swiftly and will not hold up the 'good' images".

    This is great news but what of the invalid errors that seem to be happening an awful lot on what are perfectly good images in the correct file formats?

    PS - the picture selected to enhance this page is soft and appears to be lacking definition. Perhaps another image would have been more appropriate?

  4. 25 June 2008 at 14:22 Kumar sriskandan

    The improved turnaround time is really great, but how about introducing the search changes you told us would happen a while back using the ""[]and ^ signs? I have been religiously using these in keywording and all its doing at the moment is reducing my CTR!
    Thank
    Kumar

  5. 25 June 2008 at 14:59 John peter

    A very valuable development. My main issue is with how to restrict images to "Editorial use only" without going through a whole series of deleting various descriptions of potential commercial use. I would value a box where you could just select "Editorial Use Only" and leave it at that as a restriction. The sooner this change is introduced the better. Thanks in advance.

  6. 25 June 2008 at 15:18 Jim Laws

    Well done, Alamy. The speed of the process now enables me to manage my images more effectively. I find that from upload to QC is now a 'next day' process.

  7. 25 June 2008 at 17:09 John gaffen

    The 48hr QC turnaround has completely turned around my ability to increase my portfolio without suffering nervous breakdowns! Well done Alamy keep up the good work!

  8. 25 June 2008 at 18:50 He who ha ha

    "Contrary to urban myth..."

    Correct to
    Contrary to portal myth

  9. 25 June 2008 at 20:07 Bill Brooks

    Congratulations Alamy. So fast we could almost use the system for news images. From a professional snob with a Mac.

  10. 26 June 2008 at 05:38 Arni Katz

    Bravo Alamy!

    At last this is the incentive to pull all the stops out of submission.

    And by the way...sorry about the last buggered image that I let slip through!

    (blush)

    I really am trying to have the editors love me!

  11. 26 June 2008 at 11:33 Tony Lilley

    Well done Alamy, this has helped enormously with my work. I would also like to see just one tick box when an image is for editorial use only. I just don't have the time to go through all the options required at the moment to select this option for a great number of images.
    Best wishes, Tony Lilley.

  12. 26 June 2008 at 16:49 jb

    I sincerely hope you are able to expedite the fix for "processing errors". You have no idea how frustrating it is to be told by the software that "processing errors" have occurred on images that are readable by Photoshop, Lightroom, and Infranview; and which have been accepted, unchanged, by other agencies.

    This problem has been around for months. It's great to see you celebrating the 48hr turnaround, but extremely frustrating still to have to submit images on DVD.

    I think it might be useful to reiterate which items are on the target list for 2008. You mention that they they were announced in November but the blog archives for November make no mention of them.

  13. 27 June 2008 at 12:45 Henry beeker

    Perfect job, well done!

    Now I would like to see also some better tools for replacing live images which I feel could bennefit from modern day post-processing technogy.

  14. 27 June 2008 at 13:06 Tony lilley

    I think Henry Beeker has made a very good suggestion, a way to easily replace existing pictures with better quality re-processed versions.
    In the case of upload errors, I have had some but not very many. I think that problems people are having may be with their internet connection?

    Best wishes, Tony.

  15. 30 June 2008 at 17:07 Morten svenningsen

    Good to hear Alamy - any chance we'll get the possibility to mark images as 'news photo'? With a 48h turnaround time, this could possibly create a new channel of revenue from the editorial/news market. I think you already have the client base!

  16. 01 July 2008 at 16:46 Jaybee

    Great work all at Alamy that made this happen! It does make life as an active contributor so much easier to manage.

    Keep on making great improvements. May I suggest the "" and [] and ^ are introduced next!!

  17. 02 July 2008 at 18:58 Bill Kuta

    Alamy, could you tell us more about the "development and process changes" that have enabled 48-hour turnaround? Specifically, do you now have software tools that detect various quality characteristics of each incoming image, as a tool for QC?

  18. 03 July 2008 at 16:57 Derek Vallintine

    It works fine, I uploaded an image at 8pm and when I checked at 9 am next morning it had been through quality control. The only bad news is that the image was rejected!!!!
    Good work Alamy

  19. 09 July 2008 at 11:33 michael arthur thompson

    i was impressed with the 48 hour QC turnaround it was a big improvement - however! its now (1st week of July)slipped back to a week / 5 days for the QC process to complete?
    and its taking 2 or 3 days to go from processing 25 days etc etc to awaiting QC.

    anyone else or is it just me?

    Michael Thompson

  20. 10 July 2008 at 15:34 Stephen Power

    Do you intend to change the "processing - may take up to 25 days" message, in the near future?

  21. 15 July 2008 at 21:19 Arni katz

    I guess I spoke too soon.

    Before Alamy announced this improvement my images were being processed in less than 48 hours. Now it's taking over a week and 10 images were failed with absolutely no reason given. I went back over them after rejection and there was NOTHING at issue.

    Frustrating and confusing indeed.

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