Learning the Micro Drill

Posted on June 30th, 2009 in MicroStock, Microstock markets, Techniques, image management

colordressskirtsmallquality

Micro stock pictures made into low cost legal images are easier than you think. Let’s work an exercise that reveals how much value and image potential can be mined out of one single photo, one well composed high resolution image file.

Use one complex image with a lot going on in it. Try a bunch of crops and edits with a good color image with some visual appeal. Photographs tend to entertain the eye when they contain items or objects people want. Doing these file editing and image cropping chores can keep a huge amount of media at your fingertips for micro stock or low cost legal sites vending.

I started with a photograph of a women’s dress shop near where I live. The stunning quality of the fine textiles, beaded creations, and amazing wedding dresses on the mannequins had caught my camera lens many times before. but this time I had learned that the museum photo setting grabbed the best detail when my balance was right and my focus taken care of. Since I now knew what I was capable of deriving in the desktop editing “room”, the key was to start out with a raw shot I could then process to my heart’s content.Many images came from one single high resolution image grab.

This time a few months ago I as left with grabbing video and using frame capture shots with artifacts and less visual interest thatn a static shot usually incorporates. This morning I took a shaded shot that protected the shot from the glare. But since the museum setting backed off on the flash, I wasn’t trapped in that high gloss plate glass window trap I have fallen into oh so many times before.

The museum setting drank in all the nice resolute color detail I wanted. The darker edges of the shop interior could be cropped away. The reflections in part of the window wouldn’t mess up the broad expanse of the image fiIe could use. And now, to the editing application with ye!

The image file was minimized as I must always do since my twelve mega pixel Kodak establishes a poster sized image of everything. Yeah, I know I could change the setting. But you never know just when that crazy lucky shot will come through. That’s a poor time to be thinking how unwise you were to reset the default specification on your digital camera’s memory and dimension settings.

There are some software packages with the miniature view riding in another window as you work. Â This way I can see the “postage stamp” light box value, as it were. I always try and get a “square” or icon possibility out of any shot. This makes certain forum registrations fun because an eye catching avatar. The larger photos sort of took shape all by themselves.

But I don’t save the file at that size dimensions, I tend to take it down to about 20% magnification. Then I started cropping and copying dimensional rectangles from the larger magnified raw file. One shot features thedresses. One shot features the mannequin. One shot was cropped to show only the rich contrast in textures and colors on the row of dresses on the rack. By saving each file, I was able to make them available when uploading from the thumbnail view option in the file management browser. By starting each file name with the same combination of terms, I made the filenames search friendly. Instead of having to choose certain angles and margin crops, I did one image that featured the better defined patterns and color textures, and one that filled the square with the best perspective angle from the rack’s sideways slant in the photo frame.

Keeping the various microstock and low cost legal image uses makes cropping a forthright task. I could see that from various crops the value of the shot changed. One shot looked like a feature photo for textiles. One looked like an image to promote shopping. The color values for the clipped in shot of the dresses overlapping one another had a celluloid look for color advertising or design appeal. The beauty and fashion themes were consistent in almost every image view. Keywords like ‘retail sales” and ladies formal clothing” kept going through my head. By the time the matching content was ready, I would be able to work from the available images.

This method has become a routine to process work when I have a few moments between Youtubes, waiting for a conference call to begin, or during a tele-Skype meeting with the sound turned off. By working and cropping all the image files at once, the search by date function allows easy finding even if you can’t remember the keywords.

If I think of an online photo file image effect I need, the browser interface for upload can be sortd by latest date, giving me quick access to the range of files I need without lengthy date and directory searches. By applying these tools and online editing effects to a mass of photography files, the numbers for microstock success will stack up in my favor sooner.

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