Pre-Submission Checklist
If you are bulk submitting some microstock images, you might double check some elements that come across as flaws or digital artifacts. there is also a smaller market for microstock images with specialty borders and shadows, possibly diagonally placed.
1. Final Legibility
After cropping and perfecting a small macro image, take another look at the overall size. How likely is it customers can use such a small image? Keep this in mind while sampling raw image data and stage larger crop sizes with best resolution through upload and archive stage.
2. Â Soft Proof for Printing
By the time the photo is resampled, sent through someone’s email, the photo quality degraded by amateur Photoshop and other efforts, the soft proofing event will have clarified the final result. If your basis for marketing a certain image is to get it ready for viewing, check the resolution. Not all images will be vended for online markets.
3. Try a Reversal
Photographers and filmmakers reverse shots to increase visual appeal and leverage continuity from the previous shot’s framing. Try reversing using the horizontal flip option in Paint or other editing software. Facial features or final perspective might line up with the endpoint site’s design better. Give end users more options.
Shapes and blocks work well with reversals. Work with macro photography to find images that set well when duplicated and inset against each other for a final photo result. These types of images can make excellent icons or graphics for chapter headings. Single symbols or avatars can be made into a border or series graphic.
4. Test Drive a Border Block
Borders can be tricky unless you have a visual idea of what the resident web page or magazine article layout might look like. Red or blue, navy or brown might punch p the color appeal. The challenge lies in predicting what the webpage for an image might look like. But incorporating colored borders around an image defines more crisply the visual appeal of the site or newsletter.
Many webmasters or editors do not know how to edit images or do not have time to select border options. Use black or white to increase use options. Try a set of photos that relate to a story and border them up. Keep in mind that more complex subject matter needs less border detail, but simpler images might benefit from thicker borders.
Experiment using complementary colors from inside the shot. Thinner lines work well and complete a simple layout with minimal complexity. Webmasters and newsletter editors are used to filling in extra space with images. But it is also true that delicate effects within the shot will wilt directly against a white background. Save the webmasters from themselves and give them a bordered option to prevent bleed.
5. Try Refocusing the Shot
Even if you have spent time editing and factoring out the flaws of a given image, take a look at where the light and focus happen best. Recrop the image to focus on a mountain range ridge, reposition the best light into the center of the shot, or cut focus to the side for a different shot angle landscape or impact shot. The value is in the eye of the beholder.
