Digital Submission Guidelines
Digital Submission Guidelines
DDB Stock Photography (ddbstock) happily reviews digital submissions from professional photographers that visit Latin America and the Caribbean. Digital images are much easier for us to put up on the Web than chromes. Only photographers competent with digital editing and conversion should send digital files. Images must be edited on carefully calibrated monitors so the colors you see are the colors you get. Images must be in the correct vertical or horizontal orientation and properly exposed or carefully edited to correct exposure. They must be sharp - fuzzy images won't do. Check carefully for sharpness, which is difficult to confirm on 72 dpi monitors, so zoom in and look for text or fine texture. We need TIFF files whenever possible and encourage you to shoot/scan in that format or convert to that format from RAW. Don't convert your high resolution JPEGS to TIFF files just so you can submit TIFFs. The conversion from JPEG to TIFF introduces digital degradation, so we would far rather have the original uncompressed JPEGs. Please do not compress JPEGS, it ruins them for professional publishing. We will convert at this end if necessary. You will get far better images if you shoot in native TIFF or save your RAW files to TIFF after image manipulation.
We need all the information for your digital files that you would provide for chromes. Included in the minimum information for digital images are an image identification number, caption, and keywords. I describe how to format your image identification numbers and how to identify and use the best keywords later in this document. Ddbstock provides an Excel spreadsheet that's formatted to our specifications, with imageid (50 characters max), copyright (100 characters max), caption (255 characters max), and keywords (255 characters max). Click HERE and save the XLS file to a place on your hard drive where you can find it. The file's over 300 kb and may take awhile to download over slow circuits. If you have MS Access 2002, which comes with MS XP Office Professional (aka Access 2002), then check out the zipped file below. The file has an Access mdb file that includes the database, a form for data entry, simple print reporting, and hooks to Word, Excel, and Internet Explorer. I have included a complied exe file that should work on any Windows program titled ddbCaption.exe. It's zipped with the Access file. Just unzip to a known directory location and add a shortcut to ddbCaption.exe to your desktop. You can also double click ddbCaption.exe to get it up and running. It provides a data input screen and lists data already entered below the entry screen in a spreadsheet like display. I just took 15 minutes to knock out ddbCaption.exe, but it appears to be running fine. Remember, it's free and untested, so if you have problems with it, consider going with the Excel program. The beauty of ddbCaption is that A) it's free and B) it will run on its own without need for expensive Microsoft XP 2002 Office Professional. Download the zip file HERE. I will try to find time to improve ddbCaption and add better reporting, export options, and spell check. I will denote any future update with a 'new' graphic.
We very strongly prefer the industry standard Tagged Image File Format (TIFF), but will accept JPEGS shot with high resolution digital cameras if that's all you have. Please convert your Camera RAW files to TIFFS after you've finished editing and adjusting them. Then send us the TIFF files. JPEGS are to "thin" to work with using modern image enhancement tools in Adobe Photoshop and related programs, but if the original exposure is good, and the images are sharp with good color balance, saturation, hue, and contrast, then we can work with them
Image file size should be held between 25 - 35 meg. You may send images at any resolution from 300 dpi to 4000 dpi. Our preferred size from scans is 4000 dpi at 65% or whatever reduction is necessary to meet the 25 - 30 meg size limit. We accept up to 10 meg images shot with digital cameras. We are looking for originals that will reproduce around 8 x 12 inches at 300 dpi. Please do not send any images below 300 dpi. We accept the largest TIFFS from 5 - 11 megapixel cameras, and will drop to 4 megapixel camera TIFF output in a crunch. The output from digital cameras is superior to the output from even the best slide scanners like Nikon's Super Coolscan 5000. The superiority may not be noted in a cursory or even detailed review of camera vs. scanned digital images side by side, but it is very clear if you compare the result of the two image files after they have been re-sampled at 125%. The scanned image ppixilated at lower percentage enlargement than the native image from a digital camera. See the chart below for a comparison of megapixel to actual dimension at standard 300 dpi:
2 megapixels: 1600 x 1200
3 megapixels: 2048 x 1536 or ca. 5x7 inches @ 300 dpi
4 megapixels: 2274 x 1704 or ca. 6x8 inches @ 300 dpi
5 megapixels: 2560 x 1920 or ca. 6.5x8.5 inches @ 300 dpi
6 megapixels: 2816 x 2112 or ca. 7x9 inches @ 300 dpi
7 megapixels: 3072 x 2304 or ca. 10x8 inches @ 300 dpi
8 megapixels: 3264 x 2468 or ca. 11 x 8.2 inches @ 300 dpi
11 megapixels: 4064 x 2704 or ca. 13.5 x 9 inches @ 300 dpi
12 megapixels: 4256 x 2848 or ca. 14 x 9.5 inches @ 300 dpi
13 megapixels: 4500 x 3000 or ca. 15 x 10 inches @ 300 dpi
16 megapixels: 4900 x 3300 or ca. 16.2 x 11 inches @ 300 dpi
The required imageid, copyright, caption, and keywords may be formatted as txt, csv, xls, dbf, or mdb. That is to say, we accept delimited or fixed field length txt/Ascii files, database files from the more common data sets including Access, Dbase, Foxbase, SQL, MySQL, and any other that can be easily converted to one of the above. We also accept Excel files. File Structure for image id, caption, and keywords must be as follows:
Field Name Type Field Length
imageid text <=50 characters
copyright text <=100 characters
caption text <=255 characters
keywords text <=255 characters
imageid: This is the unique identifier for your image. This id is usually the simple name of a place with no spaces followed by your initials (2-3). If I were naming a batch of 999 images of Acapulco, they would start with acapulco+ddb+001 = acapulcoddb001 and would run to acapulcoddb099 and on through acapulcoddb999. Note that characters in the imageid are all in lower case. Please use no space or punctuation in your image names. The first image in my series on St. Thomas would be stthomasddb001. Note that I dropped the space and the ".". I recognize you have already named your images, and that the names are nothing like the ones we need. Regardless, we need to receive your images named to our specifications. Your best option is to get a free image renamer like CK Rename, then copy the set you intend to send us to a separate subdirectory, sort them by name, and then rename them. You may wish to have a name concordance with the original file names, so after you sort your images with their original names, you may want to use a file and directory printer program to print the file names to a text file or spreadsheet. It's easy to make a file copy of the original names with a free file and directory print/save to disk program like Karen's Directory Printer v5.1
caption: This is a brief, informative sentence or two that identify what, who, where, when, and any specifics about the photo. Your captions must be as complete as possible. Editors rely on your captions. If you don't include all the relevant information, they will replace your image, their first choice, and go with their second choice, the one that has full caption information. I have seen this and heard it explained dozens of times. Some of my best friends are picture editors and they all agree, a well captioned good photo will beat a poorly captioned great photo 95% of the time. They just don't have time to get back with us/you for additional caption information. Good captions assure that they can assemble a proper description of the photo in their accompanying caption information in the book or article they are working on. A title in my Acapulco series might be:
Parasailing from Condesa Beach with high-rise waterfront hotels in the background, Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico. Acapulco is Mexico's oldest tourist resort; historically the port was the only major trading center on the pacific authorized to receive trade galleons from the Philippines and China.
keywords: Keywords are one of the single most important ways to get your images found and reviewed by editors and art directors. Key wording is a science and should be done carefully if you want your images found. Put your strongest keywords first and make sure that at least the first 2-4 also appear in your captions. The more keywords that also occur in your caption, the better the search engines like it.
Wordtracker is probably the best source for detailed information and analysis of keywords. We use them extensively to analyze the effectiveness of our keywords, and we are steadily gaining hits on the sites we have corrected. See: http://www.wordtracker.com. The site is a very rich source of information on the use of keywords to entice search engines and improve search return placement. Try their Free Trial to get an idea of what you can learn from their analysis of your keywords. The committed keyworder can get a week's service from Wordtracker for a mere $25.49 and that small investment should rocket your site into the higher ranks. Keywords are always in lower case and separated by commas:
acapulco, condesa, beach, mexico, resort, pacific, oldest, trade galleon, manilla, port, historic, picture, image, photo, travel, tourism, destination, vacation
Images may be submitted on DVD +/- R. We have double sided DVD readers/recorders so we can read the 8.5 GB media if you can figure out how to record still images to it. We also accept images on external hard drives. We will copy and return the hard drive to you. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BACK-UP OF ALL IMAGES YOU SEND ON FIXED DISKS BECAUSE THEY ARE PRONE TO HEAD CRASHES IF THE POST OFFICE HANDLES THEM ROUGHLY. Please do a very thorough anti-virus/anti-pest/anti-spyware cleansing of your hard disk before sending it to us. Indicate if you have not been able to do that so we can take appropriate action. Hard drives that come in and infect our systems may be drop kicked into the Mississippi. Please include caption files in xls or another format with imageid, copyright, caption, and keyword in XLS, TXT or a related format.
We can extract ObjectName (imageid), Credit (copyright), Caption/Abstract (caption), and Keyowrds (keywords) directly from IPTC information coded into JPG files. If this information is present and used consistently, then there's no need to send any text or xml files along with your images. We prefer IPTC metadata tagged images, but we can also extract data rom EXIF information. EXIF fields include FileSource (imageid), Copyright (copyright), ImageDescription (caption), UserComment (keywords). EXIF collects much more technical data on the camera, exposure, resolution, colorspace, and many other data points recorded the instant the digital picture was taken. There are few fields for user data entry. Fields change more with EXIF versions. If you have a different version that provides for file name, caption and keywords along with copyright, then use the fields and we will extract the data manually to a CVS file that we can easily work with.
There are a number of programs that allow you to add meta information into ITPC and EXIF fields. One probably came with your camerea. Adobe Lightroom allows you to batch process all the values above into JPEGS/TIFFS which makes captioning and copyrighting simple. You just need to make sure the images selected for each batch are sufficiently similiar that the caption makes sense and the keywords are appropriate. There are also a host of less expensive programs available that allow you to edit these fields and do batch process data entry. However, they lack the image editing, organizing, and presentation options available in Lightroom. A web search for 'manual data entry ITPC EXIF' should turn up a bunch of programs. I use Full Image Info to batch extract digital photo data to CVS files, but it has no field editing options.
I have attached a simple visual basic program for coding your images. The URL is: ??? It can also be downloaded from a hyperlink when you click back from this PDF file. I have included simple MDB files for Access97 and Access2002 which you can use if you own Microsoft Access. I've also included an XLS file you can download and use to enter the data if you own Microsoft Excel. Finally, I have included a comma delimited text file which may serve as an example of the sort of file that you can make on a text editor, if that is all you have. If these programs and files are not available via hyperlink in the text below this PDF when you go back, then watch for them as I will have them up soon. Please make sure that you do not go over the number of characters in any one of the fields. The maximum number were given in the table above. Any words that go over will be cut off during HTML/PHP coding.
I provide description and discussion of a few free or inexpensive commercial software packages that I have found very useful for working with images and text below:
Advanced Batch Converter from Gold Software
It accepts 90 different file types and converts to 23 of the most common file types. This simple, capable program saves me hours when I am making JPEG preview and thumb images from large TIFF files. It will recurse through nested directories and will output to a separate subdirectory, but with the option to keep the same file structure as the original. It can rename the processed images if you wish, or just convert and change the file extension. It has features that you wold not expect in a $44 piece of software. You can edit images directly in Advanced Batch Converter, to produce a variety of effects (resize, rotate, flip, mirror, crop, filters, watermarks, morphing effects, color enhancements, sharpening etc). These effects can easily be included in a batch job. I consistently use the sharpen feature when I am batching producing preview JPEGS and use the watermark feature to stamp larger images that I do not want to go astray. The program runs through 1000 images in 100 subdirectories during batch conversion very quickly. I have found no upward limit on the number of files you can batch process. The program does not choke.
Irfanview by Bosnian coding Guru irfan skiljan
If you don't want to pay for a recursive file conversion program and perhaps need to review meta-file information and decode EXIF/IPTC/Comment text or read and convert Mr. Sid format or JPEG2000 to TIFF, then you need to get Infanview. It converts from an incredible range of different file formats to a more restricted, but still very adequate range of useful file formats. It has a complete range of effects and processes many different file types that are not available in Advanced Batch Converter. It is fully folder and file recursive so you can batch just about any conversion, do a rename on the fly while the batch runs, and add effects while batching. I simply do not have time to relate all the very cool stuff Irfanview does, so check out the hyperlink and see the section under "What is Irfanview?" The program is free for non-commercial use. It will cost you $12 for a commercial license, which I hope you will cough up if you like the program.
Quick File Renamer Pro from Skyjuice
This file and folder renamer is powerful and easy to use. It can change any part of the name of a file or folder, or it can just start over with a base name of your choice and increment by 1 to distinguish one file from another. I often use it to add a "t.jpg" at the end of my thumb files to distinguish and separate them from my display JPEGS. However, I have found many other uses for it. There are plenty of file renamers out there, but few renaming programs support recursive file and folder renaming. Try this little gem for $29.95. It's quite useful if you need to work down through nested subdirectories.
Spyder2 and Spyder2Pro Studio from Colorvision Calibrate Screen Color and Gamma
Colorvision provides a number of monitor and dual monitor/printer color calibration tools that are inexpensive and really work. I discovered the solution after I sent off an expensive ad that ran in a variety of unintended dayglo colors. While the overall effect wasn't bad, it certainly was not what I intended. I spent $189 on the Spyder and use it once a month on each of my dual monitor work stations. I use it just before doing press work. My color is now spot on and I don't have that queasy feeling, which comes from guessing that my monitor is calibrated but having to wait to see printed copy to be sure.
I will divulge the rest of my personal favorite software and hardware gadgets in the weeks and months ahead, so stay tuned to this part of the site. I will have some more good stuff for you, but right now, I gotta get back to some serious PHP coding so we can display and sell some more of your fine images over the Web. Our goal is to put up 2500 downloadable, publication quality, very password protected tiff/encrypted/64 bit password protected zip files each month. You can help if you follow the instructions above and submit and submit often.
