Alamy SizeCheck utility

[braeside]

Apologies for the blatant advert for this free utility, but this may be of some use to those who use Aperture/Light Room to resize their photos for uploading to the Alamy Stock agency.

Alamy SizeCheck - software by Braeside Communication Services

Check that your Alamy photo submissions are the correct file size.

With this software utility you can check that your photographs are correctly sized for the Alamy Stock Agency before you upload them.
Alamy requires JPG files that are greater than 48MB in size when uncompressed and not more than 25MB compressed.

Simply choose the folder that your photographs are in and Alamy SizeCheck will check each jpg for correct uncompressed and compressed file sizes.

Alamy SizeCheck is available for both Apple Macintosh OS X and MicroSoft Windows platforms.

Free Download from here:

http://www.braeside.plus.com/photograph ... alamy.html

I wrote this software utility in response to some other members who were accidentally uploading incorrectly sized files, usually as a result of cropping to odd aspect ratios. For some reason the Alamy file uploader does not detect incorrectly sized files now?

Regards

David Anderson.

[David Kilpatrick]

Great utility David - one small problem on my Mac (10.4.11) - if I go to another program window, such as going to Thunderbird to write a flag up of this utility to Alamypro, then try to return to SizeCheck before it has finished its work, I can not make its window active. Once the processing is over, I can get to the app again and scroll through the list. It found two undersize files at 47.96MB which were shown up by Photoshop as being exactly 48MB, in my latest process batch. It took about 1,5 seconds per file to examine the JPEGs.

Does it also flag up a warning if your JPEG is over 20MB (their limit for uploading) or the file is over 200MB native size? (I believe they don't like anything over that now, though I used to submit large Dimage 5400 II scans which could be over 200MB).

David

[braeside]

Great utility David - one small problem on my Mac (10.4.11) - if I go to another program window, such as going to Thunderbird to write a flag up of this utility to Alamypro, then try to return to SizeCheck before it has finished its work, I can not make its window active. Once the processing is over, I can get to the app again and scroll through the list. It found two undersize files at 47.96MB which were shown up by Photoshop as being exactly 48MB, in my latest process batch. It took about 1,5 seconds per file to examine the JPEGs.

Does it also flag up a warning if your JPEG is over 20MB (their limit for uploading) or the file is over 200MB native size? (I believe they don't like anything over that now, though I used to submit large Dimage 5400 II scans which could be over 200MB).

David

Thanks for the note David. I'll check what is going on when it is in the background processing. Yes, it does take a finite time to check each file because it actually opens and closes each file in turn, rather than just checking what the file info says. This has the possible benefit of making sure that the JPG is not corrupted. (I may add an option of showing a small thumbnail image of each file).

Yes it should flag up oversize uncompressed filesizes, I did put that in the code.

[braeside]

To clarify the utility checks that the jpg is less than or equal to 25MB compressed and that it is greater than or equal to 48MB when uncompressed. (That appears to be the current Alamy filesize requirements).

[David Kilpatrick]

What would be very useful would be to make the file open in Photoshop if clicked in the SizeChecker list, then it would be possible to sort each problem without hunting file down separately - rather like the Mac's Find, Spotlight, etc utilities let you click-open any file displayed in the search results. And if you really wanted to refine it, bit depth and embedded profile would complete the compliance as Alamy don't want 16-bit files sent in error. I know many shooters use 16-bit processing then mode down to 8 finally, and that's something which may accidentally get omitted.

David

[braeside]

All good suggestions that I may be able to implement. Stay tuned. Thanks.

It of course only opens Jpg which are 8 bit only.

[ianmiddy]

What would be very useful would be to make the file open in Photoshop if clicked in the SizeChecker list

I'd think what would be better would be to define [and keep] a path to the program of choice - as we don't all use Photoshop...

...but a very useful utility - cheers.

IDM

[braeside]

What would be very useful would be to make the file open in Photoshop if clicked in the SizeChecker list

I'd think what would be better would be to define [and keep] a path to the program of choice - as we don't all use Photoshop...

...but a very useful utility - cheers.

IDM

Thanks Ian, I wrote it because I use Aperture and it has no way of specifying a precise output file size in MB, so that is relevant to me.

Thinking further about it, I cannot see a way of referencing the outputted JPG to the original in PhotoShop, Lightroom or Aperture, so I don't think that it will be possible.

I do hope to at least add a check for colour profile if I can.

[David Kilpatrick]

I don't go back to the original source to fix size errors! If the file is 47.x MB instead of 48MB, I just open the last version, zap the size up a few pixels and resave.

I have never been able to detect any detail loss or artefacts from this process, despite the theoretical impossibility of interpolating 5050 pixels wide to 5100 pixels wide (or whatever). Photoshop does it perfectly.

David

[braeside]

I am working on the utility this morning, as I have a bit of spare time between projects.

I have made some improvements - it now underlines the figures that have caused the fail in the file, and also error traps and flags up a file that wont open as a JPG.
Some cosmetic changes to the listbox to make it match the look of the OS X finder.
Plan now to get the interface responsive while it is looping through.

More later.

[braeside]

I should have another version available by tomorrow that is about a million times faster and also checks the colour profile is Adobe RGB. It will initially only be for Macintosh as I am using some OS X specific stuff. I hope to improve the Windows version later also.

[braeside]

New Mac version withdrawn pending bug fix - stay tuned.

[braeside]

New versions now available (1.0.4)

[braeside]

Version 1.0.6 available - Mac and Windows versions now fast and also check Colour Profile is correct for Alamy.

[colmo]

I can confirm this tool works perfectly on Linux via Wine (using Windows version) also.