Selling photos online... official MoneySavingExpert.com discussion

shopbot

novelli wrote: »

If you upload the photos on the above sites tho can people not download them for free????

Yes and no. In Flickr you can disable the option to download the photo and Flickr puts a transparent mask over the image to prevent a right click and save as action. However if you can see it on a screen you can download it even if it's not immediately obvious how. This would however break the copyright of the photographer. In my previous post I gave the advice to resize the images down so that even if someone does manage to download them then they will be off little commercial use as the file size will not allow a decent print size. The biggest danger here is people copying them to their own websites and passing them off as their own. The other solution is to put a watermark on the image and a quick Google would show how to do it. Image theft does occur and there have been some high profile cases on Flickr however if you take the right precautions you can minimise the chances of this happening. If you want to sell your photos then you will need to take this risk. H

niccy

a very interesting thread which appeals to the David Bailey in me.
I am very fortunate, as where i live you really can just point and shoot, and achieve stunning photos (otherwise someone like me who dosn't really understand his ISO from his ASDA or was that asa, would not be fortunate enough to have had sales)
I currently use a Nikon D50.
I do however have a query , when does a photo (that could theoretically belong to someone else) become so manipulated and altered that it is then yours?
Is it when the original photographer can no longer recognise it ?

For example take Man Rays "Tears"

JennG18

just wanted top say thank you to everyone for all the help and info I couldn't say it sooner with the site going down.

I submitted my photo's I realised I was getting confused with the JPG size and the file size not being the same... I worked it out and only had to enlarge them slightly

I will be keeping my eye on this thread, as like I said I am only just starting out, still learning things and I am very interested!

thank you again!

Mice_Elf

This is of great interest to me. I'm a really avid photographer and have even made a few sales...just would love to make a lot more!

I've made calendars as Christmas presents and have orders for more this year, but would like to learn how to sell the images that I take. I see opportunities for photos everywhere and do take good photos, even if I say that myself.

I would love to start selling and be able to make money from them. I currently use a Nikon D50, with varying size lenses and we have some great vistas around here - my forte is natural... I'm not good at portraiture photos.

kerri_gt

Saw a mention of PhotoShop earlier - another excellent Digital Imaging package that is more competitively priced than PhotoShop is Paint Shop Pro Photo by Corel - they have just released their X2 version and its getting some excellent reviews. Used it myself to alter the resolution of images and it was as easy as a couple of mouse clicks.

I have some photos I took in New York that I would really like to sell but they are worth far more than a couple of pence a pop (in my opinion anyway). Just had one put onto a large canvas for myself and for an Xmas present - I'd love to sell them as canvas prints commercially but am not sure who to contact or where to start...... any ideas?

martinlewisfanclub

Hi,
Apologies if this is a stupid question, but can anyone advise me how to increase the size of my photos? I wanted to upload some that are about 6-9Mb but BritishImages requires a min of 10Mb. (You can probably tell I'm not very savvy at the technical side of things) Many thanks

JennG18

martinlewisfanclub wrote: »

Hi,
Apologies if this is a stupid question, but can anyone advise me how to increase the size of my photos? I wanted to upload some that are about 6-9Mb but BritishImages requires a min of 10Mb. (You can probably tell I'm not very savvy at the technical side of things) Many thanks

that's exactly the same problem I had... it only wants an image size of 10mb not a file size... if you use photo shop go to Image - Image Size and it says at the top of the little box the image size, you can increase the size in there but if you increase it to much it distorts it... when I had increased the pixels to the size they required my image size was 12Mb but the file size was only 3Mb and thats what they wanted... the image size of 12Mb not the 3Mb... if that makes sense

I uploaded some picture to them a week or so ago and haven't heard anything back yet

budgetflyer

Sorry to put a neg in here,
but your average digital camera out of Argos or Comet just doesn't produce the kind of quality photos that people pay reasonable money for. Thats why some cameras cost 3K and others 50 quid !
It really isnt a case of getting a nice photo of Blackpool Tower on a sunny day with your [SIZE=-1]casio exilim[/SIZE] (good camera btw for holiday snaps, but a real photographer would cut his wrists b4 using it for an assignment)

Photoshop and the likes of CANT increase the quality. you need a better camera for that.Most of the quality images are sold in bmp format for graphic design etc.
I think thats why those sites set those parameters - to discourage amature time wasters.

seven-day-weekend

My husband sells photographs our our beautiful location here in Spain locally. He has not really bothered much with the internet, but from what he has found they really do need to be excellent photographs, both in an artistic sense amd technically.

He actually has three cameras for different work as you need a different one for different scenarios. He has an SLR with different lenses and also a high resolution 'point and press' as well as another digital camera.

Sorry I don't know any of the technical terms but if you want to sell them professionally to magazines etc, as well as being the right size and resoulution, they have to be good.

(Not saying yours are not, btw!).

martinlewisfanclub

My camera is a Nikon Coolpix885 (cost around £400 new-not £2000 but not £50 either) and really has produced some lovely photos. I believe I can do the artistic bit occasionally, but I am technically illiterate - but learning. Of course I realise these photo sites don't want timewasters that wasn't really my question. If photo sizes (or whatever) can't be manipulated then that's fine, I won't waste any more of my time. My images seem artistically as good as some on their site but obviously if they can't be increased without losing quality then I accept that it's a non-starter.
Thanks budget flyer for your realistic advice but it's a tad patronising and a wee bit snobbish to assume we're talking Kodak Instamatic and granddad with a hanky on his head at Blackpool's pleasure beach:-)