Upsize for Alamy

I receive a lot of question lately on upsizing for Alamy from Adobe Lightroom.

It is not that difficult, you need at least a 6 MP camera. I have a 6 MP Nikon D70s and I never had any problem with it.

But you do need a good sharp image to start with. Simply prepare them using your normal workflow. Don't crop your photos, since everything you crop must be added later by upsizing. When you are finished preparing the photo and are ready to upload to Alamy. Simply select the file and choose "export" in the menu to open the export dialog. Make sure to select export to disc.

In the image are the export settings I use. The most important section is the "Image settings" part.

For color space I use Adobe RGB. Alamy doesn't specify which RGB color space to use. I always use Adobe RGB except when saving a photo for web use.

For resolution I use 240 pixels per inch,  lightrooms default. Some claim that you need to specify 300 ppi, since it is a defacto industry standard. But 240 ppi is sufficient for any industrial printing. You should note that this setting has nothing to do with image quality. It doesn't affect the upsizing, it only the end user, about your intended image size.

 The important part is the resize part. By choosing "resize to fit" "Width & Height" you tell lightroom to adjust the photo until one of the side reaches the desired pixel count. So you'll end up with a photo for which the longest edge is 5100 pixels, the short edge will be sized with the same amount to 3400 pixels, so the aspect ratio remains intact. Most common sensors have and aspect ratio of 3:2   3000x2000 to make 6MP. The above settings will upsize this to 5100x3400 =17,3 MP. In mega bytes this becomes 17,3 x 3 = 52 MB, well above Alamy's required 48 MB.

That is all.