Archive for the ‘About Shrelp’ Category

Using the Shrelp Photoshop Action

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Using the Shrelp Action

1. Download it from the dashboard of your Shrelp account.

Download Shrelp Action from your Shrelp dashboard

Download Shrelp Action from your Shrelp dashboard

Zach Petschek Photography
2. Unzip the file after it has downloaded.

Unzip Shrelp Action into same folder as the zip file

Unzip Shrelp Action into same folder as the zip file

Zach Petschek Photography
3. Open action in Photoshop

Open Shrelp Action in Photoshop

Open Shrelp Action in Photoshop

Zach Petschek Photography
4. Next you will be prompted to save the file. This is a SAVE AS command so the original file will not be affected. Choose your destination folder and press ok.

Save Shrelp prepped tiff file

Save Shrelp prepped tiff file

Zach Petschek Photography
5. Open the Shrelp folder and select Image Prep (horizontal or vertical respectively). Press play.

Play Shrelp Action from Actions Pallette in Photoshop

Play Shrelp Action from Actions Pallette in Photoshop

Zach Petschek Photography
6. Verify that the Tiff settings are correct and press ok again.

Save Tiff as settings for Shrelp action

Save Tiff as settings for Shrelp action

Your file is ready to be uploaded to Shrelp from the folder you saved your file into.

Photographers Admin Demo

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

December Shrelp Updates

Friday, December 25th, 2009

Let me start, by thanking you for your interest in Shrelp! I wanted to let you know where Shrelp stands it is at the moment.

1. We have a well- defined list of photographer services, that should cover the entire life span of your images. Read more.
2. We are finalizing the Stock and Editorial services.
3. We have a desktop uploader application for bulk uploading. You can download it here.

Open the gates, we’re ready for photographers to start uploading their full catalog! If you have any questions or concerns about the services please let me know so I can accommodate your needs.

You will notice the photographers admin panel lacks the typical features that you would find on a site like flickr. But don’t worry their coming! Rather than copying features from another site I’m developing them specifically for Shrelp. Your uploads and feedback is very much appreciated at this point because they will help shape this product!

What will Shrelp release in January?
1. More photographer options to edit and move images between services. ( any images you can upload now will help with this. )
2. Improve image categorization. ( any images you can upload now will help with this. )
3. Prepare to invite riders.

Finally, we want to activate the shopping cart in February. I promise you, that before we turn the shopping cart on, you will be 100% happy with the service, or we’ll take your images down until you are. This service is for you, so let me know what you need to sell your images.

Merry Christmas,
Jonathan Spooner

Tips on advertising images 1

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

What makes a good skateboard photo?

I have gotten a few questions regarding what images will sell over others. I will be posting a few entries regarding this as time goes on. For starters here are a few;

1: shoot vertical and horizontal whenever possible. Some of our buyers are looking for an image as a portrait layout, some as a landscape. It is best to give the buyer the option of both whenever possible. To lose a sale simply because of the picture orientation is a bummer. Of course this isn’t always possible and that’s understandable. Maybe horizontal just doesn’t work well for your photo or maybe the rider only locked in one time. Don’t shoot a second orientation until you have at least one usable shot!

2: Remove any light stands, cords, or camera bags out of the photo. They will never sell if it looks like you were there. The only exception to this is if you have a flash firing back into the camera in an artistic way. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

3: For advertising photos remove any logos, names, copyrighted material, and trademarks from the image. For editorial images they do not need to be removed but for advertising sales they must be removed. For the same reason that you control usage rights of your photographs, companies own the publishing, intellectual, and usage rights of their logos, trademarks, name, and designs. The door swings both ways. Now don’t get scared away just yet. The logo or graphic need not be completely unrecognizable. Blocking part of it with some creative photoshop or other means is satisfactory.

4: Place the skateboarder against a simple background. This isn’t always easy given your environment. If the skater is wearing all black, as most skaters seem to do, adjust your position so they are surrounded by a bright solid color like the sky or white concrete. You want your image to read well no matter what size it is. From a thumbmail to a 2 page spread, it has to be eye catching.

These are all just guidelines of course. Signup with shrelp today!

How Shrelp got its start part 1

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

Zach Petschek, Jonathan Spooner & I (Ozzie) went skating pools one Sunday, this past summer. July in the Badlands is terrible for most people & skating a pool is something most folks never really consider. We three are not your normal folks. We live to ride skateboards. We devote our entire day & night thinking about it. Its what we are. We had ridden three or four pools & Zach had been telling us about several skate photographers that were complaining about how there was simply no outlet or place for skate photographers to develop an archive & have them sold. Zach went on about how ridiculous it was to see a Mountain Dew machine replete with a huge graphic of some random kid ‘falling off’ a skateboard, as a representation of skateboarding. It was a mockery! I peered over at Spooner & we nodded our agreement…It was true. We had both seen precisely what Zach was referring to. I was at the mailbox about three weeks past and saw a TV cable company mailed postcard with a skateboard graphic on it. It was pathetic. The image was some guy barely on the board, with no ramp or transition anywhere near him. It looked like some kids dad pulled from a basketball court at the local YMCA. It was sad. We took a few more runs at the pool and thought about what we’d seen and what exactly we could do about it. After we finished skating, we decided to eat. At the table, Spooner & Zach continued the conversation. Spooner wrote out four major bullet points that needed to be addressed.
Shrelp Stock Photography

Photographers Problems & Solutions.

1. Protecting your copyrights.
2. Manage model releases and contracts.
3. Pricing and contracts. – Shrelp helps you sell your image for maximum value
4. Shrelp provides secure access to your image catalog 24/7. And no one will get your high
rez file until their payment is verified and you have the cash!

1. Protecting your copyrights.

2. Manage model releases and contracts.

3. Pricing and contracts. – Shrelp helps you sell your image for maximum value

Price Matrix that covers everything from print, web, tv, products.

Our image pricing interactive tool.

Our image pricing interactive tool.

4. Shrelp provides secure access to your image catalog 24/7. And no one will get your high rez file until their payment is verified and you have the cash!

Riders Problems & Solutions
1. You need money and we pay you for your likeness.
2. Let you track editorial photos of you used.
We’re not signing up Photographers and Riders. Photographers & Riders click to sign up here.

How to set Image Prices on Shrelp

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

We’re excited to announce our new policy on image pricing. Other stock agencies control the sales price and the amount you take home. Shrelp decided this was not acceptable and gave the control back to the photographer.

As you know image licensing is complicated. For example how much more should I charge for a 1/8 page vs a 3/4 page photo? We continuously tune our interactive pricing tool to provide you with the most up to date licensing options and pricing.

Here is how it works

1. First find the “Set Price” link near an image you have uploaded.
Picture 4

2. Then set the base price and click “update prices” and watch the pricing matrix below refresh with your new prices. You will not see a our commissions taken from these prices, the amount you see here will be the actual amount you take home.

Example of our image pricing matrix.

And that’s it.