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Image Manager: issues/suggestions


staydry

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Would like to offer some fixes/improvements to Image Manager that can make dealing with it to Alamy contributors more effective and convenient:

-get rid of extra click
When user works with images one-by-one, after finishing with current one he goes to next one, selecting it. But previous one remains selected. Worth to change this behavior in case Ctrl or Shift is not pressed: when another image is selected previous one has to become unselected. Otherwise in normal conditions user is forced to click twice: first to unselect current image (returning to it if he forgot to do that at once), then to select new one. Every time. So at this stage total click count is factually doubled for no reason.

-possibility to hide failed submissions (and also zero submissions and passed ones with all images deleted) from the list on the left (and exclude them from images count)
Normally nobody needs to have them there. They take space and mix with passed ones. They also counted in total images count - that is factually wrong and just misleads users.
Deleted images from submissions has also to be excluded from total images count. Now output data is wrong.

-possibility to hide upper part of central section
Its upper part (where pull-down selectors are (quality control, pseudonyms etc.)) normally is not needed to stay on screen constantly for general operations and on small screens takes up to the half of a screen height. Defenitely worth to make this section foldable to the top in case it is not needed right now.

 

-issue with text insertion (with Ctrl+V) to the 'Add new tags' field
When any text is inserted it automatically goes to tags 'as is'. That is a bug must be: taking tags-related text from somewhere user often needs to edit it first (put commas to separate, make proper wording etc.)

 

-issue with 'Date taken'
When submission is passed, there is automatically certain date is set to all images. Clear that this date has no relation to factual date when photo was shot. So for keeping this info actual, user (if he notices that at all) has each time to manually either change date or clear it. Worth to set this field blank for new submissions, otherwise in most cases this info will be and stay wrong.

-to place 'Delete selected image' option at more predictable place
Suppose, almost nobody expects to find this option at 'Optional' section (no logics in that), especially at the bottom of it.

-to clarify pop-up note to 'Only available on Alamy' ('Optional' section)
Worth to let user understand correctly what 'only available on Alamy' means: is it about image availability on sale somewhere else or just about its simple presence somewhere in internet (at photographer's private blog or promotional page may be).

There are some other IM issues, of course, but these are key ones for me as Alamy contributor presently.

With thanks to your time.

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And (in order to not start new theme) - it is not to Image Manager, but to FTP uploading: in spite of all efforts failed to establish SSL/TLS-encrypted FTP connection (ftps://). If there is just insecure FTP connection allowed where user passes in open way its Alamy main login/password - that is rediculous nowadays.

But if it exists - would be grateful for info how to use it. Thanks.

This non-https contributors forum where same password is used is a hole in security as well, by the way.

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And (in order to not start new theme) - it is not to Image Manager, but to FTP uploading: in spite of all efforts failed to establish SSL/TLS-encrypted FTP connection (ftps://). If there is just insecure FTP connection allowed where user passes in open way its Alamy main login/password - that is rediculous nowadays.

 

But if it exists - would be grateful for info how to use it. Thanks.

 

This non-https contributors forum where same password is used is a hole in security as well, by the way.

 

But there is no reason you should use the same login and password, or is there?

 

wim

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Looks like there is no way to use any other password than main (the only) Alamy password.

As for FTP: as said at http://www.alamy.com/contributor/how-to-sell-images/how-do-i-send-you-my-stock-images/ -
---
Enter Alamy’s FTP details into your FTP Client:
  Host name: upload.alamy.com
  Login/username: Your Alamy email
  Port: 21
  Your password is the same as your Alamy login
---
In last string there is a mistyping: 'password' is same as 'password', not as 'login', of course.

No option to set specific password for FTP anywhere, same as for contributors forum. For forum you can only choose public name at the very beginning, but that is all. Very volnurable approach.

As a standard rule, any system which deal with personal data, especially finance-related, never allow users to type users' account credentials at any non-https pages (that would make senseless a fact of https use at website at all), and in most cases for accessing their support/discussion forums separate login/password chains are used.

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For the forum:

 

Forgotten your password
If you have forgotten your password, you can click the "I've forgotten my password" link on the sign in page below the password box. This will take you to a page where you can enter your username or email address, and we will then either email you a new password that you can use or a link for you to reset your password.

from

 

Btw I'm not contradicting you in any way. But my guess is that my nickname in Abingdon is Cassandra.

 

wim

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While working with the new image manager, some BUGS  and points of improvement that hopefully will be addressed.

 

- When entering more 150 characters or more in the caption field, you cannot insert or delete anything anymore, all editing options are gone. Backspace, copy & paste nor delete do anything. In case you saved it instead of rejecting the changes, there is NO way to fix anything later. Clearly a very annoying bug.

 

- When copying and pasting keywords, any time the total number exceeds 50, NONE are added and all entered keywords are lost. IMHO much better to simply add all keywords up to 50 and discard the rest. You can then cull some and add the remainder.

 

- When copying and pasting lots of keywords in the tag field, they are instantly converted. Why not wait until either Enter or the + icon is pressed, so you can do some editing beforehand, grouping them, adding commas & hyphens?

 

 - Some combinations of tags, separated by commas, but still 4 words or less, are often randomly separated, particularly when copying and pasting a large number of them.

 

-Very cumbersome is that images keep being selected unless actively deselected. My suggestion would be to allow quick deselection also by clicking anywhere else on the screen and on the white areas between images. Much faster & more intuitive.

 

- Please allow fast movement between images by using the cursor keys, undoing the selection of the image and showing the next, previous in line, having just one image selected at any one time

 

- It would be great when duplicate tags  were ALWAYS automatically discarded once you save the changes. Now it happens occasionally, but hard to see any logic.

 

-  Same with ordering tags alphabetically , sometimes happening, but also very often only partly.

 

(I have the strong impression that the exact same tags in the  four different fields in the former image manager somehow carry different values and are not considered perfect matches)

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-possibility to hide failed submissions (and also zero submissions and passed ones with all images deleted) from the list on the left (and exclude them from images count)

Normally nobody needs to have them there. They take space and mix with passed ones. They also counted in total images count - that is factually wrong and just misleads users.

Deleted images from submissions has also to be excluded from total images count. Now output data is wrong.

 

 

 

Agree with this suggestion.

 

What is the point of showing failed or deleted submissions? Then it makes the total figure of your images incorrect.

 

I have to look at the blue figure below my name on the forum to see how many images I have on sale. This should be on the dashboard as before.

 

John.

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-possibility to hide failed submissions (and also zero submissions and passed ones with all images deleted) from the list on the left (and exclude them from images count)

Normally nobody needs to have them there. They take space and mix with passed ones. They also counted in total images count - that is factually wrong and just misleads users.

Deleted images from submissions has also to be excluded from total images count. Now output data is wrong.

 

 

 

Agree with this suggestion.

 

What is the point of showing failed or deleted submissions? Then it makes the total figure of your images incorrect.

 

I have to look at the blue figure below my name on the forum to see how many images I have on sale. This should be on the dashboard as before.

 

John.

 

 

It's a feature. ;-)

 

There is a possibility to show or hide failed submissions:

Go to Quality Control and tick passed or failed.

And there is a possibility to show or hide images on sale and images waiting for deletion.

Go to Discoverability and tick Not on sale/All on sale/Deletion pending.

 

Do not tick both Passed and Deletion Pending. It will show nothing.

If that's a feature it's stupid.

 

There is no way to set preferences or change defaults for longer than one session.

-Not a feature; not a bug, but an omission.

But is it a nice to have or a must have for the next version?

 

wim

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  • 6 months later...

Hi, I am new to the forum which is why I have taken so long to reply. I preferred the old layout where I could see 96 images at a time and drag as many as I liked down so that I could give them a common tag/caption all in one go. I then dragged them back to the top and clicked on one image to bring up a large clearly laid out window so that I could individually tag each image if necessary. This was quick and easy. The new method of selecting several images so that the tags can be copied to all is a good and useful idea, but, as other people have found, clicking on an image does not always deselect it which can be frustrating and time consuming. This is especially true if the images are not close together. My other comment is to agree that failed batches should be removable.

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On 9/9/2017 at 07:16, geriatricron said:

Hi, I am new to the forum which is why I have taken so long to reply. I preferred the old layout where I could see 96 images at a time and drag as many as I liked down so that I could give them a common tag/caption all in one go. I then dragged them back to the top and clicked on one image to bring up a large clearly laid out window so that I could individually tag each image if necessary. This was quick and easy. The new method of selecting several images so that the tags can be copied to all is a good and useful idea, but, as other people have found, clicking on an image does not always deselect it which can be frustrating and time consuming. This is especially true if the images are not close together. My other comment is to agree that failed batches should be removable.

 

This is a very good point. Being able to see the entire submission certainly helped in choosing which images needed the same keywords. Unfortunately, I think we are probably stuck with what we have now. People who have always keyworded in Bridge or Lightroom or elsewhere find it handy to know that their images will go immediately on sale with no further effort on their part. It's a shame that very little consideration seems to have been given to those of us who want to keyword in the image manager on Alamy. I am trying to move to doing almost all of my keywording in Lightroom.

 

Paulette

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Rather than start a new thread I'll add my thoughts on AIM.

 

Please can there be a drop down selection box for images that do not have the full 10 Super Tags. Yes there is "Images with poor discoverability" but even with my small portfolio of ~2000 images 1900+ are shown in that category. Some days when I do batch uploads or can't think of any keywords I don't fully complete this. It would be useful to show any images that don't have 10 super tags.

 

Dragging and dropping of tags on to others is just irritating, if its to allow more keywords then at least separate the combined words with a space, eg "Kenya Africa" not "KenyaAfrica" that it does.

 

Single image previews that scale to the image section box so I can see if there are people in it, how many, other things for keywords. At the moment I usually have to open up the jpeg on my computer to reference.

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15 hours ago, JamesH said:

Rather than start a new thread I'll add my thoughts on AIM.

 

Please can there be a drop down selection box for images that do not have the full 10 Super Tags. Yes there is "Images with poor discoverability" but even with my small portfolio of ~2000 images 1900+ are shown in that category. Some days when I do batch uploads or can't think of any keywords I don't fully complete this. It would be useful to show any images that don't have 10 super tags.

 

Dragging and dropping of tags on to others is just irritating, if its to allow more keywords then at least separate the combined words with a space, eg "Kenya Africa" not "KenyaAfrica" that it does.

 

Single image previews that scale to the image section box so I can see if there are people in it, how many, other things for keywords. At the moment I usually have to open up the jpeg on my computer to reference.

 

First of all i'd just like to say I don't like the new AIM!!

 

However, in my experience, and in defence of the new system, I have always found that when 2 tags have been dropped onto one another, the resulting new tag always has the correct spacing ie "Kenya Africa" 

 

John.

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On 9/15/2017 at 04:40, GS-Images said:

 

On that note, having more characters in the caption would be helpful. There's been a lot of discussion about the higher relevance of words in the caption, and Alamy also say that you should describe images fully and use proper English sentences. So that's what I do a lot more than I used to, but I do run out of characters doing that. The limit is 150, but I think 200 or 250 max would be better. An example of what I think is a perfectly good and non-spammy caption that covers everything but that's too long (I'm using an example of an image I recently tagged)...

 

 

+1 More characters in the caption area and a slightly larger font. (I think 14 pt is the default on the forums.) I find it difficult with longer captions to scroll up and find spelling errors or make other corrections. Changing the font from gray to black would help too when contributors are working in AIM for an extended time would make it much easier on the eyes.

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Since the new image manager I can't be bothered any more, the amount of extra work required is ridiculous. I refuse to click on the single tiny pixel 10 times for each image to make 'supertags' . I have a thousand images that are undiscoverable that will require ten thousand clicks just to put the stupid tags in.

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:D Just let it all out, flotsom! Trust me, you'll feel better afterwards. We've all been there with the new AIM.

 

But for all its flaws it looks like it's here to stay. It does get better after a while, although my keywording and superduperextra tagging are probably much less thorough than they use to be (on the plus side, I am hopefully getting better at them, but that is due to hard work, and in no way a credit to the new AIM)

 

Your images are far too beautiful to give up on tagging them properly. Just had a browse around your portfolio - felt like being on a lovely, relaxing holiday!

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You're very kind :D. They are tagged and descriptioned before uploading, it's those flipping yellow stars, if I try and select a batch of images with similar keywords not all of them are clickable, just the least relevant ones, so the only way to do it is individually. If they just had a box you could paste into instead of the stupid stars it would be ok. I never get further than 2 images before getting too annoyed to continue, plus simply not enough time to do it.  No supertagging for me unless they make it quicker. They should get contributors who upload in big batches to design the image manager.

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