New AIM tool for moving and merging tags?

[John Crellin]

 

 

Thanks I can see that now - still tricky though.

 

 

John.

 

Yes very hard. All it would take is - say - hold down Ctrl to lose the "move" cross and go back to normal selection?

 

I'm used to this over years of association with software development - the coders rarely understand what an actual user wants and just implement "what they are told" with no regard for exiting functionality.

 

John C

[wiskerke]

 

 

Thanks I can see that now - still tricky though.

 

 

John.

 

Yes very hard. All it would take is - say - hold down Ctrl to lose the "move" cross and go back to normal selection?

 

I'm used to this over years of association with software development - the coders rarely understand what an actual user wants and just implement "what they are told" with no regard for exiting functionality.

 

John C

 

 

In Agile there's this 1st article of faith: do not tell me what to do, but tell me what you want and we will build you that functionality. So if as a tester or user, you want to get yourself discredited beyond repair, you tell a team to just get me a button. Saying something like just keep it editable for pete's sake, will not get you anywhere.

Despite this I am a fan of Agile working, and the current changes are probably the result of Agile developing going it's course.

 

However I think it's the opposite with the coders, they are not doing what they are told, but actually teams get too clever and all want to invent their own wheel. Or no they will not invent a wheel, but a way to get you from A to B smoothly.

And sometimes the results can be awesome; a bit like this.

For me a bike will do to get me to B and back efficiently.

 

wim

[Reimar]

 

Oh I get it.  The direction arrows need to get slightly bigger when in between tags in order to select by click and drag.  Otherwise the regular size direction cursor wants to cut and paste the tag to another one.  Very tricky to distinguish.

Almost as bad as trying to delete a dozen or more duplicate tags. 

Not impressive.

 

Do you mean you have found a way to move tags? I only seem to be able to merge tags.

Deleting tags has just become more difficult. Like many photographers I'm using a Wacom pen, that may be the problem. I have to tap around 10-12 times to delete a tag. All the other taps result in the move/merge icon.

 

Maybe I should use a phone.

Oh I get it: an Xbox!

Less QQ more Pew Pew, right?

 

wim

 

edit:

If you think we do not have a delete key on our keyboards, why not give us a trash/recycle bin?

- because there is no trash bin on an iPad? Of course that's it: it actually is an iPhone app.

 

 

Wim, I was interested in copying tag keywords into the caption (latin names I usually misspell).  To select one keyword, one has to get the big cross hairs to click and drag.

No re-positioning is possible (especially since 90% of my images have way more than 50 tags so no additions are possible).

 

OK - edit - I take all that back.  Things have changed again.  No more big cross-hairs.  If you want to select the text of the tag, point the arrow EXACTLY in the space between tags and click and drag.

Wanna bet this isn't the last carpet pull before next week?

[John Mitchell]

I went back and reworked some old images with this new tool and found it quite handy for mending broken phrases -- e.g. [blue] [sky] --> [blue sky] -- which I now have lots of. Whether or not I'll ever get around to fixing them all is another question, though.

[Tim Jones]

They're also changing something else. I've just finished tagging 10 pics that should show up as optimised but they don't. They show up as good discoverability.

Snap, I have this too

Just in the middle of a long process of optimizing tags on an almost daily basis and discovered  2 things yesterday

1. The new cross, in fact I could not do anything to get the thumbs to delete tags or create supertags only the cross wherever I put the mouse. This was in Firefox. Switched to Chrome and problem solved.

2. All the photos I have optimized since the cross arrived show as optimized (around 6) and are saved. If I refresh screen or unselect and the reselect  optimized they revert back to not optimized. Originally I thought it was a time thing but 24 hours later the same and  I have to delete a tag and the recreate it to become optimized again but it still doesn't stay that way

There is a bug here so I am glad I am not alone.

As it is their is no point in optimizing any more until it works 

[Graham]

There is definitely a bug somewhere in the optimisation display.  Like others, I have found that the status bar on the right may show an image as "Optimized", but the status bar under the thumbnail shows something less than the full green optimized status (despite having 50 tags, 10 supertags and all optional information completed: these should, according to published criteria, show as fully optimized).  I even found one last night from an old upload batch where the status bar on the right was green, but that under the thumbnail was orange: it cannot seem to make up its mind which is which.

 

Dates are also strange.  I am finding a number of images are showing the date taken as 1 Jan in any particular year.  I had assumed that this was a reflection of the fact that, under the old system, all you had to do was enter the year of the image, not the exact date.  But this is apparently not the case.  Last night I found two similar images taken within a few moments of each other, processed in exactly the same way (i.e. same metadata inclusion), within the same upload batch (in fact, showing as next to one another), yet one was correctly dated 16 April 2013, while the other was wrongly dated 1 Jan 2013: very strange.  I hope this can be sorted out: buyers may be looking for images taken during particular months, but the date taken is only in the date field, not necessarily reflected in tags, and if the date field is wrong, they will not find them.

 

Graham

[Pearl]

I am finding the ability to merge tags into a supertag very useful for legacy images.  Don't need it for new images as tags can be typed in.  Would of course be better still if we could move tags around but hopefully that's in the pipe line.

 

Pearl

[PhotoEclectica]

 

They're also changing something else. I've just finished tagging 10 pics that should show up as optimised but they don't. They show up as good discoverability.

Snap, I have this too

Just in the middle of a long process of optimizing tags on an almost daily basis and discovered  2 things yesterday

1. The new cross, in fact I could not do anything to get the thumbs to delete tags or create supertags only the cross wherever I put the mouse. This was in Firefox. Switched to Chrome and problem solved.

2. All the photos I have optimized since the cross arrived show as optimized (around 6) and are saved. If I refresh screen or unselect and the reselect  optimized they revert back to not optimized. Originally I thought it was a time thing but 24 hours later the same and  I have to delete a tag and the recreate it to become optimized again but it still doesn't stay that way

There is a bug here so I am glad I am not alone.

As it is their is no point in optimizing any more until it works 

 

 

 

There is definitely a bug somewhere in the optimisation display.  Like others, I have found that the status bar on the right may show an image as "Optimized", but the status bar under the thumbnail shows something less than the full green optimized status (despite having 50 tags, 10 supertags and all optional information completed: these should, according to published criteria, show as fully optimized).

 

Looks like that bug is fixed now. Not so relevant for sales, but it was definitely a bug.

[Tim Jones]

 

 

They're also changing something else. I've just finished tagging 10 pics that should show up as optimised but they don't. They show up as good discoverability.

Snap, I have this too

Just in the middle of a long process of optimizing tags on an almost daily basis and discovered  2 things yesterday

1. The new cross, in fact I could not do anything to get the thumbs to delete tags or create supertags only the cross wherever I put the mouse. This was in Firefox. Switched to Chrome and problem solved.

2. All the photos I have optimized since the cross arrived show as optimized (around 6) and are saved. If I refresh screen or unselect and the reselect  optimized they revert back to not optimized. Originally I thought it was a time thing but 24 hours later the same and  I have to delete a tag and the recreate it to become optimized again but it still doesn't stay that way

There is a bug here so I am glad I am not alone.

As it is their is no point in optimizing any more until it works 

 

 

 

There is definitely a bug somewhere in the optimisation display.  Like others, I have found that the status bar on the right may show an image as "Optimized", but the status bar under the thumbnail shows something less than the full green optimized status (despite having 50 tags, 10 supertags and all optional information completed: these should, according to published criteria, show as fully optimized).

 

Looks like that bug is fixed now. Not so relevant for sales, but it was definitely a bug.

 

As am update my point 2 looks fixed and now optimised photos are now not in good discoverability

[John Mitchell]

I am finding the ability to merge tags into a supertag very useful for legacy images.  Don't need it for new images as tags can be typed in.  Would of course be better still if we could move tags around but hopefully that's in the pipe line.

 

Pearl

 

Yes, I think that this must have been why Alamy added this new feature -- i.e. to help clean up broken phrases and create supertags in legacy images. I didn't quite get it at first, but now it makes sense. Step #2 -- allow us to move tags around please.

[Graham]

I think this is a useful feature, but it would be great if it could be applied to a batch of images.  I have so many legacy images where, for example, "United Kingdom" or "Great Britain" has been split into separate words, which I would much prefer to re-unite as a two-word phrase.  This is easy now on an image by image basis, but it does not work on multiple images: trying to merge tags in this way in more than one selected image gives an error message about number of tags being exceeded (even, strangely, if there are less than 50 tags in all the images selected).  What would be far better would be the ability to select a number of images, or all the images in a submission if relevant, and make the same concatenation in all of them as a batch, preferably even if one or more of them already has more than 50 tags (as many of my legacy images do).  Doing this image by image is just not going to happen except when some other changes have to be made, it's not worth the effort.

 

Graham

[ChrisC]

I seem to have figured this new tool out, but I'm not sure why it's useful. I seldom want / need to merge tags. Perhaps I'm missing something...

 

Too bad this feature couldn't be modified to allow us to change the order of tags. That would be very helpful.

In my older images, a lot of tags became separate, so you can merge them, so it can help that way, changing the order would be good, if indeed that is important these days. I just added two similar tags to an image, staring with the same letter, one went in towards the bottom of the list, one went in at the top, I'm not sure if I have the energy to investigate it :-0

[Graham]

Merging tags does not seem to work on the iPad.

 

Graham

[Betty LaRue]

Merging tags does not seem to work on the iPad.

Graham

No, it doesn't. I actually thought it did briefly, but last evening it didn't.

Betty

[Reimar]

 

 

Oh I get it.  The direction arrows need to get slightly bigger when in between tags in order to select by click and drag.  Otherwise the regular size direction cursor wants to cut and paste the tag to another one.  Very tricky to distinguish.

Almost as bad as trying to delete a dozen or more duplicate tags. 

Not impressive.

 

Do you mean you have found a way to move tags? I only seem to be able to merge tags.

Deleting tags has just become more difficult. Like many photographers I'm using a Wacom pen, that may be the problem. I have to tap around 10-12 times to delete a tag. All the other taps result in the move/merge icon.

 

Maybe I should use a phone.

Oh I get it: an Xbox!

Less QQ more Pew Pew, right?

 

wim

 

edit:

If you think we do not have a delete key on our keyboards, why not give us a trash/recycle bin?

- because there is no trash bin on an iPad? Of course that's it: it actually is an iPhone app.

 

 

Wim, I was interested in copying tag keywords into the caption (latin names I usually misspell).  To select one keyword, one has to get the big cross hairs to click and drag.

No re-positioning is possible (especially since 90% of my images have way more than 50 tags so no additions are possible).

 

OK - edit - I take all that back.  Things have changed again.  No more big cross-hairs.  If you want to select the text of the tag, point the arrow EXACTLY in the space between tags and click and drag.

Wanna bet this isn't the last carpet pull before next week?

 

 

OK, today I take the take back, back.  We're back to big and little cross hairs.  Very accurate mouse pointing is required in either case.

[ChrisC]

wim, your sarcasm has reached new heights today! says Betty from her iPad.

Hi Betty, can you use the new IM from your Ipad? I was thinking about getting one just for ease of use, if so is there any drawbacks?

 

Thanks

Chris

[Betty LaRue]

Yes, I can use it from my iPad. I cannot merge tags, though. And it takes me a bit longer to add something, because I'm a good typist on my computer, but do the one finger hunt and peck on the iPad. Although I seem to be getting quite good at it!

 

Plus the keyboard often pops up and hides things, but easy enough to hit the down arrow.

One thing that drives me nuts is this.

Say my caption needs something deleted and something new added. I hit the X key to delete the word. Then I quit hitting the X key, but HEY! The iPad just keeps right on deleting my caption until it's gone! Tick, tick, tick, just as if I were physically doing it.

 

I find if I delete one letter at a time, s l o w l y, it works. It seems decently quick delete taps causes it to go nuts. Sometimes if I hit the space bar a few times, I can stop it, but not before losing a couple more words.

 

Even so, I'd say I do 90% of my AIM work on my iPad. If I have a large upload/approval, I'll do my AIM work on my iMac, because it's faster.

Its amazing how much I can get done in the evenings while sitting comfortably on my sofa, which is easier on my bad back.

 

I do 99% of my forum visits on my iPad. I do image placement searches on my iPad.

On my iMac, I download my images from my card, sort, develop, tag, then upload to Alamy.

Everything else is mostly done on my iPad.

 

I'm very adaptable at doing new things, so I don't let the nits disturb me overmuch. Some people can't abide those nits. Only you know what type you are, lol!

Betty

[Cecile Marion]

I'm traveling at the moment and only have my iPad to use. It makes me appreciate my computer all the more, though I'm very experienced at using the iPad.

 

One thing I've learned with captions - particularly the complicated ones where I'm having to look up information and French spellings - is to create the whole entry in "notes" first. Then, once I have the caption just the way I want it, I paste it into the alamy caption line.

[Betty LaRue]

I haven't explored that. I'm steadily reworking my legacy images, and many of the captions need editing.

[spacecadet]

I haven't explored that. I'm steadily reworking my legacy images, and many of the captions need editing.

Whatever's happened recently, keywords in captions are a good idea. Or mostly harmless, at least.

[ChrisC]

Yes, I can use it from my iPad. I cannot merge tags, though. And it takes me a bit longer to add something, because I'm a good typist on my computer, but do the one finger hunt and peck on the iPad. Although I seem to be getting quite good at it!

 

Plus the keyboard often pops up and hides things, but easy enough to hit the down arrow.

One thing that drives me nuts is this.

Say my caption needs something deleted and something new added. I hit the X key to delete the word. Then I quit hitting the X key, but HEY! The iPad just keeps right on deleting my caption until it's gone! Tick, tick, tick, just as if I were physically doing it.

 

I find if I delete one letter at a time, s l o w l y, it works. It seems decently quick delete taps causes it to go nuts. Sometimes if I hit the space bar a few times, I can stop it, but not before losing a couple more words.

 

Even so, I'd say I do 90% of my AIM work on my iPad. If I have a large upload/approval, I'll do my AIM work on my iMac, because it's faster.

Its amazing how much I can get done in the evenings while sitting comfortably on my sofa, which is easier on my bad back.

 

I do 99% of my forum visits on my iPad. I do image placement searches on my iPad.

On my iMac, I download my images from my card, sort, develop, tag, then upload to Alamy.

Everything else is mostly done on my iPad.

 

I'm very adaptable at doing new things, so I don't let the nits disturb me overmuch. Some people can't abide those nits. Only you know what type you are, lol!

Betty

Hi Betty 

Thanks, sounds like there is still a few drawbacks, but like yourself rather than sit in my study at night on my with my PC on, I like the idea of sitting on the couch, tagging etc & although I can look at the forum on my phone, adding a reply, you can end up answering a question 2 or 3 times by accident, so I save that for my PC too.

Sounds like it would definitely work for me though

Ta

Chris

[Betty LaRue]