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Alamy Image Manager - the updates so far


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Hi Everyone,

 

Now that the roll-out is complete and we've had a substantial amount of feedback we thought it would be good to update you on some of the updates we've been making behind the scenes to the Alamy Image Manager. This is in-line with a previous blog post we made about ongoing improvements.

 

First of all we'd like to thank all of you for your continued comments and observations on the tool, either provided to us via email (contributors@alamy.com) or what has been posted here on the forum. We read and consider everything and most of these changes have been made as a direct result of that feedback, so thank you.

 

Secondly it's great to see just how many of you have been using Alamy Image Manager. There is always a learning curve involved when it comes to working with change, and especially when something you use regularly is overhauled from scratch so again, thank you for taking the time to get to grips with everything.

 

Here is a list of 20 key updates and changes we've made so far. This list is not exhaustive and doesn't include minor things you may not have noticed (we've made close to 300 updates in total since launching), but it hopefully shows how committed we are to making the Alamy Image Manager as broadly productive and useful as possible for our 60,000+ photographers. It's also worth mentioning we have a list of further fixes and updates that we plan on releasing in the near-future. 

 

List of changes so far:

  1. Added links to the instructions manual PDF
  2. Added ability to select text and overwrite it on the submission name
  3. Tag order - preserve orignal order of tags as they were submitted
  4. Tags – single quotes, double quotes and square brackets treated as identifying annotation to create a multi-word tag (phrase)
  5. Changes to the journey a new contributor takes when they complete registration, now redirecting to the upload page
  6. Improvements in accuracy to the upload progress bar
  7. New pop up added when clicking X button after upload completed
  8. Redundant popup removed after clicking "save changes" within the tool
  9. Tags – we now maintain the click order on tag/supertag conversion
  10. Added tools to allow Alamy to track usage stats better
  11. Improvements to the date taken performance
  12. Supertags character max length increased, with warnings now in place if you exceed the limit
  13. Multi-Tag phrases can now contain up to 10 words 
  14. Max word characters length in phrases and tag increased - fixes issue of truncated tags appearing
  15. Improvements to the location field performance
  16. Option to select date and month alone in the "date taken" field
  17. Option to delete pseudonyms that contain only deleted images
  18. Alert for tags exceeding max length in characters
  19. Added the ability to drag and merge tags to create multi-word phrases
  20. Contributor file name now visible after searching for image by clicking the magnified preview

Cheers,

 

Alamy

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  1. Contributor file name now visible after searching for image by clicking the magnified preview

Cheers,

 

Alamy

 

I'm struggling to find this.  It doesn't show when editing an image from the result of a search which would be really useful.  Can you elaborate please?

 

Pearl

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I see it, Pearl. If I click on my image and go to the preview page then click on Edit Image it takes me to the Image Manager and my file name is right below the image. Ohhhh. On checking again that doesn't happen if I go to my image in a search so I see what you mean. It only happens when I am looking at all of my images and click one. In a regular search that includes my image it doesn't happen.

 

Paulette

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I see it, Pearl. If I click on my image and go to the preview page then click on Edit Image it takes me to the Image Manager and my file name is right below the image. Ohhhh. On checking again that doesn't happen if I go to my image in a search so I see what you mean. It only happens when I am looking at all of my images and click one. In a regular search that includes my image it doesn't happen.

 

Paulette

 

Yes Paulette it is there when you click on an image through the IM.  It would be really useful to also have it when editing from a search instead we have part of the caption below the image which isn't helpful at all.

 

Pearl

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Hi Everyone,

 

Now that the roll-out is complete and we've had a substantial amount of feedback we thought it would be good to update you on some of the updates we've been making behind the scenes to the Alamy Image Manager. This is in-line with a previous blog post we made about ongoing improvements.

 

First of all we'd like to thank all of you for your continued comments and observations on the tool, either provided to us via email (contributors@alamy.com) or what has been posted here on the forum. We read and consider everything and most of these changes have been made as a direct result of that feedback, so thank you.

 

Secondly it's great to see just how many of you have been using Alamy Image Manager. There is always a learning curve involved when it comes to working with change, and especially when something you use regularly is overhauled from scratch so again, thank you for taking the time to get to grips with everything.

 

Here is a list of 20 key updates and changes we've made so far. This list is not exhaustive and doesn't include minor things you may not have noticed (we've made close to 300 updates in total since launching), but it hopefully shows how committed we are to making the Alamy Image Manager as broadly productive and useful as possible for our 60,000+ photographers. It's also worth mentioning we have a list of further fixes and updates that we plan on releasing in the near-future. 

 

List of changes so far:

  1. Added links to the instructions manual PDF
  2. Added ability to select text and overwrite it on the submission name
  3. Tag order - preserve orignal order of tags as they were submitted
  4. Tags – single quotes, double quotes and square brackets treated as identifying annotation to create a multi-word tag (phrase)
  5. Changes to the journey a new contributor takes when they complete registration, now redirecting to the upload page
  6. Improvements in accuracy to the upload progress bar
  7. New pop up added when clicking X button after upload completed
  8. Redundant popup removed after clicking "save changes" within the tool
  9. Tags – we now maintain the click order on tag/supertag conversion
  10. Added tools to allow Alamy to track usage stats better
  11. Improvements to the date taken performance
  12. Supertags character max length increased, with warnings now in place if you exceed the limit
  13. Multi-Tag phrases can now contain up to 10 words 
  14. Max word characters length in phrases and tag increased - fixes issue of truncated tags appearing
  15. Improvements to the location field performance
  16. Option to select date and month alone in the "date taken" field
  17. Option to delete pseudonyms that contain only deleted images
  18. Alert for tags exceeding max length in characters
  19. Added the ability to drag and merge tags to create multi-word phrases
  20. Contributor file name now visible after searching for image by clicking the magnified preview

Cheers,

 

Alamy

Cheers the New PDF on the blog side has clarified a few things and should be good for newbies

Chris

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  • 2 weeks later...

I know you can drag one keyword onto another to create a phrase, but it would be very helpful if keywords could be dragged around to reorder them. I use Lightroom, which alphabetizes keywords. This isn't helpful in Alamy searches, as two words that should live near each other to improve search-ability (i.e. Hadrian's Wall, Wallsend, England, tourism) end up far away from each other, since Lightroom alphabetizes them. Or perhaps I decide to add a tag or two once things are uploaded--those tags end up living at the top, and I might prefer to have somewhere else in the tag group, so they are nearest to the words they most relate to.

Currently it seems like the only way to rearrange the tags is to delete them, and then add them back in the order you want them. Is this correct?

Thanks!

~Katie

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12 hours ago, E Katie Holm said:

I know you can drag one keyword onto another to create a phrase, but it would be very helpful if keywords could be dragged around to reorder them. I use Lightroom, which alphabetizes keywords. This isn't helpful in Alamy searches, as two words that should live near each other to improve search-ability (i.e. Hadrian's Wall, Wallsend, England, tourism) end up far away from each other, since Lightroom alphabetizes them. Or perhaps I decide to add a tag or two once things are uploaded--those tags end up living at the top, and I might prefer to have somewhere else in the tag group, so they are nearest to the words they most relate to.

Currently it seems like the only way to rearrange the tags is to delete them, and then add them back in the order you want them. Is this correct?

Thanks!

~Katie

Endlessly frustrating. I think the limit for words in a phrase is about ten. Maybe someone else remembers. So you could merge the whole lot. Crazy system that is driving me crazy.

 

Paulette

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I don't find the merging easy. I wind up with the words in the wrong order or the wrong words put together. So much easier when we could just type in what we wanted. It is probably easier for people with fewer keywords but I am trying to keyword in Lightroom now and wildlife has lots and lots and lots of possibilities for relevant keywords. They come into the Image Manager in alphabetical order. It's not fun dealing with that.

 

Paulette

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Thank you, Geoff. I don't need to do much to my older images as the order of words is still as I put them. I can't do much anyway because almost all of them have a lot more than 50 keywords. I have done a bit in the way of choosing more supertags and can do some phrases with that. I'm just not skillful in doing the moving around. I don't expect to ever like this new manager but I'm finding ways of working with it. There is always something else I'd rather do even if it is cleaning house.

 

Paulette

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Thank you for all the replies. I see now I did not phrase my question properly, but there was a lot of helpful information in the replies. Mainly, it would be nice to have the ability to reorder my tags. Somewhere in the forums I read that word proximity was important, the example was mallard and duck, and it was suggested that "mallard, duck" is better than "duck, mallard". (I do realize you could just make this a phrase--that's just the example I read) I was just hoping there was an easy way to reorder my keywords, due to Lightroom alphabetizing them, and also because when I add more keywords in Alamy, I don't necessarily do it in a logical way. Let it suffice to say, I would just like to have a little creative control over the order of the tags, and the only way I've found that I can reorder regular tags (not super tags) is by deleting them, and then adding them back in so they fall in the order I would like. The order may not matter to Alamy's search engine in the end, so maybe it's just me being overly picky. ;)

 

Thanks for all the help!

 

~Katie

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10 hours ago, LawrensonPhoto said:

 

You need to use Adobe Bridge then, as it's your only option.

Hopefully we will see this option in Lightroom CC 2017 (if it ever gets here)... and spellchecker. I could go on and on.

 

No kidding on the spellchecker! Even with an English degree, keywording is a bane because I type so fast I often misspell words! I just caught spelling errors in images I uploaded in 2006. Yikes!

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