Alamy Image Manager - want a sneak peek?

[Marianne]

Looks good though thinking I'll probably have to go back to old ones if things like New York City end up as separate tags. I like the idea of "supertags" and it will finally put to rest the old do we use [ ] or "" to get them to work. 

 

Still, a welcome change - it should make keywording easier and better, IMHO. Also glad about the editorial RF. Being in the US, it's been hard deciding if my work should go to a US-based site that only permits RF or Alamy which only permits RM so this is a change that I'm happy about. I've had work split between the two and it will be nice to just upload to both. 

 

Thanks Alamy. Will we get an email when the new system is ready?

[Betty LaRue]

 

 

I don't wish for this. Wildlife images can take a lot of keywords and I have had sales when some of my detailed keywords were overlooked by other photographers.

 

Paulette

 

I hope with a bit of study you can figure out how to stay where you want to be in the searches, Paulette. Maybe there is a way. I'm a bit apprehensive, too. My images come up high in searches. Not sure how it will be in the future.

But I am excited about the other changes.

[Ed Rooney]

 

I would like to see Alamy giving a search advantage to those images that have been keyworded with 50 tags to motivate people to review their images. Those who were able to reduce to 30 keywords would receive a even bigger benefit.

 

Not only would that recognize the efforts of those who try not to spam, but punish those who use a horde of irrelevant keywords. In fact, my experience tells me that 30 keywords are more than enough. Looking at alamy measures and other agencies that identify the keywords used by buyers show that almost all searches use a couple words and are pretty direct on what they want.

 

One of the agencies that has been recently purchased by a software giant we all know started doing this and I could only see advantages. They accept 50 keywords but value more the images with just 30 and give a higher value to the first seven.

 

I don't wish for this. Wildlife images can take a lot of keywords and I have had sales when some of my detailed keywords were overlooked by other photographers.

 

Paulette 

 

 

 

You have sales because of your wonderful decisive moments, Paulette.

 

I'm wondering: should I move forward and submit as usual, or should I hang back for a few days, a week, till the new tools show up?  

[Inchiquin]

One thing that it sounds like will change, which is what I've been worried about, is that adding duplicate words to the Main and Comprehensive fields will no longer improve image placement. It is one of the "tricks" that I don't think is widely known about, and I haven't seen discussed previously. Let's say I have an image of Leeds Castle and I put Leeds Castle in the caption and essentials boxes. If I was to check the position in the search results and note it, then add Leeds Castle to the main section, the next day my image would be higher up in the results. If I was then to add Leeds Castle to the Comprehensive box too, it's position would rise up again. I have proven this many times with different images and it definitely makes a difference, and is one of the things that gave some of us an edge over our competition who weren't so familiar with the system and hadn't done this testing for themselves.

 

 

It's always been my belief that Alamy frowned on this.

 

Alan

[Bill Kuta]

If one has been adding multi-word names and phrases in quotation marks (as I have), will such a quoted phrase be picked up as a single tag?

[Nick Hatton]

Only just  got used to the present system!

[chris24]

 Jeff Greenberg mentioned  /Preserving tags devoted to UK-US words, would "humor humour" tag be returned with "humor" AND "humour" searches?

The same question could be asked of plurals.  ie. "car cars"  or "car"   "cars"

[Martin Carlsson]

 Jeff Greenberg mentioned  /Preserving tags devoted to UK-US words, would "humor humour" tag be returned with "humor" AND "humour" searches?

The same question could be asked of plurals.  ie. "car cars"  or "car"   "cars"

 

Stemming, UK/US variations and singulars/plurals is very much of interest. I can't see anything about this in the announcement and given the limit of 50 keywords it might become very important i.e.imagining a buyer searching for "females eating oranges" which often could mean that they are actually looking for perhaps a (one) female adult eating an orange + something specific. My dreamed up image would normally be keyworded as follows;

 

woman, women, female, females, adult, adults, caucasian, caucasians, one, only, person, persons, people, 20s, twentys, twenties, mid-20s, late 20s, 20-25, 20-24, 25-30, 24-29, young, orange, oranges, fruit, fruits, eats, eating, bite, bites, biting, into, enjoy, enjoys, enjoying, healthy, snack, snacks, piece, pieces, peeled, sitting, sits, sat, relaxing, enjoys, enjoying - 48 keywords just to cover the basics of the person, main object and activity in the image. 

 

attractive, beautiful, long hair, brunette, brunettes, brown hair, northern european, scandinavian, swedish, red, skirt, skirts, black, blouse, blouses, shirt, shirts, real people, inside, indoor, indoors, alone, living room, drawing room, sitting room, front room, at home, couch, couches, sofa, sofas, Sweden, Scandinavia, Nordic country, European, selective focus, focus on foreground, vertical - another 38 to add a bit more detail and "edge" for a total of 86 keywords/tags...

 

and that's just a first run quick example probably missing out a whole bunch, leaving out phrases/topical keywords such as "healthy eating", "healthy diet", "healthy diets", "trendy diet", "trendy diets", "fruit diet", "fruit diets", fruitarian diet", "fruitarian diets" - another 9 keywords/tags, which would bring the total to 95 keywords/tags.

 

I guess I'm going to have to become frugal when it comes to keywording, always try to only add what has relevance at the same time covering all bases when it comes to buyer's weird and wonderful variations of searches, but starting to feel like a bad spammer instead! I know some people even keyword for common spelling mistakes 

[Pearl]

 

 

I would like to see Alamy giving a search advantage to those images that have been keyworded with 50 tags to motivate people to review their images. Those who were able to reduce to 30 keywords would receive a even bigger benefit.

 

Not only would that recognize the efforts of those who try not to spam, but punish those who use a horde of irrelevant keywords. In fact, my experience tells me that 30 keywords are more than enough. Looking at alamy measures and other agencies that identify the keywords used by buyers show that almost all searches use a couple words and are pretty direct on what they want.

 

One of the agencies that has been recently purchased by a software giant we all know started doing this and I could only see advantages. They accept 50 keywords but value more the images with just 30 and give a higher value to the first seven.

 

I don't wish for this. Wildlife images can take a lot of keywords and I have had sales when some of my detailed keywords were overlooked by other photographers.

 

Paulette 

 

 

I agree with you on this Paulette. Some of my views come from searches using less likely keywords that the majority don't take the time to either think of or research. I don't use the rarer terms in Essentials, and sometimes not even the Main box, but in Comprehensive so at least my images appear in the results. There's a difference between keyword spamming and using accurate but less obvious keywords. I'm very against keyword spamming, but thankfully the ranking system at Alamy deals with those contributors well, as their rank decreases over time.

 

Geoff.

 

 

+1

 

My experience and sentiments entirely.  Especially as we have to use singular and plural versions of many tags

 

Pearl

[Martin Carlsson]

 

 

 Jeff Greenberg mentioned  /Preserving tags devoted to UK-US words, would "humor humour" tag be returned with "humor" AND "humour" searches?

The same question could be asked of plurals.  ie. "car cars"  or "car"   "cars"

 

Stemming, UK/US variations and singulars/plurals is very much of interest. I can't see anything about this in the announcement and given the limit of 50 keywords it might become very important i.e.imagining a buyer searching for "females eating oranges" which often could mean that they are actually looking for perhaps a (one) female adult eating an orange + something specific. My dreamed up image would normally be keyworded as follows;

 

woman, women, female, females, adult, adults, caucasian, caucasians, one, only, person, persons, people, 20s, twentys, twenties, mid-20s, late 20s, 20-25, 20-24, 25-30, 24-29, young, orange, oranges, fruit, fruits, eats, eating, bite, bites, biting, into, enjoy, enjoys, enjoying, healthy, snack, snacks, piece, pieces, peeled, sitting, sits, sat, relaxing, enjoys, enjoying - 48 keywords just to cover the basics of the person, main object and activity in the image. 

 

attractive, beautiful, long hair, brunette, brunettes, brown hair, northern european, scandinavian, swedish, red, skirt, skirts, black, blouse, blouses, shirt, shirts, real people, inside, indoor, indoors, alone, living room, drawing room, sitting room, front room, at home, couch, couches, sofa, sofas, Sweden, Scandinavia, Nordic country, European, selective focus, focus on foreground, vertical - another 38 to add a bit more detail and "edge" for a total of 86 keywords/tags...

 

and that's just a first run quick example probably missing out a whole bunch, leaving out phrases/topical keywords such as "healthy eating", "healthy diet", "healthy diets", "trendy diet", "trendy diets", "fruit diet", "fruit diets", fruitarian diet", "fruitarian diets" - another 9 keywords/tags, which would bring the total to 95 keywords/tags.

 

I guess I'm going to have to become frugal when it comes to keywording, always try to only add what has relevance at the same time covering all bases when it comes to buyer's weird and wonderful variations of searches, but starting to feel like a bad spammer instead! I know some people even keyword for common spelling mistakes 

 

 

In my opinion, using all those keywords/tags for an image of someone eating an orange is rather spammy - No offence intended.     You cannot be all things with every image. If the caption field is still going to be searchable, then that's a good place for putting some details like the specific age of the woman and maybe some other details that are fairly irrelevant. So something like, "Woman in her 20s eating an orange while sitting by the sea on a cold day".

 

It's quite unlikely any client who wants an image of someone eating an orange would care about where they were eating it, but some details of location in the caption (such as being by the sea) covers that just in case, and if things work as they do at the moment, it'll be searchable but carry less weight than a tag.

 

Details describing how the woman is dressed, what type of hair she has, what country she's in and other similar things are completely irrelevant for such an image. Put yourself in the mind of someone wanting to find an image of a female eating an orange. Would their hair colour be a concern? Someone younger maybe, yes, maybe one tag for "young woman" would be fine to cover that.

 

Reserve less relevant words for images that concentrate on those things. So for hair colour, have an image of a girl waving her hair around. Tags such as "healthy living", "healthy living concept" and "eating healthily" would be good tags for your example, as they are specific to an image of someone eating fruit.

 

As for UK/USA spellings and plurals - I don't want Alamy's system to automatically use them and I doubt it will. It's part of the skill of keywording well and having an advantage over others. Also their system would have to be able to determine if a word without or with an "s" at the end would also be a real word that means the same thing if it removes or adds an "s". Also, sometimes I have similar images where I use plurals in one and singular words in the other, to help with CTR by restricting views. The more automation of keywords/tags, the less we'll be able to tailor our images to appear as we went, and keep tight control over excessive views.

 

Geoff.

 

 

No offence taken. Spam to me is something that is irrelevant - none in the example are (I think).

 

With the current system it is easy to add a lot of very detailed keywords in the comprehensive section to cover those searches that are very detailed. My current approach was to use the comprehensive field extensively and very sparingly the main and essential field - have worked just fine.

 

With the new system a new approach will have to be taken and obviously one has to scale back on the number of keywords. Is this a good thing? I don't know - the number of images in the database is massive so vague searches (1-3 words) result in a huge number of images coming back.

 

Always been of the school that comprehensive, detailed but relevant keywording is the way to go - covers all scenarios. Try to understand me, I'm not advocating spamming, but the looks/age/ethnic origin/location (it is often quite easy for example to see if an image is shot in a Scandinavian home, a British home or an US home) of an image is relevant, especially in lifestyle, not just any person eating an orange in any old dig will do (in my humble opinion).

[Richard Baker]

Thinking about this overnight, I'll be interested to see how my meta software (iView) but otherwise Lightroom, exports words into tags into IM. I generally don't overload with keywords but I'll have to be careful not to exceed the 50 tags because the best word I think of at the end will, I presume drop off in IM. Someone has probably already created a Lightroom add-on to count the number of words/tags before Export.

 

But that's the kind of thing we can test individually when it's up and running.

 

Richard.

[Niels Quist]

Always been of the school that comprehensive, detailed but relevant keywording is the way to go - covers all scenarios. Try to understand me, I'm not advocating spamming, but the looks/age/ethnic origin/location (it is often quite easy for example to see if an image is shot in a Scandinavian home, a British home or an US home) of an image is relevant, especially in lifestyle, not just any person eating an orange in any old dig will do (in my humble opinion).

 

 

Quite agree with this - and the 50 keywords will surely be on the low side for me, as well.

 

Edited: some bad grammar

[Pearl]

I'd like to know if the words within a phrase e.g. "Snowdonia National Park" will be searchable or will I also have to add Snowdonia?  I will find 50 tags very limiting and feel it could lead to more frustration for buyers if they can't drill down to very specific needs.

 

Some good feelings about this change but not all good by any means. The goal posts keep changing it seems.

 

Pearl

[NYCat]

I wonder if commas will be needed. In Stockimo you click on "add" after typing each tag so sometimes it might be one word and sometimes a phrase. Of course, that wouldn't answer what happens with our previously keyworded images. 

 

Paulette

[IanGibson]

Maybe I wasn't very clear above

 

My main concern is: What comes up first in the search results when using supertags?

• Yellowstone national park American black bear Ursus americanus North America (10 supertags)
• Yellowstone, national park, American, black bear, Ursus americanus, North America, bears, US, USA, wildlife (also 10 supertags)

In the first I don't have to do anything but can use less supertags

If the second method has a clear advantage .......... I'll be forced to re-edit ................ 42,700 images

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

 

Whichever option turns out to be correct, I think that we will all want to revisit our keywords/tagging.  I suspect that a very large proportion of the images already on sale with Alamy have fewer than 10 words in the essential field.  These are the ones which will be converted to "supertags."

 

For best visibility, all of your images will need to have 10 supertags.  In your example, Yellowstone, and American will have used up more than their fair share of characters in the Essential field, so those images will probably only have 6 or 7 words in that field.  You will want to add a few more as super tags.  Good luck!

[Colblimp]

I'm not convinced about the 50 tags, surely some images need more than that? I'll wait and see before I give an opinion, but I've a bad feeling...

[IanGibson]

I'm not convinced about the 50 tags, surely some images need more than that? I'll wait and see before I give an opinion, but I've a bad feeling...

 

 

On the other hand, existing images with more than 50 keywords will keep them.  So if someone uploads a similar image in the future then that image will only have 50 tags, thus giving your existing images a slight advantage.

[Colblimp]

 

I'm not convinced about the 50 tags, surely some images need more than that? I'll wait and see before I give an opinion, but I've a bad feeling...

 

 

On the other hand, existing images with more than 50 keywords will keep them.  So if someone uploads a similar image in the future then that image will only have 50 tags, thus giving your existing images a slight advantage.

 

Agreed, but I'm nervous of the future...!

[ReeRay]

 

I'm not convinced about the 50 tags, surely some images need more than that? I'll wait and see before I give an opinion, but I've a bad feeling...

 

 

 

On the other hand, existing images with more than 50 keywords will keep them.  So if someone uploads a similar image in the future then that image will only have 50 tags, thus giving your existing images a slight advantage.

I'd like to think that would so but my reading is that the "new" super tagged images will carry more weight I believe.

[IanGibson]

 

 

I'm not convinced about the 50 tags, surely some images need more than that? I'll wait and see before I give an opinion, but I've a bad feeling...

 

 

On the other hand, existing images with more than 50 keywords will keep them.  So if someone uploads a similar image in the future then that image will only have 50 tags, thus giving your existing images a slight advantage.

 

Agreed, but I'm nervous of the future...!

 

 

I embrace the future......it's the past which makes me nervous

 

 

 

I'm not convinced about the 50 tags, surely some images need more than that? I'll wait and see before I give an opinion, but I've a bad feeling...

 

 

On the other hand, existing images with more than 50 keywords will keep them.  So if someone uploads a similar image in the future then that image will only have 50 tags, thus giving your existing images a slight advantage.

I'd like to think that would so but my reading is that the "new" super tagged images will carry more weight I believe.

 

 

 

They will.  But your current 'Essential' keywords will be converted into super tags - but unless you habitually choose short 'Essential' keywords, you won't have ten of them in very many of your images!

[Richard Baker]

 

 .. But your current 'Essential' keywords will be converted into super tags - but unless you habitually choose short 'Essential' keywords, you won't have ten of them in very many of your images!

 

I thought using the Essential keywords discombobulation and improbability was a good idea.

[NYCat]

Since Alamy seems to be watching this thread perhaps they can clear up the issue of commas. Some of us haven't used them or only used a minimum. Others (like Betty) use them all the time. How will they be treated? Also the quotation marks we have used (or not used).

 

Paulette

[Reimar]

I sure hope I can pick my measly 50 tags after upload from the total in my IPTC keyword field.  Truncation would not be welcome.  Other stock sites do not have such limitations. 

Will Captions also be limited?

[John Mitchell]

 

Do I or do I not have to review ALL my 42,700 images because I keyword in Bridge, so my keywords appear on Alamy WITHOUT commas. Am I now put at a disadvantage because my keywords / tags show as Eurasian beaver European beaver beavers Castor fiber ..... instead of Eurasian beaver, European beaver, beaver, beavers, Castor fiber, ...... 

 

Will my "European beaver" images appear further down the line in search results because those images - which show tags with commas - have priority? I sure hope not! 

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

Exactly my worry too Philippe. I'm pretty sure I know the answer, and I feel for those like yourself with huge portfolios. It's bad enough for me with my relatively tiny number of images. I don't use commas because we've been told not to, and don't use quotes or square brackets because they caused problems before. I re-did a lot of my keywording because of those issues, so now will I have to go back yet again to re-do them all? I think so. Like I've said already though, everyone is in the same boat, and most won't bother changing things so I hope those who do, get some advantage back.

 

Geoff.

 

 

I'm in the same leaky boat, it seems. I keyword using Photo Mechanic, and the commas get stripped when imported by Alamy. Bummer.

[Doc]

Anyone:

is Description Field remaining & unchanged in status???

or disappearing?  or...?

I gather it's staying unchanged, not searchable as now

Kumar