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Alamy Image Manager - want a sneak peek?


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The old Manage Images and I got along great. I liked the ease of highlighting keywords then sliding them into a new box without having to copy/paste like in the new MI. Or just sliding a more important keyword near the front.

 

I wonder if we can rearrange our tags like that with a mouse click/hold/slide in the new. It makes rearranging in order of importance easy. Plus any work we might need to do getting the supertags where they need to be.

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Can you say whether the old system will be available in parallel? It works well for me and i'd be surprised if I were alone.

 

This will replace all older tools.

 

Alamy

 

If it ain't broke, which it ain't, why fix it? Madness...

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Can you say whether the old system will be available in parallel? It works well for me and i'd be surprised if I were alone.

 

This will replace all older tools.

 

Alamy

 

If it ain't broke, which it ain't, why fix it? Madness...

 

 

It looks better.

Especially on a phone.

 

wim

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Can you say whether the old system will be available in parallel? It works well for me and i'd be surprised if I were alone.

 

This will replace all older tools.

 

Alamy

 

If it ain't broke, which it ain't, why fix it? Madness...

 

 

The thing is.. if you use an iPad, or want to use an iPad, it is broke! And compared to other systems, it looks dated and is more difficult to use. it's important for companies like Alamy to look modern, new and on trend. For example how many people owned a Nokia phone in the 1990s/2000s? And of those people, how many still own and use a Nokia phone? The Nokia phones weren't broken.... but....

And once we have this new system in place, after the initial teething issues, the reoccurring threads around commas, spaces and speech marks go away.

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Can you say whether the old system will be available in parallel? It works well for me and i'd be surprised if I were alone.

 

This will replace all older tools.

 

Alamy

 

If it ain't broke, which it ain't, why fix it? Madness...

 

 

The thing is.. if you use an iPad, or want to use an iPad, it is broke! And compared to other systems, it looks dated and is more difficult to use. it's important for companies like Alamy to look modern, new and on trend. For example how many people owned a Nokia phone in the 1990s/2000s? And of those people, how many still own and use a Nokia phone? The Nokia phones weren't broken.... but....

And once we have this new system in place, after the initial teething issues, the reoccurring threads around commas, spaces and speech marks go away.

 

So THAT'S why I can't do anything with Alamy on my iPad! OK, so it is broke - better fix it, Alamy! :P

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Can you say whether the old system will be available in parallel? It works well for me and i'd be surprised if I were alone.

 

This will replace all older tools.

 

Alamy

 

If it ain't broke, which it ain't, why fix it? Madness...

 

 

Thanks Alamy for updating us yesterday.

 

It comes across that it's not quite ready. I thought it was ready for roll-out, but if there are still tweaks being made, I wonder how long it'll really be before we're all able to use it. I'm not asking, just thinking aloud.

 

Putting aside issues of having to re-work our existing keywords, I think the main advantage of it will be the ability to use phrases in a way that works without issue, and be rid of the awful mess and miscommunication regarding quotation marks, commas and square brackets. If we'll be able to specify "new york city" as a multi-word tag and our images not appear when "york city" is searched for, then I'll be happy, and it'll be worth re-working my existing keywords.

 

For those who want to use the existing system still - I'm sure the way the new system will work isn't going to be compatible. I'm interested in how things work at the moment as some already have the new system but most of us don't. Somehow the 2 systems are still able to work together and search results must be working as they should? Must be very complicated to implement the changes. If it was me in control, I think I'd run a second test database that isn't connected to the main one, use that for all the testing, and then on one fine day hit the "change the whole damn lot" button and change everyone from the old to the new system, with maybe a day's downtime to check it's all worked out right.  :)

 

The blog post mentions being able to use an iPad with the new system - I'm curious why only the iPad was mentioned? Android exists too, and even Windows mobile devices if you happen to be one of the 26 people who like Windows Mobile. If it's using HTML5 instead of Flash, then any modern mobile device should be able to access it, and that's one of the other main reasons this update is very welcome.

 

Geoff.

The modern (Agile) approach to software development and beta testing means that changes are made right up to final release. So the new tools could be a day away or a year, don't read any timing into Alamy's comments about tweaks. Once it reaches an appropriate robust state it will be released.

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Can you say whether the old system will be available in parallel? It works well for me and i'd be surprised if I were alone.

 

This will replace all older tools.

 

Alamy

 

If it ain't broke, which it ain't, why fix it? Madness...

 

 

It looks better.

Especially on a phone.

 

wim

 

 

So you're one of the beta testers? ..  to know such things?  :D

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As mentioned in the blog, we know there will be lots of questions but we won't be answering everything at this stage for a few reasons:

  • Tweaks are still being made to the system so things may change
  • You will be provided with comprehensive instructions and help once you have the tools 
  • Until you have the new system and have used it, more details may leave you with more questions 

It's been mentioned a few times through this thread that we should've had people who post here testing. Well, we've asked our testers not to post details in the forum for now but we'd like to assure you that there are numerous posters from this very thread that are using the new tools and sending us feedback daily and it's feedback that we are assessing and implementing where appropriate.

 

Some other clarifications:

  • ​By the time the system is rolled out to all existing / legacy users, existing keywords will not be alphabetized
  • Commas and semicolons used with keywords within IPTC data will be recognised for all images uploaded with the new system 
  • Duplicated tags will not be able to be entered with the new system. For existing images with duplicate keywords there will be no search advantage to this

We have an ongoing group of test users who continue to provide us with really useful feedback and we are making tweaks and improvements all the time. This is the whole point of having a phased roll-out. :)

 

As mentioned in our original blog, we know there are many questions that you will have but our answer to them today may be different to tomorrow whilst fixes are made and things added / removed. For this reason we hope you can appreciate that it's not possible for us to answer questions in this thread in an ongoing basis. Providing further detailed info or instructions at this stage, before the majority of you have the tools, will likely only lead to more questions. When the new tools go live, full support and help will be available to you.

 

We're convinced you're going to love the new tools once you've gotten to know them! For now, if you're using the existing system there is no need to do anything different, just carry on as normal.

 

Cheers

 

James A

 

Thank you for clarifying - 

 

Kumar

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Can you say whether the old system will be available in parallel? It works well for me and i'd be surprised if I were alone.

 

This will replace all older tools.

 

Alamy

 

If it ain't broke, which it ain't, why fix it? Madness...

 

 

It looks better.

Especially on a phone.

 

wim

 

 

So you're one of the beta testers? ..  to know such things?  :D

 

 

Yes.

Just with very little time unfortunately.

 

wim

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  • duplicated tags will not be able to be entered with the new system. For existing images with duplicate keywords there will be no search advantage to this

I have two questions about this.

Similar to Philippe, presumably we can still put e.g. London Bridge, London and Bridge and each would be valid search terms.

Someone else (forget who) mentioned birds with repeated words in their scientific names, e.g. Crex crex. Would they have to be made into e.g. Crex_crex or Crex-crex, and if so, would Alamy's search just drop the underscore or hyphen as Google search does. Or would Crex crex as a keyword phrase be OK as it is.

Don't bother speculating, it's only worth an official answer from Alamy or else I'll just have to wait and see, like the other non-testers.

 

Happy to say I nearly always separated my keywords by commas as it was natural for me to do so, except unfortunately in a few cases when a couple of dropped commas would let me complete one more EssKey. Sadly, I'll have to wade through my entire port to identify these relative few.

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Looks good to me.

 

Getting rid of Flash, yabadabadoo.....

Getting rid of flash will be a huge win for me - actually for all of us from a security point of view.  I've not had Flash on a computer for a year and it's a painful process for me to keyword.  So... THANK YOU !!!

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