M.Chapman

Not a long shot at all, I think that's quite likely to fix it. If you're lucky your browser may allow you to clear only the data associated with Alamy.com so you don't loose any settings associated with other websites. Mark

Eee those were the days! Hardly hear any reports of visits there by forum regulars in recent times. Must have gone out of fashion or has QC got easier? Mark

Certainly if the search algorithm has been changed it's possible that customers could be finding what they want more quickly, so there are less views. So the graph I posted above won't necessarily correlate with views. On the other hand it might... Mark

Concerned by reports of plummeting views from individual contributors I did some analysis of the number of pages of search results on AoA which should give a more statistically significant viewpoint. The graph below shows the number of pages of search results during the 5 days of each week since the start of this year (NB. I've added 25% to the most recent week as Friday's data isn't available yet). This should give an indication of the level of the recorded activity from registered Alamy customers. As you can see there's no sudden drop in recent weeks. There is however some evidence of a slow decrease which could be a concern given that the number of images in Alamy's collection has increased over the period, (although search activity from registered customers is not the same as sales activity or revenue). I'm also not sure whether activity from all Alamy's distributors' websites is captured in AoA or not. Mark

I recently had Alamy send me a copy of all my metadata (4,000 images) as a spreadsheet which made it easy to scan through the whole lot. I was surprised to find that I'd unintentionally left some fields blank (number of people, releases, property and releases) on about 20 images. It only happened on images I've tagged using the new AIM and is caused by failing to scroll the "optional" window back up to the top when swapping between images. I soon got them fixed and will need to be more careful in future. Mark

I've seen evidence of it in the past. The search terms used when the zoom occurred have to exactly match the search term used in the later search for the image to be promoted. The "discovery" followed a long discussion with Alamy as to why one of my (worst) images always appeared first in a particular search when the search term was only in the tags, whereas other images that had the same keyword in supertags appeared lower down If you have a record of your zoomed images (including the exact search term used) try repeating the search and see which of your images appears first (assuming you have more than one image which meets the search criteria). Mark Update - I just looked again this morning and the pattern is still there. If an image has previously been zoomed, then if the search is repeated (using exactly the same search terms) it appears higher in the results than might otherwise be expected. Similarly, images that have been zoomed using different search term, or not zoomed at all appear lower. I realise this is slightly a self-fulfilling argument (images that appear higher have more chance of being zoomed) . But here are the stats which strongly suggest what I'm seeing isn't down to chance. I have 32 of my images returned when I search Alamy for Leicester Cathedral. Out of the first 7 of my images, 6 have all been previously zoomed using Leicester Cathedral as a search term. The remaining 25 (which all appear lower down in the search results) have either never been zoomed, or have been zoomed using a different search term. Purely chance? I think not.

If any of your test images was zoomed whilst using the same search term as you are using, I believe it's position may improve. Unless of course Alamy have changed something else..... Mark

On the flip side, it may make it easier for us to find usages and infringements... Mark

They are to stop people sitting on the wall. Mark

I think a cull has to happen at some point as the search engine seems to get slower and slower at delivering results, or is it just me? An automated cull of exact duplicates?? Mark

5 sales for $119 gross, $56 net. But spoilt slightly by a refund for $32 gross, ($16 net) for a sale that was originally invoiced in June... Like a number of others I seemed to suffer the effects of the "refunds day" on 21-08-2018 Mark

Goodness I'm flattered guys. Ah that could spoil it... Mark

Could the inconsistency in the histogram be because LR is using ProPhoto RGB and perhaps PS is set to a default working colour space of AdobeRGB or the export (via PSD or TIFF) is using AdobeRGB? Changing from one colour space to the other seems to to alter the RGB histogram so that histogram based contrast and exposure adjustments using one or the other are inconsistent. You may want to take a look at this thread https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/10185-soft-proofing-on-or-off/?tab=comments#comment-182159. If both LR and PS are set to ProPhotoRGB I find things become more consistent, but then get messed up when you save to an AdobeRGB jpg for Alamy. I'm no expert in this area, but I also see inconsistencies in the histograms between LR and PS if I don't set PS to use ProPhotoRGB and the export format to ProPhotoRGB. I'm now doing all my final adjustments in PS after RAW conversion with my colour space set to AdobeRGB since that's the format I want to end up with for Alamy. Mark

17MB is the minimum uncompressed image size required by Alamy. This means the uncompressed image must contain at least 17 MegaBytes of image data. In 8 bit mode, each pixel is stored using 3 bytes of data (1 byte each for Red, Green and Blue). So the minimum number of pixels required by Alamy is 17/3 = 5.667 MegaPixels. As a rough guide, just make sure your image contains at least 6 million pixels and you'll be OK, e.g. a 3000 x 2000 image is fine. When you save the image as in a jpg format file the image data is compressed to save disk space, so you will see the file size will be considerably smaller, but that's OK. Mark

Bit of both. If you keep a record of your zooms (and the search term used) it's easy to see the "zoom" effect. If you have several images of the same subject, but only one has been zoomed then that image will appear first (amongst your images) if the search is repeated. A previous zoom seems more powerful than whether the search terms appear in the tags, supertags and/or caption in determining image position. Mark