Harry Harrison

Hi Marianne, It's quite simple, I'll leave out how to get the csv into your spreadsheet program but I'm happy to help you with that. I'll assume that you've got your spreadsheet open with the column headings as in the csv. First you need to insert a new column, it can be anywhere but let's say it is to the right of Column D, your 'Tags' column. If you do that it will become the new Column E and shove the others to the right. Give that new column a heading in Row 1, level with all your other headings, so you know what it is, "No. of tags" perhaps, but anything you like. Copy the revised formula above into the second row of that new column, it should be cell E2. Hopefully you'll now just see a number, the number of tags for that first image. Now you need to copy that same formula down right through all the rows of your spreadsheet. The same principle applies for the supertags but substitute 'D2' in the formula with whatever column has your Supertags. They started out as Column G but now you've inserted a new column they will be Column H, just look in the grey bar at the top. It probably isn't going to be straightforward if you've never done this type of thing before but hopefully you'll get it to work and then all should become clear.

Just for the record it dawned on me that this formula doesn't account for when there are no tags at all when as it stands it would add 1 thanks to the +1 at the end. The correct formula should be this: =IF(LEN(D2)=0,0,LEN(D2)-LEN((SUBSTITUTE((D2),",","")))+1) So in other words it checks if the length is 0 and if so enters 0, otherwise it uses the formula above.

Marianne, I don't know if your husband sorted something out for you but now I've checked I can see that it is very straightforward in a spreadsheet program. I don't specifically know about Apple Numbers but I imagine it works the same. If not and you don't have Excel then the open source office suites such as Open Office, NeoOffice or Libre Office will do fine. As an example, if the your tags are in column D, as they would normally be then the formula is: =LEN(D2) - LEN((SUBSTITUTE((D2),",","")))+1 Note the +1 at the end as the last tag doesn't have a comma after it. Here (SUBSTITUTE((D2),",","")) is the contents of the tags cell when all the commas have been removed. You can do the same for the Supertags column and also if you so wish add the two results in another column to see how close they come to 50, the maximum allowed I think.

I use Filemaker but it may be easy with something like Access but I've never used that. You can certainly get it for a Mac, it goes back a long way and was only available on a Mac to begin with however a current version is pricy, I'm using an old version. Filemaker is very powerful but actually quite easy to use if you're doing this type of thing. This page should tell you how to do the same in Excel but I haven't tested it with commas: https://exceljet.net/formula/count-specific-characters-in-a-cell It should work, it's a formula that compares the total length of all the characters in the cell with the total length when all the instances of the specified character (a comma in this case) has been removed, the difference would be the number of characters that had been there. Someone that uses Excel may be able to give you a better method.

Thanks, sorry, I missed that. There's quite a science to it then - or a pseudo science I suppose!

Is there a downside to suddenly changing the pseudonym on a bunch of images that have been there a while? Presumably it doesn't matter if they've sold under the original pseudonym but can their ranking be affected in any way?

Yes, very nasty shards as it happens. I've ordered another though as it's a bit long in the tooth, a 5D MkII, there's not much of a choice. You can't seem to get the original Giottos or Larmor. I have read that the actual screen isn't too expensive or difficult to replace, though that was some time ago, they may not be available any more.

I second Keith here, though I like to bookmark the All Activity page: https://discussion.alamy.com/discover/

Yes, in fact they are a strange mix of pure curated (say less than 1000 images) and customised searches and sort orders, but I do find that some of the extra categories they offer would be useful in the current dropdown. It will be good to hear what you discover.

Thank you Clemency, yes it is helpful to hear Alamy's view on this and in particular Alamy's replies to your specific questions. This Discoverability bar gets a pretty bad press on this forum, deservedly so in my opinion if it means that those new to Alamy feel compelled to throw irrelevant keywords in just to get it to turn green. It's good I suppose that it means you are encouraged to visit the optional tab as well and complete the information there. The very name is confusing because improving 'discoverability' in terms of turning the bar from orange to green may have the opposite affect on your ranking in certain circumstances. I'm interested that you say that libraries use Categories to filter content internally, perhaps they do use them after all despite what I was told and so have some way of searching by them. If they do then I think they might be a pretty blunt tool because I'm guessing a lot of people don't use them and for me I often find that there isn't a suitable one, even Alamy's own Categories are much more comprehensive: https://www.alamy.com/category.aspx I wish Alamy offered some guidance on how to use them. On the other hand you obviously use them all the time so you must have a pretty good handle on how best to apply them.

Yes, there would be though it's not straightforward, I think the easiest way is to 'count' the commas. I use a database program to do the same, very handy.

I believe that we are not supposed to mention or discuss other libraries by name here on this forum but I know what you mean. When I looked into them I was pretty appalled by the sense of mission of those behind it.

Yes, very interesting, I was surprised to see that even 5 years ago when the article was written it states that judges had already overseen hundreds of such cases and from what you say things haven't moved on in the intervening period. On the other hand I've never been to Hungary but judging from what we read in the papers freedom to photograph in the street may not be a top priority for the current government.

Useful advice but I think you mean the Categories dropdown. There is no hard evidence that these are actually used in the search algorithm unless perhaps Alamy have told you otherwise? Certainly there is no category search as such on the public facing site. People sensibly fill them in anyway as best they can just in case they might be used in the future. There was some discussion that perhaps they were used by Alamy picture researchers on their system internally but I was told that this wasn't the case by an Alamy rep. Are you able to shed any light on this perhaps?

Managed to put a perfect comic book shatter pattern across my Giottos Schott glass screen protector the other day, my Fuji just swung down and clipped it in the centre. I wondered how to get it off, fingernails, credit cards, heat etc. ? No, that dental floss trick from the 'Sony RX100 grip' thread worked a treat, quick & easy and no risk of damaging the actual camera screen. Recommended. But...I forgot to photograph it before I took it off!