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How to copy keywords in Photo Mechanic or Bridge to tags in Alamy


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Hi, I have been an Alamy contributor for a few years but feel I may be missing out on something. At present, I write each tag on my images individually, except if there are several similar images. I don't use the keywords in Bridge or Photo Mechanic, which I believe I could do and may speed my submission process. 

 

Please can you tell me am I right, and if so how do I go about it for each of the two programmes?

 

Many thanks

 

Kevin

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I use photo mechanic for live news where you have to have headline and caption done before you upload. - Using it for tags is really simple, just put the words or phrases you want as tags into the keywords bit, separated by commas.  Then when it gets through QC those keywords will be the tags and you just have to select any you want as supertags.  Obviously, if you want you can fill in the caption in the description/caption field in PhotoMechanic as well - useful if you end up sending the image to a different agency as well as Alamy.

I have used the keywords field recently when I uploaded 40 odd photos of coins - many of the tags were going to be similar so rather than type them all out, again and again, I wrote them in Photo Mechanic then used their copy and paste function so all the photos had the basic tags done I just have to add the ones specific to each coin.

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I do all my keywording in Photo Mechanic. I've created and saved "snapshots"  of commonly used keywords -- e.g. I have several for my Vancouver images -- that I can apply to a series of similar images. I then tinker with the keywords as needed for individual images. I haven't done any cutting and pasting, though, since I do my keywording before uploading. After uploading, I usually tinker some more in AIM as I'm always thinking of new keywords/tags to add. It's never-ending...

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6 hours ago, Starsphinx said:

I use photo mechanic for live news where you have to have headline and caption done before you upload. - Using it for tags is really simple, just put the words or phrases you want as tags into the keywords bit, separated by commas.  Then when it gets through QC those keywords will be the tags and you just have to select any you want as supertags.  Obviously, if you want you can fill in the caption in the description/caption field in PhotoMechanic as well - useful if you end up sending the image to a different agency as well as Alamy.

I have used the keywords field recently when I uploaded 40 odd photos of coins - many of the tags were going to be similar so rather than type them all out, again and again, I wrote them in Photo Mechanic then used their copy and paste function so all the photos had the basic tags done I just have to add the ones specific to each coin.

Rather than copy and paste, would it not be easier to type them once, save the stationary pad as a .xmp file, and then just apply it to whichever images you want in one go.

 

i have to say that using keywords in Lightroom is far easier once you get the hang of it. You can add a hierarchy of words and synonyms in one click. With the Alamy Lightroom plugin (I know I keep banging on about it but I really couldn’t imagine my workflow without it), you can fetch and set keywords/tags/supertags between the Lightroom database and Alamy, so OP may wish to  consider using/buying LR. 

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7 hours ago, Sally said:

Rather than copy and paste, would it not be easier to type them once, save the stationary pad as a .xmp file, and then just apply it to whichever images you want in one go.

 

i have to say that using keywords in Lightroom is far easier once you get the hang of it. You can add a hierarchy of words and synonyms in one click. With the Alamy Lightroom plugin (I know I keep banging on about it but I really couldn’t imagine my workflow without it), you can fetch and set keywords/tags/supertags between the Lightroom database and Alamy, so OP may wish to  consider using/buying LR. 

Its a function of photo mechanic - especially useful when doing live news as I can enter all the information that is the same for each shot (headline date attribution) click the copy button then type the bit that is different on the first shot (caption) then its the save and move forward button, paste button, type caption, save and move forward button.  You can, of course, save as many different bits of stationary as you like - I have a basic one for me and a basic one for my son for application on import.  I don't save keywords as stationary because I have not run across a situation where I am doing a huge number of pictures the same as a huge number done before.  If I was going to be doing some more coins I would have saved the stationary but I will certainly not have as big a batch to do again - it might be one here or there but that's it.
I know Lightroom has different functionality - I have never used it for keywording.  I may in the future.  I am also considering having a look at "stock submitter".  The thing is everyone's workflow is different.  The bulk of my work is not stock but sport which I do off my own website, and keywording need is minimal while speed is wanted.  I know there is a bit of photo mechanic where you can program short words or numbers to be entered and they will appear as names or whatever - so you can set it so that when you type "1" in the stationary it prints "Smith, goalkeeper for Rovers" - and you can save as many versions as you like so you can have a set for Rovers, one for City, and one for United - all printing different names.  However most if not all of the teams I cover don't have set numbers and mix their players up quite a bit and Smith may be playing as "10 striker" next week so I don't use it.
Like most things, I am still learning PhotoMechanic (only been using it 3 years lol) so there is functionality I have not discovered - just like with Lightroom.  I am aware of things that can be done but at the moment I don't do them.  As my work and techniques evolve and change so will my software use.

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Hi there. Many thanks for your help. I like the idea of using Photo Mechanic, completing the keywords before uploading to Alamy, as I have never done this previously and for my workflow it sounds much more streamlined.

 

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