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Do you fill "Optional" tab?


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Hi

I used to fill all the info in the Optional tab in AIM, but recently do this less and less to the point where my last several submissions I have not touched the Optional tab.

What is your experience? Do you always do this? Do you know of / noticed any effect of filling it in / not filling it in?

 

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The 'optional' tab has several very important fields in it, not least the number of people and property requiring releases. It also has the 'only available on Alamy' field, which is essential if you are only posting the image to Alamy as it gets you a 50% commission rather than 40%. The tab is less optional than one might imagine!

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Yes.. I fill in as much as I can. And just because something might not seem to be used today doesn't mean that Alamy won't find some novel and compelling reason to use it in the future... and if this happens, you have a real task going back to fill these details in for a lot of photos in the future.

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8 hours ago, Pietrach said:

Hi

I used to fill all the info in the Optional tab in AIM, but recently do this less and less to the point where my last several submissions I have not touched the Optional tab.

What is your experience? Do you always do this? Do you know of / noticed any effect of filling it in / not filling it in?

 

Unlike most apparently, I'm like you.  It may hurt in the future, but who knows?  I'll deal with it then if I need to.

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Yes I fill the optional tab in. But, I rarely enter anything into the description field. Now that the hook-up to Google maps has gone I'm beginning to question if the location field is worth completing either as it's not directly* searchable by customers. If the location is important, then it goes in the caption and potentially the tags (depending on how important it is). So is there any point in also adding it into the non-searchable location field? If the location isn't important, what's the point in entering it anywhere? I did wonder if Alamy was going to start adding geo-location data based on the Google map info, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside? 

 

*QUESTION - how does Alamy decide which images to display when the customer ticks location UK/USA/Europe or Australia filter?

Maybe Alamy could tell us which field(s) it uses to determine if the image was taken within the selected region.

 

Mark

 

PS. One thing I'm coming to realise is that it takes far longer to enter all the info Alamy asks for than the more concise info required by some of its competitors... 

 

Edited by M.Chapman
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Yes, except:

1. when there are blurred pixels which may or may not be people, I don't indicate number of people. I feel strongly that if someone searches for a photo with e.g. "three people", they actually want to see the people, not an ambiguous blur. Note that in these circumstances I don't say 0 people, I just don't fill in the people boxes.

I do indicate number of people where the people are visible, and the other fields.

By default, if you don't indicate that you have a model release, 'no release' appears on the page, so it isn't an issue, even if the out of focus blobs should recognise themselves.

2. If it's an isolated photo of an object, I don't fill in the location field, as it's irrelevant.

3. Sometimes I can't find any appropriate category, and when that happens, I don't sweat it.

Edited by Cryptoprocta
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1 hour ago, Cryptoprocta said:

but I feel strongly that if someone searches for a photo with e.g. "three people", they actually want to see the people, not an ambiguous blur.

Me too, this is one of my gripes. Nor, if they search on three people, would they want to see a photo of one person with two out of focus blobs behind. 

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Can I ask if these fields in the Optional tab pre-date the new AIM? So in particular the no. of people, property, releases, location, categories (primary & secondary)?

 

I can't help but think that the Location field has been somewhat deprecated since they abandoned the link with Google, certainly it's not going to work in the way that they perhaps intended, linked to a map etc. I personally struggle with the categories more than anything because a lot of images don't seem to easily fit into the limited selection available.

 

I gather that the categories and location are not searched currently but may be in the future, even if they are not searched directly I suppose they could be used somewhere in the sort priority algorithm. But then if Alamy decided that they weren't after all going to use them would they say?

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10 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Can I ask if these fields in the Optional tab pre-date the new AIM? So in particular the no. of people, property, releases, location, categories (primary & secondary)?

 

I can't help but think that the Location field has been somewhat deprecated since they abandoned the link with Google, certainly it's not going to work in the way that they perhaps intended, linked to a map etc. I personally struggle with the categories more than anything because a lot of images don't seem to easily fit into the limited selection available.

 

I gather that the categories and location are not searched currently but may be in the future, even if they are not searched directly I suppose they could be used somewhere in the sort priority algorithm. But then if Alamy decided that they weren't after all going to use them would they say?

 

All the fields you mention in the first line of your query were in the old image manager too, except categories.

 

The linking of the location field to a map was a recent innovation, previously it was just a text field. It used to be searchable, but it threw up so many false positives that it became a nuisance and Alamy made it non-searchable.

 

The categories fields are the only ones I ignore. I too struggle to fit images into categories a lot of the time so I just leave them blank.  I also fail to see how a potential customer might make use of a categories search, unless they have only the vaguest idea of what they are looking for and are seeking inspiration. Even if Alamy make categories live I will probably ignore them if I can.

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7 minutes ago, Cryptoprocta said:

Based on things they've introduced in the past then not fully implemented, who knows?

 

Well I certainly don't go back very long with them but I can see that if they have encouraged contributors to spend time, and sometimes presumably a great deal of time, filling in particular information it would be at the very least embarrassing to have to say that it was time spent in vain.

Edited by Harry Harrison
typo
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11 minutes ago, Joseph Clemson said:

It used to be searchable, but it threw up so many false positives that it became a nuisance and Alamy made it non-searchable.

 

Thanks, that's cleared that one up, but it is still advisable to fill the optional location field in given what you've said about it?

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1 minute ago, Harry Harrison said:

 

Well certainly don't go back very long with them but I can see that if they have encouraged contributors to spend time, and sometimes presumably a great deal of time, filling in particular information it would be at the very least embarrassing to have to say that it was time spent in vain.

Many years ago, they introduced a 'thing' whereby if you wanted a phrase to stick together in search, like e.g. "New York", you had to put quotes round it. That was never implemented, though many people spent a lot of time going back through their files doing it. The really funny (?) thing about that was that for years later, people were advising newbies to do it on the forum, even though it demonstrably wasn 't working.

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8 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

 

Thanks, that's cleared that one up, but it is still advisable to fill the optional location field in given what you've said about it?

 

If the customer needs to know the location, that is the field they would be advised to look at in any given image they are considering. Many contributors use additional info or tags for location, but there is little consistency about it. I count it as a plus for Alamy: none of the microstock sites have location fields, and sometimes (I'd go so far as to say, very often, in editorial work) location  information matters to the customer.

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23 minutes ago, Joseph Clemson said:

 

All the fields you mention in the first line of your query were in the old image manager too, except categories.

Can I infer from that then that the vast majority of images, those added before the AIM won't have a category anyway?

 

In  Alamy's defence I can see that of course they have to try stuff out and time's change, their competitors introduce things also that they have to match. It's not easy I imagine.

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1 minute ago, Harry Harrison said:

Can I infer from that then that the vast majority of images, those added before the AIM won't have a category anyway?

 

In  Alamy's defence I can see that of course they have to try stuff out and time's change, their competitors introduce things also that they have to match. It's not easy I imagine.

 

I'll have to defer to someone with a better memory to answer this. I have a feeling there was a previous category system, but I can't recall the details. I've certainly never used it.

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