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Do you fill "Optional" tab?


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2 minutes ago, Joseph Clemson said:

If the customer needs to know the location, that is the field they would be advised to look at

 

Got you, I will definitely fill it in then, fortunately it's quite easy to find images in AIM as I usually put it in somewhere. Actually it makes sense for it not to be searchable given your other advice about not including the location for generic images where it is immaterial.

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8 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

I am just that kind of newbie - I don't want to waste time doing things that are pointless, rather be taking pictures!

On  the other hand, it's easier to do it as you go along, rather than, at some future date, having to go back over your port and add things which actually have been implemented. Those of us who chose to bother had to do it when the new AIM was introduced, as many correctly added keywords in existing images were mangled.

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Recently, I believe in one of the meetups when an Alamy rep came, the categories were mentioned. The rep said they were used by Alamy personnel when a client asked Alamy to perform a search for them. 

So leave it out at your own peril. You might have your images eliminated from those searches. 

I, for one, fill out everything. Usually don’t the 2nd category, but if it’s something like a phone, technology and object would apply. Most of my image don’t fit two categories often.

Betty

Edited by Betty LaRue
Typo
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2 minutes ago, Betty LaRue said:

Recently, I believe in one of the meetups when an Alamy rep came, the categories were mentioned. The rep said they were used by Alamy personnel when a client asked Alamy to perform a search for them. 

I read that also, but then that raises the question of how do they do that? It would mean that they have a totally different interface available to them in the office. A programmer can query a database in any way he or she likes but day to day researchers need an easy to use system. I wasn't at the meeting but wondered if somehow there had been a confusion with the Alamy Stock Categories which is a different animal altogether - or are they somehow related in some mysterious way?

 

I also think that since everyone is entering their categories 'blind' as it were, and there is little guidance from Alamy then there is unlikely to be any large degree of consensus in how they have been entered which would make searching on them a bit of a mixed bag.

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16 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

I read that also, but then that raises the question of how do they do that? It would mean that they have a totally different interface available to them in the office.

I think that's quite possible.

The rep at the meeting I was at said that if a search in quotes shows up in your Customer Search stats in Measures, it means that  a researcher had performed the search.

That was specifically in reply to me asking why so few search results showed quotes, whereas using quotes in a search leads to much cleaner searches, especially where a search phrase is used. I was wondering whether Alamy should point this out to all buyers, but that was the reply I got.

I wondered if I could correctly infer from that that if a buyer searching on their own used quotes, that wouldn't show up in our Measures. It's a reasonable inference IMO, but not a definite conclusion.

Edited by Cryptoprocta
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Yes. Sales are hard enough to come by without doing everything in your power to stack cards in your favour, especially when it only takes a few seconds - and fractions of a second per image if you're working on a batch.

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On 11/03/2019 at 21:55, M.Chapman said:

 

*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

 

My experiments have shown that the location filters for UK/USA/Europe are taken from the location field.  I initially discovered this as I had put United Kingdom and Europe rather than UK and Europe in the location for a few images.  Those images were returned for searches where the filter was set for Europe but not when set for UK even though UK was in the caption.

 

I always fill in all the information

Edited by Pearl
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18 minutes ago, Pearl said:

My experiments have shown that the location filters for UK/USA/Europe are taken from the location field

That's a great bit of detective work, I'm sure everyone will pleased to know that information, particularly as it was thought that the Location field wasn't searched.

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Opportunity for a quick rant. The standard of keywording. E.g found an image recently that specifically mentioned people in the caption, i.e. a people picture, but no-one to be seen.  Mind you it sold!  Not an isolated  instance by any means, I see this kind of thing every day.

 

As I've said before, there are many images on Alamy that don't have the number of people field completed - but of course that is optional.

 

Surely all of this gives a very bad impression to customers struggling  to find photos - perhaps there should be some keywording police recruited. 😯 

 

Just need to tell the offenders that all  their images will be withdrawn from sale if they don't clean up their act.  

 

Suspect a lot of this is due to the inclusion of job lots from elsewhere. Can't imagine the good people on this forum would be so negligent.

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8 minutes ago, Bryan said:

As I've said before, there are many images on Alamy that don't have the number of people field completed

Bryan, I've missed you saying this before but how can you tell if the number of people field hasn't been filled in on an image?

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Just now, Harry Harrison said:

Bryan, I've missed you saying this before but how can you tell if the number of people field hasn't been filled in on an image?

 

Easy, search using the number of people option. 

 

It's waste of time doing so as many many images don't comply.  Mine do like 😉

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11 minutes ago, Bryan said:

Easy, search using the number of people option. 

Ok, I just wondered if you could tell by looking at a image, a random image if you like, not as a result of searching, if there was some hidden data field that I'd missed.

 

I struggle a bit with this blurred people/disembodied hands business, important for commercial work with model releases probably but irrelevant for where there is no model release, and gives misleading search results if carried through to the letter, still that has been discussed before here.

 

Thanks

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On 12/03/2019 at 20:58, Joseph Clemson said:

 

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.

123RF have a location field which they introduced several years back but it is optional.

 

Kevin

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  • 3 years later...

I have always filled in Optional. I’m of the thought that if I have a choice, always err on the side of the extra work, because if I don’t, Murphy’s Law will eventually kick in and chop my head off. When the new Image Manager was brought in, I was forced to revise 5000 plus images. Not because anything I failed to do, but something Alamy did. Nevertheless, it was a horrible chore, and nothing I ever want to go through again because of my failure to take steps I could have easily taken.

It’s easier to fill in Optional at ingestion than to find out later that something has been implemented by Alamy that uses that information.

If something new is introduced using the info, I can sit back with a smile on my face.

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I always do the options.  As mentioned, you can usually do most of them in bulk anyway when doing a set of images.  I don't want to have to go back and go over old images in the future if something optional becomes mandatory.

 

Jill

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