New/creative/relevant image listing

[will perrett]

When buyers search for an image, they are invited to choose in what order they wish their selected images to appear: newest first (even I understand that), creative or relevant.  I'm not at all clear how the images are ordered in these latter two versions (especially creative: does the software have some sort of aesthetic criteria built in?).  But that's not my main issue currently: instead, "new" seems to have developed gremlins, and for the last two or three days has been offering images in random, not newest first, order.  I know because I use my name as a tag (though I believe this is frowned upon) in order to check my images' visibility: they are there all right, but definitely not in "newest first: order.  Anyone else noticed this phenomenon?

[geogphotos]

As far as I know there is no difference between the results of a Creative or a Relevance search, sometimes the search order is shuffled a bit but not apparently through any actual logic.

 

It is some sort of anachronism from a time a few years ago when Alamy intended to manually sort the collection but it seemed to run out of steam. Why they don't get rid of it I have. no idea. 

 

The 'New' filters seem to be. working okay on the couple of searches I tried. 

Edited June 5, 2020 by geogphotos

[spacecadet]

+1.

"Creative" relied on curation. It never got further than a few, a very few, subject areas and images. ISTR trying it a while back and there were some slight differences.

Sure, Alamy's going to sort through 200M images by hand!

[will perrett]

2 hours ago, geogphotos said:

The 'New' filters seem to be. working okay on the couple of searches I tried. 

Not for me.  I tried a search for "Richmond, North Yorkshire", as I'd recently uploaded a batch of 20 images from there, all with those tags.  Sure enough, 1 appeared on the first page, but none of the others.  I gave up searching for them on page 6.  Given that they were all submitted at the same time, I would have expected them to appear pretty much together, for a search based on "new".  What happened to the other 19?

[geogphotos]

1 hour ago, will perrett said:

Not for me.  I tried a search for "Richmond, North Yorkshire", as I'd recently uploaded a batch of 20 images from there, all with those tags.  Sure enough, 1 appeared on the first page, but none of the others.  I gave up searching for them on page 6.  Given that they were all submitted at the same time, I would have expected them to appear pretty much together, for a search based on "new".  What happened to the other 19?

 

The images are ranked by the date they are uploaded rather than the date they were taken. Can't explain what you are finding with your own images but this might be something to do  images being  ranked by the date they are uploaded rather than the date they were taken.

Edited June 5, 2020 by geogphotos

[will perrett]

 

5 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

The images are ranked by the date they are uploaded

But all 20 images were uploaded in the same batch, i.e. identical uploading date!  And uploaded within the last week.  Thus I would have expected to see them together, and, if not on page one, then certainly not far back.  (Incidentally, the date taken would have been the same as well.)

[geogphotos]

6 minutes ago, will perrett said:

 

But all 20 images were uploaded in the same batch, i.e. identical uploading date!  And uploaded within the last week.  Thus I would have expected to see them together, and, if not on page one, then certainly not far back.  (Incidentally, the date taken would have been the same as well.)

 

 

Yes I understand that but can't explain. 

[spacecadet]

12 minutes ago, will perrett said:

 

But all 20 images were uploaded in the same batch, i.e. identical uploading date!  And uploaded within the last week.  Thus I would have expected to see them together, and, if not on page one, then certainly not far back.  (Incidentally, the date taken would have been the same as well.)

AFAICS, the "new" filter influences the search but doesn't completely override other factors such as rank. So it appears imperfect. You don't get all your "new" images on page one if that would exclude images with higher ranking. But the do seem to spread out a lot.

Edited June 5, 2020 by spacecadet

[will perrett]

5 hours ago, spacecadet said:

AFAICS, the "new" filter influences the search but doesn't completely override other factors such as rank.

Thing is, when I use my name as a search item (I've included my name as a tag on all my images), and search on "new", the order is still jumbled, and big time.  And rank can't come into it, as I'm only looking at my images.  (If you want to try it, put in Will Perrett Photography)  The Alamy software appears to be attempting to group images by subject: thus a whole bunch of Norway images appear together, same for Cornwall, Croatia, etc., even though this is not the order in which I uploaded them.  (For variety's sake, I upload 20 images per subject per upload and rotate them, so that 20 Norway pictures, say, come round every 10th upload or so.) Odd business...

[M.Chapman]

6 hours ago, will perrett said:

 

But all 20 images were uploaded in the same batch, i.e. identical uploading date!  And uploaded within the last week.  Thus I would have expected to see them together, and, if not on page one, then certainly not far back.  (Incidentally, the date taken would have been the same as well.)

 

Did they all have identical caption and tags? If not then this will also influence position, potentially very significantly, especially when using a multi-word search as the presence of a matching phrase also becomes important. Even if your images all have the same captions and tags they won't appear next to each other as the "dispersal algorithm" will separate them, typically by 19 images.

 

Mark

Edited June 5, 2020 by M.Chapman

[will perrett]

Well, until a couple of weeks ago, I could search on my name and quite reliably and accurately, all my images would appear, in the order in which I had uploaded them, batch by batch.  Not any more!  Something's changed.  My images do not all have identical tags or captions, though of course some tags are shared as appropriate (all are tagged "Will Perrett" for instance).  So, a search for "Will Perrett", with "new" chosen, no longer shows my most recent uploads first.  In fact I have to go to around page 6 or 7 to find the latest uploads.  In other words, "new" seems to be kaput...

[M.Chapman]

21 minutes ago, will perrett said:

Thing is, when I use my name as a search item (I've included my name as a tag on all my images), and search on "new", the order is still jumbled, and big time.  And rank can't come into it, as I'm only looking at my images.  (If you want to try it, put in Will Perrett Photography)  The Alamy software appears to be attempting to group images by subject: thus a whole bunch of Norway images appear together, same for Cornwall, Croatia, etc., even though this is not the order in which I uploaded them. 

 

I just tried it and all your images I looked at are ordered by "Date taken" (not Date uploaded) I only checked 20 or so, but it seemed to be working and isn't "kaput"

 

Mark 

Edited June 5, 2020 by M.Chapman

[M.Chapman]

9 minutes ago, will perrett said:

Well, until a couple of weeks ago, I could search on my name and quite reliably and accurately, all my images would appear, in the order in which I had uploaded them, batch by batch.  

 

It's quite possible that Alamy have changed the meaning of "New" from "Date uploaded" to "Date Taken". They often say that they can, and do, change the search algorithm

 

Using "Relevant" tends to order by date of upload (if everything else is equal). In your case, it's altered because you have put Will Perret Photography as the caption of T9T67Y, T9T844 and T9T7WA and the Caption currently carries a higher weighting than a Tag.

 

If you want to reliably see them in the order they were uploaded, then AIM does this, submission by submission.

 

Mark

Edited June 5, 2020 by M.Chapman

[will perrett]

Thanks Mark: I think you've cracked it.  Don't suppose there any way to change the Alamy algorithm back to how it was!  It would certainly explain the grouping of images that I'm seeing, as all the Norway lot, for instance, were all shot over the course of a few days, although uploaded in a staggered sequence over many months...

[M.Chapman]

14 minutes ago, will perrett said:

Thanks Mark: I think you've cracked it.  Don't suppose there any way to change the Alamy algorithm back to how it was!  It would certainly explain the grouping of images that I'm seeing, as all the Norway lot, for instance, were all shot over the course of a few days, although uploaded in a staggered sequence over many months...

 

Why do you want it back the way it was? What relevance would it have to customers? AIM will show them to you in the order uploaded. If you want to control the order in which your images of the same subject appear for a given search term then use the caption, tags, and supertags to help achieve this. It doesn't always work as other factors (e.g. a previous zoom of an image using the same search term) can promote an image and "Date taken" can also demote the position of older images.

 

Mark

Edited June 5, 2020 by M.Chapman

[will perrett]

You're right of course.  Maybe I'm just resistant to change....

[geogphotos]

1 hour ago, M.Chapman said:

 

It's quite possible that Alamy have changed the meaning of "New" from "Date uploaded" to "Date Taken". They often say that they can, and do, change the search algorithm

 

Using "Relevant" tends to order by date of upload (if everything else is equal). In your case, it's altered because you have put Will Perret Photography as the caption of T9T67Y, T9T844 and T9T7WA and the Caption currently carries a higher weighting than a Tag.

 

If you want to reliably see them in the order they were uploaded, then AIM does this, submission by submission.

 

Mark

 

 

Mark,

 

Has Alamy confirmed this because I recall when tags were more powerful than Caption? 

 

I'm not complaining to me it is right that Caption should be more important. 

 

Is this the same for Archive images where the character limit is much higher?

[M.Chapman]

1 hour ago, geogphotos said:

Has Alamy confirmed this because I recall when tags were more powerful than Caption? 

Alamy rarely confirm anything but it’s simple to test. At the moment it seems that Caption and Supertag have roughy equal weighting, with Tags having a lower weighting. But it does change from time to time. 

 

Mark

[geogphotos]

5 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

Alamy rarely confirm anything but it’s simple to test. At the moment it seems that Caption and Supertag have roughy equal weighting, with Tags having a lower weighting. But it does change from time to time. 

 

Mark

 

 

That sounds about right to me. It was crazy when Tags had more Alamy juice than Caption. I don't really use Supertags as I should.

[dunstun365]

On another site (by the firm that does photoshop) they generate keywords by the image & it seems very accurate don't know how they do it but alamy needs something similar

[geogphotos]

4 hours ago, dunstun365 said:

On another site (by the firm that does photoshop) they generate keywords by the image & it seems very accurate don't know how they do it but alamy needs something similar

 

 

Does it generate Latin names for plants and insects? Can it recognise locations and identify significant events?

 

Perhaps it could be a rule of thumb that if Adobe can auto-generate better 'tags' than the photographer that the picture has no place on Alamy - just my opinion.

[meanderingemu]

10 hours ago, dunstun365 said:

On another site (by the firm that does photoshop) they generate keywords by the image & it seems very accurate don't know how they do it but alamy needs something similar

 

 

Not sure i agree, So i tried.  Uploaded two recent image

e

"flower, garden, flowers, nature, plant, green, spring, summer, window, pink, wall, pot, stone, decoration, frame, outdoor, wood, beautiful, floral, wooden, gardening, plants, white, old, red"

 

 

"flag, flags, building, red, usa, blue, national, architecture, symbol, wind, white, house, europe, sky, country, america, patriotism, city, banner, canada, window, nation, old"

 

 

Seems to be missing what the actual content of the image is, and also include wrong information

[meanderingemu]

8 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seems to be missing what the actual content of the image is, and also include wrong information

 

 

out of curiosity i uploaded this one to another MS with recent compensation issues, and it's even worse at creating relevant kw. 

 

"flag, symbol, nation, national, wind, government, international, business, finance, world, together, banner, politics, united, friendship, patriotism, cooperation, freedom, partnership, concept, texture, stripes, background, independence, 3d"

[meanderingemu]

and before some says, but they are all editorial...

 

.

 

flower, nature, white, plant, spring, green, flowers, strawberry, yellow, blossom, flora, macro, bloom, garden, wild, beauty, summer, forest, wood, leaf, daisy, natural, anemone, petal, grass

 

 

so yes it does a good job, as it would make sure that people who do their own kw are advantages, but not sure that's what you had in mind

 

added: also remember that system is suppose to fever top entered KW, so this does not seem to be really helpful.

Edited July 5, 2020 by meanderingemu