geogphotos Posted September 4, 2020 Share Posted September 4, 2020 (edited) Referring visitors from a website to Alamy has one major difficulty. Our file refs are not searchable. They used to be at one time. Wouldn't this help get sales and encourage contributors to refer potential buyers to their images at Alamy? Alamy are paying referral companies, why not incentivise contributors as used to happen way back in the past when we were actively encouraged to link with Alamy? I seem to recall that the now Mrs Capel led this campaign way back when. Edited September 4, 2020 by geogphotos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Harrison Posted September 4, 2020 Share Posted September 4, 2020 12 minutes ago, geogphotos said: Our file refs are not searchable Surely most contributor's filenames will not be unique? I know yours will be but I imagine most upload direct from their camera with whatever filename that has given them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
geogphotos Posted September 4, 2020 Author Share Posted September 4, 2020 2 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said: Surely most contributor's filenames will not be unique? I know yours will be but I imagine most upload direct from their camera with whatever filename that has given them. That surprises me, no wonder people have difficulty finding their files. It could be an opt in service, or 'thinking from the top of my head' a distinct delivery platform to pool the aggregated efforts of all these contributors who want to participate and have their own website. Alamy does use our image refs to help identify images, and they used to have them searchable at one time. They are in the system already. If as you say that is a problem. What about changing them to a unique contributor prefix which you state on your website for potential buyers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Harrison Posted September 4, 2020 Share Posted September 4, 2020 14 minutes ago, geogphotos said: What about changing them to a unique contributor prefix which you state on your website for potential buyers I think it might be the difficulty involved in managing a system that would ensure uniqueness considering the number of contributors on Alamy, the incorporation of new collections etc.etc. The Alamy Image ID is definitely unique, how about including that in the metadata of your web images? Clearly not an attractive proposition but it as at least possible to download the Alamy csv which gives your file reference (unique in your case) and the Alamy Image ID. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Harrison Posted September 4, 2020 Share Posted September 4, 2020 25 minutes ago, geogphotos said: That surprises me, no wonder people have difficulty finding their files. Actually, in the case of Lightroom it's perfectly easy to get it to change the original filename to new custom unique filenames based upon whatever system you like, either in the catalogue itself or on export, it's just not necessary to do so as Lightroom makes it easy to find your files in other ways, particularly if you've made use of even rudimentary captions and keywords. Lightroom can be set not to import duplicate records but it doesn't just look at the filename to establish what makes a duplicate, it looks at various other parts of the metadata in conjunction so there's no problem if the camera specific filenames 'roll over' at say 9,999. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
geogphotos Posted September 4, 2020 Author Share Posted September 4, 2020 1 hour ago, Harry Harrison said: I think it might be the difficulty involved in managing a system that would ensure uniqueness considering the number of contributors on Alamy, the incorporation of new collections etc.etc. The Alamy Image ID is definitely unique, how about including that in the metadata of your web images? Clearly not an attractive proposition but it as at least possible to download the Alamy csv which gives your file reference (unique in your case) and the Alamy Image ID. Don't much fancy doing that for over 65k images. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Harrison Posted September 4, 2020 Share Posted September 4, 2020 59 minutes ago, geogphotos said: Don't much fancy doing that for over 65k images. No, quite, but if Photoshelter offered an import process it would be easy with that csv. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
geogphotos Posted September 4, 2020 Author Share Posted September 4, 2020 3 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said: No, quite, but if Photoshelter offered an import process it would be easy with that csv. Unfortunately they don't which is why I ended up having to do all the exclusive/non-exclusive stuff so laboriously. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Harrison Posted September 4, 2020 Share Posted September 4, 2020 8 minutes ago, geogphotos said: Unfortunately they don't which is why I ended up having to do all the exclusive/non-exclusive stuff so laboriously. Yes, they could only offer it if they could be sure that the uploaded file references were unique anyway, they would be for yours but not for others. They'll have their own unique references for the images but they're not public. It's not a criticism of Photoshelter, they seem very good to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now