Primary and Secondary Categories

[Jansos]

I know this has been covered before in 2019 but I must admit to still being a little confused about which category to select. I know some contributors don't bother with them at all but why can't Alamy make them a bit more obvious? Perhaps they could be automatically generated by AI, depending on the keywords chosen?

[Allan Bell]

I have tried them in the past but gave up.

 

I like the AI idea though.

 

Allan

 

[Avpics]

I do fill them in with a millisecond of thought, but I don't believe that Alamy have ever got around to it being of any use or ever will.

[Harry Harrison]

2 hours ago, Jansos said:

but why can't Alamy make them a bit more obvious?

Or why can't they say whether they are used and if so in what way? No contributor  can be sure if they are choosing appropriate categories because we can't search on them and see what comes up, as we could with keywords of course. There is no feedback loop, we are doing it blind.

[John Mitchell]

I only select a category if the image obviously fits into one of them. Otherwise I don't bother. As mentioned in previous conversations, the list of categories is woefully inadequate. For instance, you would think that there would be categories like "climate change" and "diversity" given how popular these subjects are nowadays.

 

 

Edited November 27, 2021 by John Mitchell

[Michael Ventura]

I too only select a category or two when it is obvious fit for my photo.

[gvallee]

10 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

Or why can't they say whether they are used and if so in what way? No contributor  can be sure if they are choosing appropriate categories because we can't search on them and see what comes up, as we could with keywords of course. There is no feedback loop, we are doing it blind.

 

E-mail from Alamy to me dated 14th June:

 

"The categories in the image manager are not visible externally currently. This may change in the future and they may be used to link customers to specific collections but at the moment, they are used by us internally to categorise collections for things like directing picture needs to the correct contributors."

[Harry Harrison]

10 hours ago, gvallee said:

E-mail from Alamy to me dated 14th June:

Thanks for posting this, interesting. It must be a very blunt tool if they use it internally given the current list of categories, coupled with the fact that huge swathes of the library won't have them at all and those that do may or may not be categorised optimally. Still, they're stuck with them, although new categories like 'climate change', 'diversity' or even 'environment' would be a very good idea how could they possibly bring them in now, who is going to retrospectively go back through their images and reassign them given that the reward for doing so is so unclear? I don't suppose they would relish the prospect of coming out and telling us that they're not going to use them after all either.

[Abiyoyo]

The 90% of mine are Travel, and the second one is Architecture / Interiors. These are my default Categories. I do not spend too much time on this.

[Harry Harrison]

In case it is useful, a reminder of the list of categories:

 

Abstracts and backgrounds
Animals and wildlife
Architecture and interiors
Archive or historical
Art and artwork
Business
Celebrations and life events
Concepts
Education
Entertainment and celebrities
Food and drink
Healthcare and medical
Industry and agriculture
Landscapes
Lifestyle
News and reportage
Objects and still life
Occupations
Plants and gardens
Science
Sport
Technology
Transport
Travel
Weather and seasons

[gvallee]

2 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

Thanks for posting this, interesting. It must be a very blunt tool if they use it internally given the current list of categories, coupled with the fact that huge swathes of the library won't have them at all and those that do may or may not be categorised optimally. Still, they're stuck with them, although new categories like 'climate change', 'diversity' or even 'environment' would be a very good idea how could they possibly bring them in now, who is going to retrospectively go back through their images and reassign them given that the reward for doing so is so unclear? I don't suppose they would relish the prospect of coming out and telling us that they're not going to use them after all either.

 

You're right, new categories have been added here and then. No way I'm going back again over what I've already done. 

[Nick Hatton]

21 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

I only select a category if the image obviously fits into one of them. Otherwise I don't bother. As mentioned in previous conversations, the list of categories is woefully inadequate. For instance, you would think that there would be categories like "climate change" and "diversity" given how popular these subjects are nowadays.

 

 

There is a weather choice 

[John Mitchell]

1 hour ago, Nick Hatton said:

There is a weather choice 

 

True, but weather and climate, although obviously related, are two different things -- weather means day-to-day conditions, climate refers to the big picture.

 

 

 

 

[Doc]

I only select a category when it's fairly obvious. Frankly there are many images which don't fit into any of their categories - Street scenes in towns/cities, and images related to religion to name but two common subjects.

 

I suspect it may be one of those things that Alamy decided to try but hasn't really delivered any practical value

 

Kumar

[wiskerke]

21 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

In case it is useful, a reminder of the list of categories:

 

Abstracts and backgrounds
Animals and wildlife
Architecture and interiors
Archive or historical
Art and artwork
Business
Celebrations and life events
Concepts
Education
Entertainment and celebrities
Food and drink
Healthcare and medical
Industry and agriculture
Landscapes
Lifestyle
News and reportage
Objects and still life
Occupations
Plants and gardens
Science
Sport
Technology
Transport
Travel
Weather and seasons

 

That's 25.

However All categories on this page: https://www.alamy.com/category.aspx lists 56:

 

Abstract
Agriculture
Architecture
Art
Australia
Autumn
Backgrounds
Black & white
Book covers
Business & technology
Christmas
Cities
Colors
Concepts
Cultures
Cut Outs
Entertainment & celebrity
Environment & green living
Everyday
Families
Fashion & style
Flowers, gardens & plants
Food
Germany
Health & beauty
Historical
Images for print
India
Industry
Landscapes
Lifestyle
Live news & reportage
Love
Middle East
Movement, motion & action
Music, fans & memorabilia
News & entertainment
Nostalgia
Pets
Royalty-free
Science & healthcare
Small business
Sport
Spring
Still life
Stockimo (and I have seen Social used for this also)
Summer
Teaching & learning
Transport
Travel
UK
US
Vectors & illustrations
Wildlife
Winter
Wonders of the world

 

And then there are Categories or Latest collections on the front page:

 

Body Positivity
Climate Crisis
Future Travel
Global Diversity
Lifestyle
Modern Learning
Pharma Revolution
Royals
Royalty-free
Summer of Sports
This Ability
Togetherness

 

wim

Edited November 29, 2021 by wiskerke
typo

[Harry Harrison]

43 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

That's 25.

However All categories on this page: https://www.alamy.com/category.aspx lists 56:

Yes Wim, but that's part of the problem, those so-called categories in 'Browse by category' are totally unrelated to the ones we enter in 'Optional' on AIM. In fact some of the positive suggestions were that they would correlate the two, but I can see that this far down the line that wouldn't be possible either.

 

Edit:

I know that I've said this before but they are either simple keyword searches with some curated pages up front, or pure curated pages of less than a thousand images or so.

Edited November 29, 2021 by Harry Harrison

[wiskerke]

1 hour ago, Harry Harrison said:

Yes Wim, but that's part of the problem, those so-called categories in 'Browse by category' are totally unrelated to the ones we enter in 'Optional' on AIM. In fact some of the positive suggestions were that they would correlate the two, but I can see that this far down the line that wouldn't be possible either.

 

Edit:

I know that I've said this before but they are either simple keyword searches with some curated pages up front, or pure curated pages of less than a thousand images or so.

 

Yep.

But maybe there's some new management reading this.

I would simply steal scrape use all the categories of all competitors as inspiration and together with those lists here put it all in a spreadsheet. And see what's missing. Religion and Politics have often been mentioned.

Because of continuity it would be easiest if the AIM ones are preserved.

 

wim

 

 

 

 

[Harry Harrison]

1 hour ago, wiskerke said:

I would simply steal scrape use all the categories of all competitors as inspiration and together with those lists here put it all in a spreadsheet. And see what's missing. Religion and Politics have often been mentioned.

Yes, but they're different things aren't they? As I said, the old 'Browse my categories' are a strange mix of part and fully curated selections and search results, well past their sell-by-date really. The new 'Collections' are entirely curated selections of normally 100 images (sometimes 50, very occasionally more). Who knows how Alamy arrive at those selections but I suppose they're a good thing, a little labour-intensive from Alamy's point of view though. I can see it might be useful to be one of the chosen ones but I can't see how you might go about increasing your chances of doing so.  Neither can I see how it works for the customer either, they look at the 'Modern Parenting' collection of 50 images, nice but none are quite the ticket, then what? They just have to go back to searching the whole library I suppose, clearly there is no actual 'Modern parenting' category when it comes to captioning, the few that I spot checked don't even have it in the caption or as a keyword. Is AI playing a part here?

 

What is clear is that none of this has got anything at all to do with the Primary & Secondary categories that we are optionally invited to select in AIM.

[wiskerke]

1 minute ago, Harry Harrison said:

Yes, but they're different things aren't they? As I said, the old 'Browse my categories' are a strange mix of part and fully curated selections and search results, well past their sell-by-date really. The new 'Collections' are entirely curated selections of normally 100 images (sometimes 50, very occasionally more). Who knows how Alamy arrive at those selections but I suppose they're a good thing, a little labour-intensive from Alamy's point of view though. I can see it might be useful to be one of the chosen ones but I can't see how you might go about increasing your chances of doing so.  Neither can I see how it works for the customer either, they look at the 'Modern Parenting' collection of 50 images, nice but none are quite the ticket, then what? They just have to go back to searching the whole library I suppose, clearly there is no actual 'Modern parenting' category when it comes to captioning, the few that I spot checked don't even have it in the caption or as a keyword. Is AI playing a part here?

 

What is clear is that none of this has got anything at all to do with the Primary & Secondary categories that we are optionally invited to select in AIM.

My point entirely.

But there must be a way to make it easier on clients and staff.

 

wim