Creative Collections

[NYCat]

Sales history not working for me this morning.

 

Paulette

[Nodvandigtid]

2 hours ago, sooth said:

 

something else for me.... found somebody stealing my keywords on various images (i usually include my name and initials).  did a spot check and apparently lifting entire keywords and descriptions from other users. gonna have to email @alamy on this...   

From what I recall - on an old contract an offender doing this could have had their contract terminated.

The issue has been raised more recently (sorry I I can't track thread) but the "offender" and the "offence" went unpunished - I am reluctant to try to recall the response and include it but basically such actions went unpenalised.

 

It's a bit like a title from a Peter Rodgers film ... "Carry on Regardless"

 

And on a similar theme, as for the new website, details and justifications I am afraid it's all a bit of a shambles which must surely impact negatively on all uses (buyers and contributors in equal measures - some more equal than others of course😉)    

 

It's depressing.

[Harry Harrison]

22 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

If this is a fact we need to be advised, this is a major change.  These are supposed to be "Optional" entries.  

Agreed, I posted something to that effect in the 'New Website Layout' thread as there was some discussion about it there, probably the time to do so again. I think that many of us only click on 'Sell for editorial only' when we want to be extra-cautious with locations, brand names etc.

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/15674-new-alamy-website-layout/page/6/#comment-318596

 

No response from Alamy naturally.

 

Edited June 29, 2022 by Harry Harrison

[meanderingemu]

6 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Agreed, I posted something to that effect in the 'New Website Layout' thread as there was some discussion about it there, probably the time to do so again. I think that many of us only click on 'Sell for editorial only' when we want to be extra-cautious with locations, brand names etc.

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/15674-new-alamy-website-layout/page/6/#comment-318596

 

No response from Alamy naturally.

 

 

most of the image i have as Ed only, were mainly because it was put by Alamy as upload through Live News.  Also interesting to see what happens to typical weather and wildlife LN shots which probably also qualify as creative if contributor take no actions to reverse the auto-checkmark.   

[sb photos]

1 hour ago, NYCat said:

Sales history not working for me this morning.

 

Paulette

Maybe, just maybe, it’s a sign that IT is delving into the code to resolve all the weird and frustrating issues. Fingers crossed

[Gorilla Dave]

I'm sorry Mummy...  I've been logging in to the new Alamy website again...

 

[meanderingemu]

23 hours ago, Alamy said:

 

 

Foundation Collection

Images in this collection are more creatively functional and simple than images in the other collections allowing a lot of freedom to creative customers who want to have more control over the way they use imagery.

 

 

Thanks,

 

Alamy

 

 

Can you elaborate on this.  How are these foundation images? 

 

 

 

 

(also noting the cartoon is not even a wood duck)

[Harry Harrison]

2 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

Also interesting to see what happens to typical weather and wildlife LN shots which probably also qualify as creative if contributor take no actions to reverse the auto-checkmark.   

One such subject I can think of is 'storm, Porthcawl':

 

All Images - 3,150

All Creative - 1329

 

of which...

Ultimate - 0

Vital - 214

Uncut - 1,101

Foundation - 0

Unaccounted for in Creative - 14

 

Editorial - 1814

 

1814 + 1329 = 1343 - probably 7 historical not in Creative or Editorial

 

Not a very good example I suppose, probably better to search for sunsets, Summer beaches etc.

Edited June 29, 2022 by Harry Harrison

[Harry Harrison]

I may be missing something but currently from the home page you can do a general search in the single search field.

 

Alternatively there are 'one stop' links to go and search the new Ultimate, Vital, Uncut & Foundation categories and these pages can be bookmarked:

 

https://www.alamy.com/category/Ultimate/

 

https://www.alamy.com/category/Vital/

 

https://www.alamy.com/category/Uncut/

 

https://www.alamy.com/category/Foundation/

 

However there is no direct page that can be bookmarked to search Editorial, and of course no link to do so from the home page. Why would Editorial be sidelined like this?

 

Clearly you can tab across to All Creative or Editorial from one of the above but a single editorial search page that could be bookmarked and linked from the Home page would seem like a good idea. Like this (doesn't work of course):

 

https://www.alamy.com/category/Editorial/

Edited June 29, 2022 by Harry Harrison

[Shergar]

13 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

I may be missing something but currently from the home page you can do a general search in the single search field.

 

Alternatively there are 'one stop' links to go and search the new Ultimate, Vital, Uncut & Foundation categories and these pages can be bookmarked:

 

https://www.alamy.com/category/Ultimate/

 

https://www.alamy.com/category/Vital/

 

https://www.alamy.com/category/Uncut/

 

https://www.alamy.com/category/Foundation/

 

However there is no direct page that can be bookmarked to search Editorial, and of course no link to do so from the home page. Why would Editorial be sidelined like this?

 

Clearly you can tab across to All Creative or Editorial from one of the above but a single editorial search page that could be bookmarked and linked from the Home page would seem like a good idea. Like this (doesn't work of course):

 

https://www.alamy.com/category/Editorial/

If this doesn't work out for Alamy they should be good to go with a reinvented Rubik cube.

[Sharon]

1 hour ago, meanderingemu said:

 

 

Can you elaborate on this.  How are these foundation images? 

 

 

 

 

(also noting the cartoon is not even a wood duck)

Nor is the photograph of a mallard drake a wood duck... just saying` 😉

[Rebecca Ore]

9 hours ago, sb photos said:

 

No wonder sales are down when searches are screwed. Contributors and buyers must be frustrated.

I was cynically wondering if the team picking photos for the collection are in India not to know what the London Eye is.   Even foreign Dr. Who fans  would know. 

 

Links to zooms are working. 

[Martyn]

Yaay ... my first red arrow in 17 years ... come on cowardly keyboard warrior ... debate rather than red arrow ... 

[Reimar]

23 minutes ago, Martyn said:

Yaay ... my first red arrow in 17 years ... come on cowardly keyboard warrior ... debate rather than red arrow ... 

It wasn't me, but I've had some inexplicable red arrows too.  Not to worry.

Sometimes I think the downvote has to do with the subject (downvote Alamy's action) rather than your comment.

[meanderingemu]

1 hour ago, Martyn said:

Yaay ... my first red arrow in 17 years ... come on cowardly keyboard warrior ... debate rather than red arrow ... 

 

 

welcome to the club.....  

[John Mitchell]

I've always been a fan of the KISS rule.

 

Overall simplicity is what attracts me to a website, not a flashy homepage and confusing navigation options.

 

But then I'm not a Web designer...

 

 

[Gorilla Dave]

I've found the Alamy landing page so unpleasant - i just avoid it completely now.

If i want to do a search i use the search box on My Dashboard.

GD

[Rebecca Ore]

1 hour ago, John Mitchell said:

I've always been a fan of the KISS rule.

 

Overall simplicity is what attracts me to a website, not a flashy homepage and confusing navigation options.

 

But then I'm not a Web designer...

 

 

 

I was thinking that one of the reasons for revised search pages would be to rescue good and/or relevant images from the pack.   Commercial use needs releases on people and possibly on property and always on trademarked products.  People looking for famous landmarks, animal and plant species need searches that ONLY bring up those, without Genre stemming from Genre species keyword pairs.   People could be able to do searches by country or region (which at this point they can if country or region is a keyword).  Get the big buckets set up and then subdivide that.   DON'T use people who are not familiar with The Shard, London Eye, Canary Wharf, and whatever that unused power station that stars in so many SF series.  Cheap help can make things messier than not. 

 

If keywords include both Costa Rica, some place in another hemisphere, and Nicaragua, the photographer was lying.  The keyword for the region if the country doesn't matter is Central America or tropical America. 

 

"What's the goal for this?" should be the question.   If the goal is to help people find the best quality photos with the most accurate keywords and captions, then the web designer isn't being paid to be flashy.   Having a way of narrowing searches isn't a bad thing, but if it doesn't narrow searches usefully and throws up photos that someone like Luis (my helper whose eye is good, but who probably doesn't have a clue about London landmarks) thinks are snazzy, then the problem isn't solved.   We have enough photographers who imagine that their photos are so enchanting that someone will find a use for them even if the search was for something else to illustrate an essay or ad about something completely different.  A plain vanilla search of all photographs gets a first page of just London Eye photos.   Maybe sorting for Ultimate, etc., should come after the base search.   Or hire a web designer who can write a plan for why what is done in what order.   How many advertisers won't already have a story board that sketches out what photos they're looking for and what sort of uses they'll put them to? 

[Rebecca Ore]

Other thing --  if your web designer hasn't heard of dissolves and wipes (what was done in Ken Burns' Civil War series), sit him or her down in front of "Battleship Potemkin," "Birth of a Nation" (nasty racist film but D. W. Griffith used all the moves and trope early in the game), and the opening visuals for "Ministerio del Tiempo" which has fast but not annoying transitions.  A number of people are finding what happens on Alamy's home page now annoying. 

 

In programming for projects, specs for the program describe in writing what everything in the program is going to do and how it will interact with other parts of the program.   And the program/web site gets tested by neither the people who wrote the specs or the people who did the programming before running live. 

 

One pattern I noticed when I looked at the lower frequency searches in All of Alamy was that a number of searches were by image ID #s which suggested that assistants did initial searches and wrote down image IDs for someone senior to look at to make final picks.  First search rules out most of the photos, second search is to look closer at the possibles.   Now searching by image ID is not obvious (apparently, still can be done).  

[Harry Harrison]

6 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

Can you elaborate on this.  How are these foundation images? 

Our challenge, should we choose to accept it, is to try and work out how images are separated out into Vital & Foundation. Ultimate is, we are told, hand-picked (that's a lot of hand-picking!) and Uncut is what's left over barring Editorial & Archive/Historical.

 

I'm positive that Alamy aren't about to tell us as it would be very commercially sensitive but it has to be a compound search algorithm of some kind. Whatever it is I hope it's a fast learner.

[wiskerke]

1 hour ago, Harry Harrison said:

Our challenge, should we choose to accept it, is to try and work out how images are separated out into Vital & Foundation. Ultimate is, we are told, hand-picked (that's a lot of hand-picking!) and Uncut is what's left over barring Editorial & Archive/Historical.

 

I'm positive that Alamy aren't about to tell us as it would be very commercially sensitive but it has to be a compound search algorithm of some kind. Whatever it is I hope it's a fast learner.

For Ultimate: Buy and iPhone and upload to Stockimo. Or join the EyeEm agency that's featured heavily in Ultimate. It's an official partner of Alamy, so I'm guessing it's OK to mention them here. Interestingly EyeEm also started as a iPhone only collection.

 

wim

[Harry Harrison]

7 hours ago, wiskerke said:

For Ultimate: Buy and iPhone and upload to Stockimo. Or join the EyeEm agency that's featured heavily in Ultimate.

Ah, so it's the source that's 'hand-picked', not the images. That explains a lot.

[wiskerke]

6 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

Ah, so it's the source that's 'hand-picked', not the images. That explains a lot.

It may well be hand picked, but I'm guessing the source plays an important part. Maybe only because it aligns certain requirements like RF; releases and so forth.

S*o is curated, so are most agencies and some premium ones more so than others.

Is curating good? The proof of the pudding is in the selling.

EyeEm seems to use AI. Which may well be a good idea: this is a commodity, not art. Meeting the current taste the best may well sell more. However most people in marketing will tell you that you'll need something else as well.

 

wim

[Andreas]

Tried again, search for 'aerial view germany river' return a television tower as single Ultimate result. Hand-picked by an AI-driven robot ?

 

I assume buyers are  confused as well about the new categories - the minimum I would expect is a popup-box that comes up when I hoover with the mouse about the new criteria, returning a short description.

 

And filter/display logic does not work - I search again for 'aerial view germany lake', result page tells me 6 found in Ultimate. A click on 'see all ultimate images' returns 11.311 images.

 

It looks as if any  tests were done in 15 minutes by an apprentince.

Which is bad, as it effects our sales.

 

 

[Harry Harrison]

12 minutes ago, Andreas said:

A click on 'see all ultimate images' returns 11.311 images.

 

It looks as if any  tests were done in 15 minutes by an apprentince.

Which is bad, as it effects our sales.

This bug has been reported on here several times, the same happens for Vital, Uncut & Foundation, and there are also other bugs that are equally frustrating to anyone trying to use this new interface to actually find pictures. Since these new categories seem to be at the very core of this upgrade you might imagine that preventing anyone usefully searching them might be near the top of any list for fixes.

 

I'm just trying to understand how this is all meant to work but if you are actually trying to find images to meet a deadline it must be extremely frustrating I would have thought.