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54 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

However most people in marketing will tell you that you'll need something else as well.

Interesting also that the number of images (photographs) in Ultimate has been unchanged since the launch.

Edited by Harry Harrison
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Is there anything on the Alamy website that explains to potential customers what the terms Ultimate Vital Uncut & Foundation actually mean?
Because I would like to know too!

Edited by Stephen D
I hadn't finished!
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21 minutes ago, Stephen D said:

Is there anything on the Alamy website that explains to potential customers what the terms Ultimate Vital Uncut & Foundation actually mean?

Only on the home page:

 

Ultimate

If you’re fed up with run-of-the-mill search results, try hand-selected images like no other, sourced by creative experts.

 

Vital

This high-end creative collection is built on authenticity and created with emerging trends in mind.

 

Uncut

Celebrate the raw, the random and the subversive. From abstract photographers to UGC – it’s all here. Uncut frees you from convention.

 

Foundation

Elementary stock images perfect for composites. The foundation of design, find cut-outs, graphics and vectors to speed up your creativity.

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Actually reading that again, knowing what I know now, it does rather 'over egg' Uncut, seeing as how that is the main pool after Ultimate, Vital, Foundation & Editorial (and historical?) have been taken out. But I suppose there's nothing wrong with a bit of over-egging in the Creative Advertising world.

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1 hour ago, Harry Harrison said:

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.

 

What makes me wonder is that a simple link to a subset of the search can not get fixed - its usually a dynamically generated link with current parameters targeting the previous result.

 

I miss an AI-driven, self-learning, state-of-the-art algorithm to deliver a unique customer experience that puts Alamy ahead of the competition.

(just some buzz words we used in my last company where top management showed nice IT powerpoints, while data collection for a large data warehouse partially was done with stupid text files)

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1 hour ago, Harry Harrison said:

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.

 

 

you do start to wonder how much testing was done.  I understand minor bugs, but when the main focus of the update doesn't even work you risk really upsetting clients.  

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This morning I tried a very simple live news search that should have found yesterdays uploads, campsfield house. Any search engine will find no end of hits, but not an Alamy search. 2 or more pages of sport, celebrities and more irrelevant images before 1 of my 4 images were found. It’s a wonder any buyers find anything they search for. As searches are such a mess it’s a wonder Alamy have not rolled back to just before the ‘upgrade’ happened.

Edited by sb photos
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16 minutes ago, sb photos said:

As searches are such a mess it’s a wonder Alamy have not rolled back to just before the ‘upgrade’ happened.

I really wonder whether actual picture researchers are going to bother with Ultimate, Vital, Uncut, Foundation, and yes, even Editorial searches given the current situation. As other (I think Live News) photographers have already suggested perhaps they will revert to searching All Images and then filter for 'Last week'. If you do that for 'campsfield house' then your images are the only ones that come up.

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Interesting, I had two presentation sales yesterday of images now in the new "Uncut" collection and both were at the old $19.99 price. Honestly, I think they probably just clicked on the cheapest option since both are travel photos from very popular tourist towns along the Connecticut shore near the Rhode Island border and are more likely to be used in a travel article or advertisement than a presentation - given that even $20 is insultingly low for a very high resolution RM file. My photos were in the original "Creative" collection for years, so I'm not happy with this downgrade. Guessing the sales were made a couple months ago and just showing up now, hence the older better price. (In fact, one of the images sold last year for a marketing package for $169.99). I'll be keeping an eye out online for these photos. 

 

Why this move from bad to worse? Wouldn't it have made more sense to increase prices in the Ultimate collection since they are so special, rather than decreasing everything else? 

 

Edited by Marianne
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Bug log.

 

I find it impossible to enter a 'To' date in the date range the first time around as the system automatically refreshes to perform the search. The same problem impacts on trying to enter any date in the past because it takes too long to go back through the calendar. 

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1 minute ago, Marianne said:

Crazy that an editorial search removes most images when pretty much anything can actually be used editorially. 

Pigeonholing images this way will only hurt search results. 

This was brought up in the other thread as well, and it seems to be this change that would have the most impact on regular Alamy contributors. All the more surprising that Alamy have not mentioned or explained  it to us directly on this forum, and in any case they didn't notify this forum of the changes until late Friday afternoon for 'marketing' reasons.

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On 29/06/2022 at 07:15, meanderingemu said:

 

 

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

 

Screenshot-from-2022-06-29-09-13-24.png

 

 

 

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

 

And that photo looks like a male mallard to me.  

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6 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

This was brought up in the other thread as well, and it seems to be this change that would have the most impact on regular Alamy contributors. All the more surprising that Alamy have not mentioned or explained  it to us directly on this forum, and in any case they didn't notify this forum of the changes until late Friday afternoon for 'marketing' reasons.

 

I haven't done a lot of testing the way you have. However, it seems to me that generally speaking "All" now means "Secondary Editorial" and "Editorial" means "Primary Editorial." All the other categories -- Ultimate, Vital, Uncut, etc. -- must be above my pay grade. 🤔

 

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4 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

I haven't done a lot of testing the way you have. However, it seems to me that generally speaking "All" now means "Secondary Editorial" and "Editorial" means "Primary Editorial." All the other categories -- Ultimate, Vital, Uncut, etc. -- must be above my pay grade. 🤔

 

 

I have clear primary editorials, loaded as Live News, that end up in Creative.  Need to check if they have anything in common, but many could not be used commercially .  Need to do checks on what triggers, but would be easier if @Alamy told us

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47 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

 

I have clear primary editorials, loaded as Live News, that end up in Creative.  Need to check if they have anything in common, but many could not be used commercially .  Need to do checks on what triggers, but would be easier if @Alamy told us

It would be very interesting to know if these primary editorials that you mention have ‘Sell for editorial only’ checked but end up in  Creative.

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1 hour ago, Harry Harrison said:

It would be very interesting to know if these primary editorials that you mention have ‘Sell for editorial only’ checked but end up in  Creative.

 

 

that's what i have to start crosschecking.  I know the ones i obviously removed due to subject were moved.  But i starting to look at the not obvious, which obviously are editorial, i just removed it because i didn't worry about their usage, leaving it to buyers to manage (with appropriate No Release Checkmark) 

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I see that on the 28th (Tuesday) Alamy put out a new blog post adding some more information about the aims of these new changes, and the new 'partners' facilitating it.

 

https://www.alamy.com/blog/alamy-launches-create-search-an-original-way-for-the-creative-sector-to-be-inspired-faster

 

Rebecca has also noted on another thread that the same release was put out on PA Media's website here:

 

https://pamediagroup.com/alamy-launches-create-search/

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One paragraph in this release caught my eye, in fact it's posted twice on the PA Media site:

 

"The Ultimate collection delivers hand-picked, thought-provoking, trendsetting imagery. Uncut is the
heart of Alamy – authentic content created by users from all over the world, unavailable to license
on other platforms."

 

Surely it can't be correct that all Uncut images are exclusive to Alamy? Uncut is what is left after Ultimate, Vital, Foundation & Editorial have been taken out, in fact Alamy say as much in the first post of this thread:

 

"Images in this collection can be for commercial use and are a mix of images that may or may not currently fit into the Ultimate, Vital or Foundation collections. We are still reviewing images in this collection as an ongoing process and may add them to other collections in future."

 

It must surely be a typo and was meant to read "Ultimate is the heart of Alamy – authentic content created by users from all over the world, unavailable to license
on other platforms."

Edited by Harry Harrison
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2 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

One paragraph in this release caught my eye, in fact it's posted twice on the PA Media site:

 

"The Ultimate collection delivers hand-picked, thought-provoking, trendsetting imagery. Uncut is the
heart of Alamy – authentic content created by users from all over the world, unavailable to license
on other platforms."

 

Surely it can't be correct that all Uncut images are exclusive to Alamy? Uncut is what is left after Ultimate, Vital, Foundation & Editorial have been taken out, in fact Alamy say as much in the first post of this thread:

 

"Images in this collection can be for commercial use and are a mix of images that may or may not currently fit into the Ultimate, Vital or Foundation collections. We are still reviewing images in this collection as an ongoing process and may add them to other collections in future."

 

It must surely be a typo and was meant to read "Ultimate is the heart of Alamy – authentic content created by users from all over the world, unavailable to license
on other platforms."

 

Ultimate is not exclusive so far. It would be a good thing though.

 

wim

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On 30/06/2022 at 18:40, John Mitchell said:

However, it seems to me that generally speaking "All" now means "Secondary Editorial" and "Editorial" means "Primary Editorial."

I think that's right, provided 'Secondary editorial' is defined as pictures that are suitable for editorial use but do not have the 'Sell for editorial only' check-box checked. This means that they come up under 'Creative' and most probably 'Uncut', for now anyway. You will only find them by searching in 'All images' or 'All creative'. On the other hand images that do have 'Sell for editorial' checked will come up under a search in either  'All images' or Editorial but there doesn't seem to be any ranking in the latter, just reverse chronological, or at least that's how it seems so far.

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On 30/06/2022 at 08:56, meanderingemu said:

 

 

you do start to wonder how much testing was done.  I understand minor bugs, but when the main focus of the update doesn't even work you risk really upsetting clients.  

 

The entity that did this was probably one of Alamy's and PA's new friends.   If the new friend also deals directly with clients, perhaps this wasn't as happy a marriage as imagined. 

 

If Alamy/PA wants to get into advertising, probably some of us need tips on how to photograph for this market.  Any recommended websites or books?   I guess I'll have to learn to use my focusing rail thingie and see about doing small item focus stacking.   PA seems to be assuming that agencies are going to be producing more advertising ready images than its individual contributors.  

 

I think we're on week two of the non-links to search results and our profile portfolio links. 

 

The individually picked images are attractive enough, but their connection to search terms varies.  The people doing the picking are not specialist researchers in matching subject to image (yeah, a whole lot of the photographers aren't either).   For advertisers, calling a bird by the wrong name won't matter since they're just interested in the image, not the ID, but for editorial, especially for books and magazines, correct ID is critical.   Have most of these image users switched to specialist agencies who do have qualified researchers on staff or who only accept photos from academics who specialize in the areas they're photographing?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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