Ultimate and Vital. Guidelines Needed Please

[meanderingemu]

Now that @Alamy has decided this is the wave of the future, we should have clear instructions what actions we should be taking, and how it affects process.  I just went through the efforts of identifying my images that qualify for said collections all seem to have following criteria they are Marked with OPTIONAL Info as No Person, No Property  (note: i don't have images with released model that i indicated as "without property")

 

So is "Optional" still optional?  This seems like a misnomer since the data influences Alamy's feature of the future. 

 

But the biggest issue, is that we were told historically to let client decide if the "Physical Property" or "unidentifiable Part of a human" in the image was an issue for Client- so i personally have gone with a large definition that also included unidentifiable, and sometimes marginal, property and people.  This now puts me at a disadvantage with someone who went with what i will refer a MS approach to say, "this is not easily identifiable, so i'll mark as No" in order to not get the "Editorial" label.  

 

So Alamy can we have clear instructions what we are supposed to be doing in line with the brand new Exciting feature. Thanks

 

 

 

Note: to people who load live news, it appears that images these images even if subsequently marked as No, No- happens with Weather and wildlife image, do not qualify for these New Exciting Collections. 

 

 

 

[spacecadet]

Do we know the potential consequences of doing.........absolutely nothing, which is my preferred option?

[meanderingemu]

15 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

Do we know the potential consequences of doing.........absolutely nothing, which is my preferred option?

 

 

i guess we won't be featured in these collections.  so if Alamy is pushing them we lose.  Also as someone pointed out, fees for Ultimate images are doubled. 

Edited September 20, 2022 by meanderingemu

[Sultanpepa]

1 hour ago, spacecadet said:

Do we know the potential consequences of doing.........absolutely nothing, which is my preferred option?

 

Absolutely. I'm not doing any more work than is strictly necessary, it's just not worth the effort even if a fee is doubled. (doubling $1.50 is $3 bucks) I've completely stopped adding the optional stuff as it never seemed to make any difference. Everything I add to Alamy now is editorial because Alamy made anything else a minefield of possible litigation. It's taken me till this month just to start uploading again. From now on it's bare minimum work to get it on sale. After that it's up to the customer to find it.

Edited September 20, 2022 by Sultanpepa

[meanderingemu]

13 minutes ago, Sultanpepa said:

 

Absolutely. I'm not doing any more work than is strictly necessary, it's just not worth the effort even if a fee is doubled. (doubling $1.50 is $3 bucks) I've completely stopped adding the optional stuff as it never seemed to make any difference. Everything I add to Alamy now is editorial because Alamy made anything else a minefield of possible litigation. It's taken me till this month just to start uploading again. From now on it's bare minimum work to get it on sale. After that it's up to the customer to find it.

 

to me the doubling is not incentive, but if it means images not getting to customers @Alamy needs to provide clear guidelines. Telling us it's optional and then using it to give preferential treatment is a breach of their responsibility as distributor.  Contributor are free to use the info or not, but Alamy still needs to provide it, especially if it's a clear change from prior instructions. 

Edited September 20, 2022 by meanderingemu

[M.Chapman]

I fear it's reaching the point where Alamy no longer understand their own software, contributors or customers...

 

Mark (hoping to be proved wrong)

[Harry Harrison]

5 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

I just went through the efforts of identifying my images that qualify for said collections all seem to have following criteria they are Marked with OPTIONAL Info as No Person, No Property

The database download shows that if you don't enter anything here then the default is still 0 & NA for people and N & NA for Property so it looks as if they are instead excluding images where these values have been changed from the default, I don't know whether all it takes is for one to change.

 

Also, as I've said before, no explanation forthcoming as to what comes up under Editorial (though I think we've worked it out for ourselves) and no attribute filter in AIM for images marked as 'Sell for Editorial only'. 

Edited September 20, 2022 by Harry Harrison

[meanderingemu]

6 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

The database download shows that if you don't enter anything here then the default is still 0 & NA for people and N & NA for Property so it looks as if they are instead excluding images where these values have been changed from the default, I don't know whether all it takes is for one to change.

 

Also, as I've said before, no explanation forthcoming as to what comes up under Editorial (though I think we've worked it out for ourselves) and no attribute filter in AIM for images marked as 'Sell for Editorial only'. 

 

in AIM doing a search for "0 people", i only get images that i indicated 0 people , so i assume this is where they get Vital info. But again silence from Alamy

 

as for filter in AIM for editorial only, i use "Restricted Images", it works because i don't use other restrictions (ie. do not sell for personal use)

[Harry Harrison]

34 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

as for filter in AIM for editorial only, i use "Restricted Images", it works because i don't use other restrictions (ie. do not sell for personal use)

Thanks, I don't sell for personal use so that wouldn't work for me.

[Harry Harrison]

36 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

in AIM doing a search for "0 people", i only get images that i indicated 0 people

Now that is strange, and possibly significant. 

[John Mitchell]

On 20/09/2022 at 04:52, spacecadet said:

Do we know the potential consequences of doing.........absolutely nothing, which is my preferred option?

 

I'd say that's the "ultimate" solution -- i.e. leave it in the hands of the gods. 🎲

 

P.S. This has been mentioned before, but does it really matter if our images are in the "Ultimate" and/or "Vital" collections? Surely, after wrestling with the new filters, most clients must revert to to the "All" filter, which the only one that seems to work OK.

Edited September 21, 2022 by John Mitchell

[Betty LaRue]

I have a lot in vital, around 450-470 in each of at least 3 pseudos, I didn’t check the others. Nothing, as far as I can find, in Ultimate.

[meanderingemu]

19 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

I have a lot in vital, around 450-470 in each of at least 3 pseudos, I didn’t check the others. Nothing, as far as I can find, in Ultimate.

 

are they mainly flowers and birds like me?  

[Harry Harrison]

15 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

are they mainly flowers and birds like me? 

That's a question for Betty I know but just fyi mine are predominantly flowers, landscapes (I don't have birds) and a few distant town/cityscapes. Actually my pictures tend to have people in them, there are none of those in Vital though. So as you say, no people, no property but possibly a bit more selective than that given that it must be automated.

 

I don't know why I had the figure of 67 in my head, I've only got 43 in fact. Since there were so few I saved them as a Lightbox and at that time there were 44. I see that now 3 out of the original 44 have been relegated to Uncut and 2 new substitutes brought in, these are both landscapes. 

 

The flower image that I made 'Sell for Editorial' eventually disappeared from Vital but appeared in Editorial of course. Last night I unchecked it for Editorial and this morning it is back in Vital.

Edited September 22, 2022 by Harry Harrison

[Marianne]

It's strange, when I search Ultimate with my name under the filter, I get 829 images under "all" but 0 if I search "creative" and 0 if I search "editorial" despite most of my images having been in the old "creative" collection and many others being editorial only images.

 

Stranger still...

The same 829 images are in Vital in seemingly the same order as in Ultimate, but in Vital 19 show up in Creative - mostly landscapes from Arizona, illustrations, and one iPhone image from S.

 

Stranger still...

When I search Uncut with the Creative filter on, I have 829 Creative images in Uncut. (The first page is different than what shows up in Ultimate & Vital - but some images are the same). The same 829 show up in Editorial in the Uncut collection. 

 

I am totally confused. The filters and categories are working oddly. Moreover, I'm not sure where the other ~400 images I've uploaded to Alamy using my name vs. a pseudo are, but it seems a mess.  Searching a pseudo with around 100 images, roughly as many land in the Vital/Creative collection as those from my better and much larger main name collections with well over 1,000 photos. 

 

🤠  It's the wild west out there - no rules, no idea what to expect

[meanderingemu]

10 minutes ago, Marianne said:

 

 

🤠  It's the wild west out there - no rules, no idea what to expect

 

and no support 

[Betty LaRue]

5 hours ago, meanderingemu said:

 

are they mainly flowers and birds like me?  

Yes, a lot of those, and some homemade food. Tomato vines, trees, milkweed, Butterflies, insects.  I have a main pseudo that has most of my stuff. Another for animals, wildlife including all insects, pet animals, etc and one for flowers, trees and all plants, including weeds.

[meanderingemu]

47 minutes ago, Betty LaRue said:

Yes, a lot of those, and some homemade food. Tomato vines, trees, milkweed, Butterflies, insects.  I have a main pseudo that has most of my stuff. Another for animals, wildlife including all insects, pet animals, etc and one for flowers, trees and all plants, including weeds.

interesting thanks.  do you state that you have a release for the property in your homemade food images (e.g. the plate, utensils) ?

[Harry Harrison]

Alamy Twitter post giving a small insight about a set of one photographer's images selected for Ultimate, well deserved clearly:

 

https://twitter.com/alamy/status/1573205814113976320

 

Links to this spotlight piece:

 

https://www.alamy.com/blog/qa-with-aerial-photographer-abdul-momin?utm_campaign=alamyblog&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

 

So in this case it seems that the work of the photographer has, quite rightly, attracted their attention and so they have selected a set of 53 of his images for Ultimate out of a fairly small port of 674. 152 in Vital though still very unclear how these are 'selected'.

 

Edited September 23, 2022 by Harry Harrison

[M.Chapman]

34 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Alamy Twitter post giving a small insight about a set of one photographer's images selected for Ultimate, well deserved clearly:

 

https://twitter.com/alamy/status/1573205814113976320

 

Links to this spotlight piece:

 

https://www.alamy.com/blog/qa-with-aerial-photographer-abdul-momin?utm_campaign=alamyblog&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

 

So in this case it seems that the work of the photographer has, quite rightly, attracted their attention and so they have selected a set of 53 of his images for Ultimate out of a fairly small port of 674.

 

 

Some great images. Alamy really needs a mechanism to allow their contributors to prevent such images from being "given away" at rock bottom fees. If I had images that good I'd currently be very wary of letting Alamy sell them. 

 

Mark

Edited September 23, 2022 by M.Chapman

[Harry Harrison]

8 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

If I had images that good I'd currently be very wary of letting Alamy sell them. 

Actually that does raise the question of whether Ultimate and Vital images are protected from this in some way.

[meanderingemu]

3 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

Alamy Twitter post giving a small insight about a set of one photographer's images selected for Ultimate, well deserved clearly:

 

https://twitter.com/alamy/status/1573205814113976320

 

Links to this spotlight piece:

 

https://www.alamy.com/blog/qa-with-aerial-photographer-abdul-momin?utm_campaign=alamyblog&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

 

So in this case it seems that the work of the photographer has, quite rightly, attracted their attention and so they have selected a set of 53 of his images for Ultimate out of a fairly small port of 674. 152 in Vital though still very unclear how these are 'selected'.

 

 

interesting that these great images have people, likely unreleased, and property. 

Edited September 23, 2022 by meanderingemu

[Harry Harrison]

19 minutes ago, meanderingemu said:

interesting that these great images have people, likely unreleased, and property. 

Alamy give a link to his collection here:

 

https://www.alamy.com/category/abdul-momin.html

 

You can open the filter sidebar and choose 'Model Released' so then the number found goes down from 674 to 22. Only one of these, the close-up of two women making baskets, looks as if it really needs a model release - but it doesn't seem to have one, in fact none of them do. Baffling.

 

[meanderingemu]

46 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Alamy give a link to his collection here:

 

https://www.alamy.com/category/abdul-momin.html

 

You can open the filter sidebar and choose 'Model Released' so then the number found goes down from 674 to 22. Only one of these, the close-up of two women making baskets, looks as if it really needs a model release - but it doesn't seem to have one, in fact none of them do. Baffling.

 

But they still have people in it, so the requiring vs not requiring is left to buyers if you fill out AIM properly,  and we are back to my original question to @Alamy

 

 

or is Alamy promoting people who cheat the system?  These image should be anoted

Is there people Yes

Do you have a Waiver No

 

 

nowhere does the system ask if a Waiver is needed, we were always told this was left to buyers, but now they won't even see my image because i respected Alamy's rules 

Edited September 23, 2022 by meanderingemu

[Harry Harrison]

1 hour ago, Harry Harrison said:

Only one of these, the close-up of two women making baskets, looks as if it really needs a model release - but it doesn't seem to have one, in fact none of them do. Baffling.

Just correcting myself here. I realise now that if you have declared that there are no people (or presumably failed to enter if there are people) then the images will come up under the 'Model released' filter even though of course there is no model release. Probably this has always been the case, I just hadn't thought about it before.