Editorial search - "Archive - greater than 20 years old"

[Harry Harrison]

I happened to see that there is now a way to separate out the Editorial images into those that are  "Archive - greater than 20 years old", I hadn't noticed it before, is it recent?

 

Not sure how they work out which ones ones are over twenty years old, the few photographic images that I've checked haven't had dates though they do certainly seem to fit the criteria.

[John Mitchell]

Interesting. The filter of course only works for images that have the "date taken" field filled out, which means that millions of historical images won't be included in search results.

[geogphotos]

8 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

Interesting. The filter of course only works for images that have the "date taken" field filled out, which means that millions of historical images won't be included in search results.

 

 

So my scans from 1958 will be dated 2022 - not happy!

[Harry Harrison]

18 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

So my scans from 1958 will be dated 2022 - not happy!

Are your scans Editorial only though? The one that you posted today of Barcelona 1958 wasn't I thought. They don't seem to all display a 'Date taken' and they don't all have the 'This image may have imperfections...' stuff either, e.g. this one. If you upload a scan and change the Date taken in AIM is what you enter (just the year perhaps) ignored?

Edited July 3, 2023 by Harry Harrison

[Harry Harrison]

28 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

Interesting. The filter of course only works for images that have the "date taken" field filled out, which means that millions of historical images won't be included in search results.

The few that I've checked have been agency pictures, I wonder how they provide the date when they come into Alamy, presumably not down to the actual date taken. Must be difficult dealing with different date formats.

[Martin L]

25 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Are your scans Editorial only though? The one that you posted today of Barcelona 1958 wasn't I thought. They don't seem to all display a 'Date taken' and they don't all have the 'This image may have imperfections...' stuff either, e.g. this one. If you upload a scan and change the Date taken in AIM is what you enter (just the year perhaps) ignored?

Not the ones that I have changed. The date taken that I changed in AIM from the EXIF data for when it was  photographically scanned to the actual date seems to stick and is displayed to the user e.g. Bread Queue In Moscow

Edited July 3, 2023 by Martin L

[geogphotos]

26 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Are your scans Editorial only though? The one that you posted today of Barcelona 1958 wasn't I thought. They don't seem to all display a 'Date taken' and they don't all have the 'This image may have imperfections...' stuff either, e.g. this one. If you upload a scan and change the Date taken in AIM is what you enter (just the year perhaps) ignored?

 

 

Not sure what Editorial Only means - is there such a designation for RM pics?

[Harry Harrison]

27 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

Not sure what Editorial Only means - is there such a designation for RM pics?

It's for when you check the 'Sell for Editorial only' box in the Optional tab in AIM, it checks the two separate boxes "Don't sell for advertising and promotion" & "Don't sell for consumer goods". Then this is flagged up to the top right of the image in the zoom screen. The way they've placed this new option leads one to believe that somehow images over 20 years old are some kind of subset of Editorial, which appears not to be the case in actuality.

Edited July 3, 2023 by Harry Harrison

[Harry Harrison]

43 minutes ago, Martin L said:

Not the ones that I have changed. The date taken that I changed in AIM from the EXIF data for when it was  photographically scanned to the actual date seems to stick and is displayed to the user e.g. Bread Queue In Moscow

Thanks Martin, good to know. Does it force you to put in an actual date from a calendar (it looks as if it does) so you just have to make a stab at it (unless you kept a diary for your time in Moscow in 1990 I suppose). What an interesting place to be.

Edited July 3, 2023 by Harry Harrison

[John Mitchell]

38 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Thanks Martin, good to know. Does it force you to put in an actual date from a calendar (it looks as if it does) so you just have to make a stab at it (unless you kept a diary for your time in Moscow in 1990 I suppose). What an interesting place to be.

 

 My old 35mm slides had the date stamped on them (Y/M/D), so it wasn't a problem. Also, the "editorial use only" box in AIM doesn't have to be ticked by the looks of it. For instance, some of mine taken in 1991 and scanned much later come up in this set of results. I used to keep a diary as well.

 

 

Edited July 3, 2023 by John Mitchell

[Martin L]

28 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Thanks Martin, good to know. Does it force you to put in an actual date from a calendar (it looks as if it does) so you just have to make a stab at it (unless you kept a diary for your time in Moscow in 1990 I suppose). What an interesting place to be.

I just guessed

 

......but there is some weird s**t going on.

 

On Windows 10 and Chrome, logged in: Date Taken  = 12 September 1990

On Windows 10 Chrome, logged out: Date Taken = 12 December 2022 (the date it was scanned)

Just went back to check the date again when logged out and Date Taken = 12 September 1990

What???????!!!!!!!!!!!........caching maybe??......

 

On Chrome and Android Logged Out : Date Taken = 12 December 2022

On Chrome and Android Logged in: Date Taken = 12 September 1990

Logged out and gone back in and Date Taken = 12 September 1990

 

God knows what the users will see........they'd probably think the Muscovites are really old fashioned if they see the pic and date taken is 2022!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Harry Harrison]

26 minutes ago, Martin L said:

On Chrome and Android Logged Out : Date Taken = 12 December 2022

On Chrome and Android Logged in: Date Taken = 12 September 1990

Logged out and gone back in and Date Taken = 12 September 1990

Very weird, and then there was this from Sooth not long ago:

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/16799-am-i-being-stupid /#comment-341000

 

 

[Harry Harrison]

45 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

Also, the "editorial use only" box in AIM doesn't have to be ticked by the looks of it. For instance, some of mine taken in 1991 and scanned much later come up in this set of results. I used to keep a diary as well.

Well, perhaps it was misleading of me to introduce Editorial into the mix but then that really is the fault of Alamy's interface, if you have to go to the Editorial tab to find "Archive (greater than 20 years old)" what are people supposed to think. I see that just '1999' as 'Date taken' worked for those, but then others that come up (not yours) don't display a 'Date taken' at all.

[M.Chapman]

Testing I did a while back when trying to set the date on scanned slides indicated something was unreliable, I never managed to fathom it out. I came to the conclusion that sometimes the date entered via AIM wasn't fully formed (happens especially if entering the year only), and this caused the date to be omitted from the search result display.

 

Mark

Edited July 3, 2023 by M.Chapman

[Harry Harrison]

14 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

Testing I did a while back when trying to set the date on scanned slides indicated something was unreliable, I never managed to fathom it out. I came to the conclusion that sometimes the date entered via AIM wasn't fully formed (happens especially if entering the year only), and this caused the date to be omitted from the search result display.

 

Thanks Mark, that might explain why the agency pictures that I checked don't display 'Date taken' either.

[John Mitchell]

3 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

Testing I did a while back when trying to set the date on scanned slides indicated something was unreliable, I never managed to fathom it out. I came to the conclusion that sometimes the date entered via AIM wasn't fully formed (happens especially if entering the year only), and this caused the date to be omitted from the search result display.

 

Mark

 

I've noticed the same. Changes to "date taken" have not stuck with a lot of my scans -- i.e. the date reverts back to the scanned date or there's no date at all. Interestingly, this doesn't seem to have happened with older images that I uploaded via the archival route.

 

 

Edited July 3, 2023 by John Mitchell

[Rico]

1 hour ago, John Mitchell said:

 

I've noticed the same. Changes to "date taken" have not stuck with a lot of my scans -- i.e. the date reverts back to the scanned date or there's no date at all. Interestingly, this doesn't seem to have happened with older images that I uploaded via the archival route.

 

 

I usually put the date when the photo was taken in the caption and also in the keywords so that should fix it hopefully.🙏

[geogphotos]

Why not include images uploaded under the Archival route as the Archival selection?

[Harry Harrison]

1 hour ago, geogphotos said:

Why not include images uploaded under the Archival route as the Archival selection?

Why not indeed, last year's redesign of the Home Page to incorporate the new Collections does at least mention Archival images, "Alamy's deep chronicle of archive imagery. Prominent figures, historical events, inventions and launches" and then invites potential buyers to "Discover Archival Imagery" which takes you here to "Browse our archive categories". 

 

There are links to wholly curated collections under the headings of 'Discoveries, inventions and launches', 'Biographies', 'World events' and 'Obituaries'. In theory there is a search feature for 'Discoveries, inventions and launches' but it doesn't seem to work and if you enter a search term you get the panicky message that "You’re currently in a curated collection. Expand your search to view archive content from the whole Alamy collection."

 

The redesigned home page had no mention of Editorial images at all, it still hasn't, and so it seems a strange decision to bury these 'greater than 20 years old' images away under the Editorial search tab.

[Harry Harrison]

6 hours ago, Rico said:

I usually put the date when the photo was taken in the caption and also in the keywords so that should fix it hopefully.🙏

It would be good to test it, I somehow doubt that they will include the caption and keywords in the frame when determining the 'Date taken'. Certainly it will enable the potential buyer to see it though.

[sooth]

I posted about the date taken issue a few times already since last year, the latest post seemed to "mysterious" disappeared. nobody seems to care about fixing this, or not aware of it. i don't care anymore. if the photo is important, i just put the date in the caption and call it a day.

 

i won't bother explaining it again, so here is a pic and hopefully one can figure it out.

 

 

 

 

[gvallee]

13 minutes ago, sooth said:

I posted about the date taken issue a few times already since last year, the latest post seemed to "mysterious" disappeared. nobody seems to care about fixing this, or not aware of it. i don't care anymore. if the photo is important, i just put the date in the caption and call it a day.

 

i won't bother explaining it again, so here is a pic and hopefully one can figure it out.

 

 

 

 

 

But did you report it to contributor services? Alamy said repeatedly they don't take action on Forum posts.

[Martin L]

5 hours ago, gvallee said:

 

But did you report it to contributor services? Alamy said repeatedly they don't take action on Forum posts.

I have based on my query that logged in, the 'Date Taken' field on an Archive image is displayed as entered in AIM but logged out it is displayed to the user seemingly extracted from the EXIF data.