Thoughts on more minimal tags

[geogphotos]

Adding tags is one of the most time-consuming tasks. And, unlike post-processing and captioning, an area where sensible options exist to do less. 

 

Can anybody share experiences of reducing the amount of keywords to the most Essential ( to use Alamy's former terminology) and relying on the power of a detailed, accurate caption? 

 

Can one prosper through the 'caption is king' maxim - and cut back on some of the busy work?  

 

Say, for example, a set of 30 images of the same town. What about using the same tags to give geographic location and differentiate the subject matter solely through the caption. Is it really necessary to have tags saying 'shop, shops, store, store, shopping, shoppers, people, city centre, chain store, chain-store, retail, High Street' etc if the most salient information is in the Caption.

 

I realise straight off that there would be some loss of 'Alamy Algo power' as a consequence of not covering stemming, but conversely there could be gain in CTR - what do you think, or even better, what have you found out?

 

Let's exclude Supertag strength for another discussion. 

[Allan Bell]

How about just captioning the image and Alamy allowing more letters in the caption line to achieve decent description.  Do away with tagging completely and the minimum five tags for customers to be able to see the image.

 

Sorry if this is slightly off course.

 

Allan

 

[geogphotos]

6 hours ago, Allan Bell said:

How about just captioning the image and Alamy allowing more letters in the caption line to achieve decent description.  Do away with tagging completely and the minimum five tags for customers to be able to see the image.

 

Sorry if this is slightly off course.

 

Allan

 

 

 

I'd certainly like to have more characters for captions - they are available for Archive and Reportage ( no doubt for News too).  I've never understood why such relatively tight limits have been in place all this time.

 

I wonder what would happen to searches if all the Tags were turned off for a trial. It could be that with 360,000,000 images available captions are all you need.

[Inchiquin]

So we end up with unwieldy captions like "British railway station on the Calder Valley (Caldervale) line in the English town of Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire, England, Britain, United Kingdom (UK), with Transpennine Express (TPE) class 185 diesel multiple unit (DMU) train passing through"?

 

And still no stemming. Not for me, guv.

 

Alan

Edited November 16, 2023 by Inchiquin

[spacecadet]

52 minutes ago, Inchiquin said:

So we end up with unwieldy captions like "British railway station on the Calder Valley (Caldervale) line in the English town of Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire, England, Britain, United Kingdom (UK), with Transpennine Express (TPE) class 185 diesel multiple unit (DMU) train passing through"?

 

And still no stemming. Not for me, guv.

 

Alan

I think that's over 150😀

I can see the logic in using as many of those 150 characters as possible but we are told that supertags are stronger than captions, so they'd stay .

Edited November 16, 2023 by spacecadet

[kimba]

If I have more than one image of a person, place, or thing, I create a generic Photoshop-File-Info for that image and export it so I can use it over and over and include a caption, a lot of the base keywords that fit all the images, and then all of the other pertinent information that possible to put into that file.

 

When I upload the images, all of the File-Info uploads with it, so I've got the basic caption and keywords already there. I then run through the images and edit the caption where appropriate and add more detailed keywords. Still some work, but, a lot less than keywording each file individually. 

 

If appropriate, I will leave the generic first line of the caption and if I need more than 150 characters, I'll go to the Optional section and add Additional Info, although it says that Additional Info is not searchable so I don't add it often. 

 

I also don't use a lot of keywords unless the image contains something that is particularly detailed and worthy of the extra effort. Once I start taxing my imagination for words, I move on. 

[Betty LaRue]

32 minutes ago, kimba said:

If I have more than one image of a person, place, or thing, I create a generic Photoshop-File-Info for that image and export it so I can use it over and over and include a caption, a lot of the base keywords that fit all the images, and then all of the other pertinent information that possible to put into that file.

 

When I upload the images, all of the File-Info uploads with it, so I've got the basic caption and keywords already there. I then run through the images and edit the caption where appropriate and add more detailed keywords. Still some work, but, a lot less than keywording each file individually. 

 

If appropriate, I will leave the generic first line of the caption and if I need more than 150 characters, I'll go to the Optional section and add Additional Info, although it says that Additional Info is not searchable so I don't add it often. 

 

I also don't use a lot of keywords unless the image contains something that is particularly detailed and worthy of the extra effort. Once I start taxing my imagination for words, I move on. 

I do something similar. While I develop in LR Classic, I finish off in PS. Then I do my tags. On images of same subjects, I created a template in Bridge that I apply on me images of that subject. Then add/delete to the tags in the template as needed. I don’t have to look up scientific names because those are in the templates. A blessing, that.

[Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg]

I've created 40+ "tag phrases"

singular for the other place JPGs

then add plurals for Alamy JPGs

(because the other place has stemming

& PAlamy, to their detriment iMO, don't)

example: senior citizen pensioner,retired retirement,old older elder elderly, (all singulars)

I go thru entire shoot in Adobe Bridge & paste that tag phrase where proper;

AFAICT doing same tag phrase for, say, 2000 keeper shoot is faster

than hopping back & forth between unrelated tag phrases...

if anyone understand what I just said raise your hand...

of course, I also need to add tags unique to each image not in my tag phrases...

 

Minimalism tagging:

XYZ Museum, inside interior, ABC exhibit, teen senior man woman child looking at

you can sell it many times with just XYZ Museum

but are you willing to risk additional sales by dropping one or more of the other tags?

[Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg]

On 16/11/2023 at 05:50, Inchiquin said:

And still no stemming. Not for me...

Inchiquin, Lord Guinchikin of all Blinchikins

I take this to mean, "There'll be no time-consuming stemming by me!"

There are thousands like you, mate.

And PAlamy won't bring stemming back.

Oh the humanity...

[Inchiquin]

8 hours ago, Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg said:

 

Inchiquin, Lord Guinchikin of all Blinchikins

I take this to mean, "There'll be no time-consuming stemming by me!"

 

 

Sir Jeffrey, Greenest of all Bergs, not exactly. I meant that changes to the system that don't include stemming are not to my liking.

 

I add my own stemming on Alamy, because I have to.

 

Alan

[Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg]

15 hours ago, Inchiquin said:

I add my own stemming on Alamy, because I have to.

Master Inchiquin, who the Mayans declare upon meeting you, BISH-a-BELL,

so you are a stemmer who wants PAlamy to do the stemming...

as do hundreds of disappointed contributors like you !!

Edited November 22, 2023 by Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg