Image order in portfolio randomly re-organised

[Sally Robertson]

Hello, I've just noticed that my images have suddenly been re-organised in a randomised way. Before that they were in order of upload. Sometimes the order of the most recent upload would change slightly within itself, but otherwise the images were sequential from first upload to the most recent ones.

 

Is anyone else seeing their images re-organised this way? It's not necessarily a bad thing in that it makes it kind of randomly interesting to look at with a wide variety of images across a page. The main disadvantage is I had a mental map of kind of where things were before based on chronological order. I can obviously still find things by doing searches and with only 470 images I don't have a lot to search through at this stage. I'm just wondering what the logic behind this re-organisation is?

[Alexander Hogg]

In Alamy Manager on the left hand side of the pictures there is a drop down menu with newest first but can be changed to A to Z or Z to A Don't know if this has been changed (Just under All Submissions) 

[ReeRay]

1 hour ago, Sally Robertson said:

Hello, I've just noticed that my images have suddenly been re-organised in a randomised way. Before that they were in order of upload. Sometimes the order of the most recent upload would change slightly within itself, but otherwise the images were sequential from first upload to the most recent ones.

 

Is anyone else seeing their images re-organised this way? It's not necessarily a bad thing in that it makes it kind of randomly interesting to look at with a wide variety of images across a page. The main disadvantage is I had a mental map of kind of where things were before based on chronological order. I can obviously still find things by doing searches and with only 470 images I don't have a lot to search through at this stage. I'm just wondering what the logic behind this re-organisation is?

Under "Search by Image" right hand side >select "newest"

[CAROL SAUNDERS]

1 hour ago, Sally Robertson said:

Hello, I've just noticed that my images have suddenly been re-organised in a randomised way. Before that they were in order of upload. Sometimes the order of the most recent upload would change slightly within itself, but otherwise the images were sequential from first upload to the most recent ones.

 

Is anyone else seeing their images re-organised this way? It's not necessarily a bad thing in that it makes it kind of randomly interesting to look at with a wide variety of images across a page. The main disadvantage is I had a mental map of kind of where things were before based on chronological order. I can obviously still find things by doing searches and with only 470 images I don't have a lot to search through at this stage. I'm just wondering what the logic behind this re-organisation is?

 

Yes absolutely I think I know what you mean.  I keywords some images over the weekend and normally check the next day to see if they have been uploaded and hey ho I just checked on my bookmarked page for my own images, and images are all over the place, it's not Image Manager I don't know what's going on here 🙃 Bit late for an April fool !

 

Carol

 

 

 

 

[CAROL SAUNDERS]

I actually don't think it's anything do with image manager, normally when I look at my own the latest ones are first and so on and so on, now they are literally all over the place ?

 

Carol

[VbFolly]

If you are looking at your images by clicking on your image number from the forum, they appear randomized. You can alter this by changing from Sort by 'Relevant' to 'Newest' in the top right hand corner. They seem to have changed the default to Relevant for some reason.

[CAROL SAUNDERS]

20 minutes ago, VbFolly said:

If you are looking at your images by clicking on your image number from the forum, they appear randomized. You can alter this by changing from Sort by 'Relevant' to 'Newest' in the top right hand corner. They seem to have changed the default to Relevant for some reason.

Ah thanks so much that has sorted it😁 another case of it it ain't broke don't fix it😉and it wasn't broke...

 

Carol

[Sally Robertson]

Hi Everyone,

 

I wasn't referring to AIM but to the images displayed on the Alamy website. I've clicked on the number in the Alamy forum before and never seen them in that new randomised order until today. I haven't done anything to choose a different order that would have brought that about. I can change the order as suggested with the dropdown menu on the right. However, if I close that window and open Alamy.com again and bring up my images by searching for one, then click to see all my images, it reverts to the new randomised order. So although I can instruct it to show the newest first, it reverts to the randomised order as soon as I leave that screen with my portfolio and then go back to it.

 

This is new. I have never seen it before. It doesn't really matter much in the scheme of things but it basically means if someone saw one of my images and then looked at all my images, they will now always see this randomised version as the default now. I guess before they would see images grouped together - such as an upload from a particular location. Now the images from that upload are scattered across multiple pages in a random way.

 

I wonder if it was an April Fool's joke Carol 🙃🙂 Though as you say, it's a bit late. Perhaps the randomised order is considered more interesting? Or there is some kind of AI algorithm that randomises it according to image search patterns by predicting relevance?

[Steve F]

31 minutes ago, Sally Robertson said:

This is new. I have never seen it before. It doesn't really matter much in the scheme of things but it basically means if someone saw one of my images and then looked at all my images, they will now always see this randomised version as the default now.

 

Hi Sally, it's been randomising image order as long as I can remember (might not be so long, memory issues :P). It seems to avoid placing similar images next to each other. But images from the same upload are generally on the same results page.

[Harry Harrison]

I haven't been paying attention to the default sort order that a buyer sees but if this is new (and the default used to be 'Newest') then to me it is a bug and needs to be fixed. Logically it makes no sense when you click on the number in the forum as there is no relevance but of course that isn't likely to affect buyers.

 

It also happens if I click on your name(or any pseudonym of course) in the image details page then it still comes up with this strange 'Relevant' sort order and still there is nothing for it to be relevant to since I haven't done a search, so it is in effect random, except it seems not to change.

 

Suppose if the buyer does do a search, say for  'Fremantle markets' and then clicks on your image in the first page of the search results, then clicks on your pseudonym, stil the same 'random' order, your Fremantle Market images haven't risen to the top of the page, so it isn't 'relevant' to the current search at all.

Edited April 2 by Harry Harrison

[Harry Harrison]

Steve has a point there, looking at mine I see a veritable Smörgåsbord of images from my uploads so I suppose in the right circumstances that would possibly be of more interest, not clear how they work it out.

[Sally Robertson]

16 minutes ago, Steve F said:

 

Hi Sally, it's been randomising image order as long as I can remember (might not be so long, memory issues :P). It seems to avoid placing similar images next to each other. But images from the same upload are generally on the same results page.

 

Hi Steve, I know what you mean in that I'm familiar with the randomising where the same upload images are usually on the same page. But this is different. For example, my most recent uploads are now scattered all over the different pages and some of my very first uploads are now where the newest ones used to be. So it is a much more radical randomising. But maybe it is not happening to everyone, but it certainly is to me.

 

18 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

I haven't been paying attention to the default sort order that a buyer sees but if this is new (and the default used to be 'Newest') then to me it is a bug and needs to be fixed. Logically it makes no sense when you click on the number in the forum as there is no relevance but of course that isn't likely to affect buyers.

 

It also happens if I click on your name(or any pseudonym of course) in the image details page then it still comes up with this strange 'Relevant' sort order and still there is nothing for it to be relevant to since I haven't done a search, so it is in effect random, except it seems not to change.

 

Suppose if the buyer does do a search, say for  'Fremantle markets' and then clicks on your image in the first page of the search results, then clicks on your pseudonym, stil the same 'random' order, your Fremantle Market images haven't risen to the top of the page, so it isn't 'relevant' to the current search at all.

 

Yes, perhaps it is a bug. "Relevant' doesn't seem to be necessarily relevant. But as you say it is not likely to affect buyers.

[Steve F]

1 minute ago, Sally Robertson said:

But this is different.

 

Ah, it would help if I'd checked before giving my 'authoritative' answer! Yes, I'm seeing much more randomisation than before.

[Sally Robertson]

3 minutes ago, Steve F said:

 

Ah, it would help if I'd checked before giving my 'authoritative' answer! Yes, I'm seeing much more randomisation than before.

 

Yes, it's quite a hodgepodge mix now. I guess it makes it kind of interesting!

[NYCat]

Oh dear. It is happening to me too and going to "newest" sorts them in date taken not the order in which they were uploaded. Messes up a bit of my system. I only do some rough keywording after I upload and go back days later to finish off. One thing I do is put my Alamy image numbers into Lightroom and can usually just go from image to image and back and forth to Lightroom. I've been going back through old trips to do my recent uploads so the new ones are buried.  Now I'm going to have to go to the Image Manager to find each image. Rats.

 

Paulette

[CAROL SAUNDERS]

Well if it's a bug I hope it gets fixed, I don't like change🙃

 

Carol

[NYCat]

Actually, I realize I can get the image number in the Image Manager so not as awkward as I thought. Everything is just easier to read on the Zoom page rather than in the Image Manager. I also like to see my newest upload first and all together to judge how I'm doing with brightness, etc.

 

Paulette

[Mr Standfast]

It worked last week, now it's broken.

 

🙄

[Cecile Marion]

It worked for me Sunday morning. Now it is one big mess.

[Martin L]

Weird thing for me is that if you cycle through each page, it gets a randomized each time, so you get some repeated again from a previous page and some don't come up at all (presumably because they now would appear on a previous page at that click of the 'Next Page' button).......spooky
👻👻👻

[wiskerke]

And some of the best sellers of course appear last.

 

wim

 

edit: and now one of mine is on the first page of a search for Amsterdam that has never been licensed in 14 years.

Plus it takes ages for every page to load. Has AI taken over?

Edited April 2 by wiskerke

[Cal]

I suspect it's related to the fact that if you try to load your portfolio link it leads to a 404 (I assume it's not just me).

 

I personally appreciate the ability to view my port from the forum as it always showed latest upload order which was useful for checking database refreshes etc. The page it leads to now isn't cutting the mustard.

[Chuck Nacke]

20 hours ago, Sally Robertson said:

Hello, I've just noticed that my images have suddenly been re-organised in a randomised way. Before that they were in order of upload. Sometimes the order of the most recent upload would change slightly within itself, but otherwise the images were sequential from first upload to the most recent ones.

 

Is anyone else seeing their images re-organised this way? It's not necessarily a bad thing in that it makes it kind of randomly interesting to look at with a wide variety of images across a page. The main disadvantage is I had a mental map of kind of where things were before based on chronological order. I can obviously still find things by doing searches and with only 470 images I don't have a lot to search through at this stage. I'm just wondering what the logic behind this re-organisation is?

Yes, I was going to post about this on the Forum.  Wish Alamy would explain?  I have a link to my main Pseudonym from one of my web sites and all of a sudden the images are appearing in a VERY STRANGE order, not as uploaded as it has been for years.  It has nothing to do with Image Manager.  The entire Alamy site has been strange for a couple of months?

 

Chuck 

[Broad Norfolk]

Disappointing. All logic seems to have gone!

Jim.

[Sally Robertson]

8 hours ago, Chuck Nacke said:

Yes, I was going to post about this on the Forum.  Wish Alamy would explain?  I have a link to my main Pseudonym from one of my web sites and all of a sudden the images are appearing in a VERY STRANGE order, not as uploaded as it has been for years.  It has nothing to do with Image Manager.  The entire Alamy site has been strange for a couple of months?

 

Chuck 

 

Yes, I did prefer how it was before in that it made sense to have images from the same shoot roughly grouped together usually on the same page. If a potential customer did look at our portfolios that seems like it would be more helpful for them. Even if buyers are looking for something specific most of the time there may be an occasion they look at a contributor's pages of images out of interest.

[NYCat]

13 minutes ago, Sally Robertson said:

 

Yes, I did prefer how it was before in that it made sense to have images from the same shoot roughly grouped together usually on the same page. If a potential customer did look at our portfolios that seems like it would be more helpful for them. Even if buyers are looking for something specific most of the time there may be an occasion they look at a contributor's pages of images out of interest.

 

We also seem to have lost the "other images by same contributor" button. That is a real shame. I'm sure it was sometimes used by buyers.

 

Paulette