How did this contributor input more than 50 Tags?

[rickygui]

 

https://www.alamy.com/a-woman-interior-designer-chooses-a-color-sample-from-chipboard-the-choice-of-wood-material-for-the-interior-project-from-chipboard-or-natural-wood-s-image599338770.html?imageid=5F34236A-3B76-4D9B-8664-505950865C6B&p=1255775&pn=1&searchId=04fc7dc97631ade6f79d169336d17221&searchtype=0

 

While 50 tags are the limit, this one got more than 50 tags, how? 

 

[gvallee]

I use a combination of templates and single keywords in Bridge prior to upload and do not count how many tags I've got. Very often the combination is above 50. The upload process takes all of them.

 

It's only if you tag manually after upload that the limit is 50.

 

 

 

Edited August 3 by gvallee

[NYCat]

6 hours ago, rickygui said:

 

https://www.alamy.com/a-woman-interior-designer-chooses-a-color-sample-from-chipboard-the-choice-of-wood-material-for-the-interior-project-from-chipboard-or-natural-wood-s-image599338770.html?imageid=5F34236A-3B76-4D9B-8664-505950865C6B&p=1255775&pn=1&searchId=04fc7dc97631ade6f79d169336d17221&searchtype=0

 

While 50 tags are the limit, this one got more than 50 tags, how? 

 

 

A lot of those tags have nothing to do with the photo.

 

Paulette

[Michael Ventura]

14 minutes ago, NYCat said:

A lot of those tags have nothing to do with the photo.

 

Classic case of key word spamming.

[IKuzmin]

4 hours ago, Michael Ventura said:

Classic case of key word spamming.

Did you have a chance to attend the recent Alamy keywording seminar? With blue sky and clouds for that girl on the hill?.. And, moreover, some "conceptual" ones?.. That was an example!😉

 

[NYCat]

10 minutes ago, IKuzmin said:

Did you have a chance to attend the recent Alamy keywording seminar? With blue sky and clouds for that girl on the hill?.. And, moreover, some "conceptual" ones?.. That was an example!😉

 

 

I also thought the sky and clouds should not have been included though I'm willing to believe that concepts are worthwhile. I'm just not good at thinking them up.

 

Paulette

[Mark Scheuern]

On 03/08/2024 at 06:37, NYCat said:

 

A lot of those tags have nothing to do with the photo.

 

Paulette

Did you miss seeing the adorable puppy on the beach? 
To be fair, they are so bad that I have to think it was an error. Unless a lot of this contributors pictures are like that. Then I would wonder why anyone would think a customer is going to search for "puppy" and choose that image, instead. 

Edited August 4 by Mark Scheuern

[rickygui]

On 03/08/2024 at 13:04, gvallee said:

I use a combination of templates and single keywords in Bridge prior to upload and do not count how many tags I've got. Very often the combination is above 50. The upload process takes all of them.

 

It's only if you tag manually after upload that the limit is 50.

 

 

 

Thanks! At least your answer clear my head. 

[rickygui]

On 03/08/2024 at 23:49, IKuzmin said:

Did you have a chance to attend the recent Alamy keywording seminar? With blue sky and clouds for that girl on the hill?.. And, moreover, some "conceptual" ones?.. That was an example!😉

 

I didn't heard about a seminar, is it online? How do I register in the future? 

[Harry Harrison]

4 hours ago, rickygui said:

How do I register in the future? 

 

Well, I got an Alamy email on 21 June for the Webinar that took place on 9th July. They actually publicised it here first on June 19th:

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/17795-alamy-webinar-learn-how-to-improve-your-keywording/#comment-363956

 

As you can see from that thread they have now put it on their blog, or you can view it on Youtube:

 

https://www.alamy.com/blog/supercharge-your-image-discoverability-watch-the-free-improve-your-keywording-webinar

 

 

 

 

 

[Harry Harrison]

On 03/08/2024 at 06:04, gvallee said:

Very often the combination is above 50. The upload process takes all of them.

I didn't know that happened, it shouldn't do, I'm sure Alamy could prevent it from happening. I hadn't noticed because although I keyword and caption in Lightroom I don't ever get near 50 keywords before I upload as I just want to get the basic ones in. However I don't get a character count in Lightroom so sometimes my caption is longer than 150 characters but only 150 characters make it up on to Alamy, the rest are stripped off.

 

I imagine these images with their 'spam' keywords won't ever get Supertags.

Edited August 5 by Harry Harrison

[Sally Robertson]

The other day I was looking to see if a specific arts centre building in Melbourne was on Alamy. I found most of the first 4 pages had images by the same contributor using the same set of keywords for multiple different scenes in the city. So the words "park" and "river", for example, appear in all these images even though most of them do not feature a park or the river and are in fact of buildings, the interior of a library and other subjects. They have spammed the same set of words for many images across the city so they come up in searches even though they are frequently not relevant. I wonder if anything can be done about it. It would be very difficult for Alamy to scrutinise as they can't know everything about every place in the world nor be aware of everywhere it is happening. But where such spamming is obvious I don't know whether they can inform contributors not to do it. It would be frustrating for a customer looking for something particular and having to wade through hundreds of images that are not what they are looking for. The contributor, in this case, possibly doesn't understand how the keywording process is meant to work so it may not necessarily be deliberate, but it would actually be of greater benefit to everyone if the keywording was done correctly.

[gvallee]

2 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

I didn't know that happened, it shouldn't do, I'm sure Alamy could prevent it from happening. I hadn't noticed because although I keyword and caption in Lightroom I don't ever get near 50 keywords before I upload as I just want to get the basic ones in. However I don't get a character count in Lightroom so sometimes my caption is longer than 150 characters but only 150 characters make it up on to Alamy, the rest are stripped off.

 

I imagine these images with their 'spam' keywords won't ever get Supertags.

 

None of my images include spam. I spent a very long time and considerable effort studying searches in AoA in order to build my templates and keywords hierarchy in Bridge.

They include plurals, alternative spellings or names, American spellings. One template example: colour, color, colourful, colorful, bright colours, bright colors. That's already 7 tags.

I guess it depends what type of imagery is one's portfolio. I shoot  mostly landscapes, so my keywording will have to depict first what it is and the location (Australia, Far North Queensland, FNQ, Queensland, QLD, Cairns). From searches, my landscape template is Landscape, view, scene, scenic, scenery, vista, blue sky.

If there are some prominent clouds and if applicable, then again from searches, Cloud, Clouds, Cloud formations, Cloudscape, Cumulus, Fluffy clouds, White clouds.

If there's a sunrise/sunset: Sunrise or sunset, atmospheric, ethereal, could also be red sky, fiery sky, pink clouds, mackerel sky, etc.

Then if it's a beach: beach, beaches, Australian beach, sandy beach, coastline, travel, maybe exotic, perhaps Palmtrees with alternative spelling Palm Trees.

Are there people? No: nobody, Yes: 1 Person, One Person, someone, One Only.
NOTE that you cannot only rely on the number of persons you have entered in the additional tab, there are 48 pages (100 results per page) of results for the word %person% in the last year and around 150 searches for %nobody%. Not all clients use the filters.

If it's in the Outback, then searches have been: remote, isolated, off the beaten track, off the beaten path, backcountry, etc, etc.

 

There has also been lots of different terms used to search for stormy weather (black clouds, black skies, storm, stormy, etc, etc) and waves (lapping waves, small waves, etc)

You get my drift.

And let's not go to wildlife... And I haven't mentioned concepts or emotions either.

Now that my templates and hierarchy are in place, it takes me no time to tag my images, the hard work has been done.

I'm not sure what you mean by images with 50+ tags won't be super-tagged. All my images have 10 supertags.
 

 

Edited August 5 by gvallee

[gvallee]

1 hour ago, Sally Robertson said:

The other day I was looking to see if a specific arts centre building in Melbourne was on Alamy. I found most of the first 4 pages had images by the same contributor using the same set of keywords for multiple different scenes in the city. So the words "park" and "river", for example, appear in all these images even though most of them do not feature a park or the river and are in fact of buildings, the interior of a library and other subjects. They have spammed the same set of words for many images across the city so they come up in searches even though they are frequently not relevant. I wonder if anything can be done about it. It would be very difficult for Alamy to scrutinise as they can't know everything about every place in the world nor be aware of everywhere it is happening. But where such spamming is obvious I don't know whether they can inform contributors not to do it. It would be frustrating for a customer looking for something particular and having to wade through hundreds of images that are not what they are looking for. The contributor, in this case, possibly doesn't understand how the keywording process is meant to work so it may not necessarily be deliberate, but it would actually be of greater benefit to everyone if the keywording was done correctly.

 

There used to be a contributor that included all the main Australian cities in all his images. Alamy contacted him but to no avail. Months later, all the incorrect locations were still there.

 

Recently, Alamy contacted me to say that someone told them I had an incorrect street name in Guildford, UK. I appreciated being contacted and corrected the error straight away.

 

[Harry Harrison]

1 hour ago, gvallee said:

None of my images include spam.

No, I wasn't suggesting that you do, I was talking about the image linked to in the thread, and the fact that if AIM prevents us from adding more than 50 keywords then their system should prevent it from happening however the images are uploaded.

Edited August 5 by Harry Harrison

[Harry Harrison]

1 hour ago, gvallee said:

I'm not sure what you mean by images with 50+ tags won't be super-tagged. All my images have 10 supertags.

Sorry, I thought it would be clear, these images with irrelevant keywords, and too many of them (like the one linked to at the start of this thread), are unlikely to ever have anyone going in and adding Supertags.

[Sally Robertson]

1 hour ago, gvallee said:

 

There used to be a contributor that included all the main Australian cities in all his images. Alamy contacted him but to no avail. Months later, all the incorrect locations were still there.

 

Recently, Alamy contacted me to say that someone told them I had an incorrect street name in Guildford, UK. I appreciated being contacted and corrected the error straight away.

 

 

That's very annoying when people do that. In the example I was giving they have put the same title "Melbourne Landmarks, Australia" on every image and then the same keywords for every image. I found if I searched in quotations I got better results, but if not this person's images dominate the first four pages under a search for the Arts Centre Melbourne even though that building is not in their images. I'm wondering if they just did it that way as an initial quick fix to get their images up on sale but have never gotten around to correcting it.

 

I would be very happy too to get any feedback if anything in my images turned out to be incorrect. A while ago I found that a flower I was 100% convinced was one species was actually another that looks very similar. So I identified an error in my own keywords and went back and changed it. I know I am probably a bit weird, but I actually like the keywording process to some extent as I feel like I have learned so much about everything from historical architecture to botany etc.

[Harry Harrison]

There's a photograph of a cricket match at a local village that I saw credited to Alamy in a rather glossy 'coffee table' book. The book had it as a different viillage and when I  found it on Alamy I saw that it was captioned that way.

Edited August 5 by Harry Harrison

[Harry Harrison]

I have pictures of the annual tradition of 'Swan Upping' where men (I think it was just men) in appropriate livery visit a large number of locks on the Thames over a period of a week, ringing all the new cygnets and counting the adults, checking for disease etc. An agency photographer obviously followed them to every lock but has captioned them all the same, i.e. with a list of all locks visited during the week wherever the picture was taken.

 

 

Edited August 5 by Harry Harrison

[Sally Robertson]

15 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

There's a photograph of a cricket match at a local village that I saw credited to Alamy in a rather glossy 'coffee table' book. The book had it as a different viillage and when I  found it on Alamy I saw that it was captioned that way.

 

Yes, I can see why Alamy put the qualifier about contributors providing the captions on the images.

 

3 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

I have pictures of the annual tradition of 'Swan Upping' where men in appropriate livery visit a large number of locks on the Thames over a period of a week, ringing all the new cygnets and counting the adults, checking for disease etc. An agency photographer obviously followed them to every lock but has captioned them all the same, i.e. with a list of all locks visited during the week wherever the picture was taken.

 

That's the kind of thing I've just been seeing. It seems almost like a speed/efficiency thing to get the images up fast and in the simplest way possible, and I guess they are keen for all their images to be seen over the week long event. But it's potentially a bit misleading if a customer search is focussed on one lock in particular or one particular day of the event. If the number of images is vast it will make things more difficult for the customer. At least they can see the date in the date field (though here in Australia I've found if not logged in the date shows a day ahead but corrects when logged in. I have no idea why this happens given the date comes straight from the EXIF data).

[M.Chapman]

I've never understood why Alamy apply a rigorous QC process to our images (right down to rejecting an image for a pixel or two width of CA fringe) , whilst never checking the ability of the contributor to keyword and caption reliably. It makes no sense to me.

 

Mark

[Phil Robinson]

18 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

I've never understood why Alamy apply a rigorous QC process to our images (right down to rejecting an image for a pixel or two width of CA fringe) , whilst never checking the ability of the contributor to keyword and caption reliably. It makes no sense to me.

 

Mark

That's what the CTR and rankings are for - they automatically relegates the images of photographers who spam keywords to the bottom of the pile.

[Phil Robinson]

Another stock site where I contribute video but not stills has a system of suggested keywords when you upload clips, and presumably images.
It seems to work on a combination of the caption and an AI analysis of the image/clip.
Sometimes the suggestions can be helpful and I occasionally use one or two of them.
Sometimes they can be hilarious. 
I uploaded a clip of a seagull dragging a dead pigeon out of the river Medway in the centre of Maidstone and one of the suggestions was 'Galapagos'.
I recently sent a clip of a beetle feeding on a flower and it suggested - "business, keyboard, marketing" and a whole lot of other mad ideas. I've just sent one of a spider and it suggests "butterfly, grasshopper, mosquito, dragonfly, bug" and more.
You can add them individually (or ignore them) or there is also an "ADD ALL" button, which I suspect a lot of people click on and then copy the keywords across to other sites. This might explain a lot of the crazy keywording on here.

 

Also, the longer I've been with the site and the more videos I upload, the crazier the suggestions are becoming. 

Edited August 6 by Phil Robinson

[Steve F]

23 hours ago, gvallee said:

 

None of my images include spam. I spent a very long time and considerable effort studying searches in AoA in order to build my templates and keywords hierarchy in Bridge.

They include plurals, alternative spellings or names, American spellings. One template example: colour, color, colourful, colorful, bright colours, bright colors. That's already 7 tags.

I guess it depends what type of imagery is one's portfolio. I shoot  mostly landscapes, so my keywording will have to depict first what it is and the location (Australia, Far North Queensland, FNQ, Queensland, QLD, Cairns). From searches, my landscape template is Landscape, view, scene, scenic, scenery, vista, blue sky.

If there are some prominent clouds and if applicable, then again from searches, Cloud, Clouds, Cloud formations, Cloudscape, Cumulus, Fluffy clouds, White clouds.

If there's a sunrise/sunset: Sunrise or sunset, atmospheric, ethereal, could also be red sky, fiery sky, pink clouds, mackerel sky, etc.

Then if it's a beach: beach, beaches, Australian beach, sandy beach, coastline, travel, maybe exotic, perhaps Palmtrees with alternative spelling Palm Trees.

Are there people? No: nobody, Yes: 1 Person, One Person, someone, One Only.
NOTE that you cannot only rely on the number of persons you have entered in the additional tab, there are 48 pages (100 results per page) of results for the word %person% in the last year and around 150 searches for %nobody%. Not all clients use the filters.

If it's in the Outback, then searches have been: remote, isolated, off the beaten track, off the beaten path, backcountry, etc, etc.

 

There has also been lots of different terms used to search for stormy weather (black clouds, black skies, storm, stormy, etc, etc) and waves (lapping waves, small waves, etc)

You get my drift.

And let's not go to wildlife... And I haven't mentioned concepts or emotions either.

Now that my templates and hierarchy are in place, it takes me no time to tag my images, the hard work has been done.

I'm not sure what you mean by images with 50+ tags won't be super-tagged. All my images have 10 supertags.
 

 

 

Great post, thanks Gen.

[M.Chapman]

8 hours ago, Phil Robinson said:

That's what the CTR and rankings are for - they automatically relegates the images of photographers who spam keywords to the bottom of the pile.

Indeed. But why incur the expense and slow down in search response times due to hosting millions of incorrectly keyworded images? Also, reranks seem pretty infrequent these days, so it may take some time for demotions (years??) to happen. As others have noted, incorrectly tagged images are often appearing high in search results.

 

Mark

Edited August 6 by M.Chapman