Gervais Montacute Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 I find myself getting bogged down with keywording and not really having a vast array of adjectives readily at my disposal. It seems to take me far too long at the moment. Anyone like to share an approximation of how long it takes just to keyword and every other necessity for one image? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wiskerke Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 If no research needed, less than 1 hour If Google Map or Google Web search needed, 1-5 hours ;-) yes but I kid you not. wim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Southpole Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 wiskerke 1 Hour per image ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wiskerke Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 Only for the simple ones. I may use 5 minutes, but then I have to go back to it for more than an hour the next day or later. As I said: I kid you not. And I get back to some over time. To far too little actually. I should overhaul each every year. I'm sure the ones I haven't touched after they went live, now drag my CTR down. I use AoA for checking which terms clients actually use. And when I'm diligent I check later where they land on the page for certain regular searches. But with goalposts moving from time to time this is frustrating, so I only do this for a handful of images. Over time my guess is, that my 150 to 200 most important images all get around 5 hours of keywording attention. Initially I only used the same numbers as Jeff jokingly, but thinking it through, found that it's quite the truth for me. So there you probably have the extremes next to each other. Bear in mind though, I'm not a native English speaker. (And, as I said before, I'm trying to use that as an advantage.) wim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Rooney Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 One to five minutes seems about right for me, although I've not timed myself. All my sales, all the images that have sold on Alamy, have rather simple keywording. When I review them, for time to time, I'd be more likely to delete a keyword than add one. Over-thinking the process is not helpful. Mostly I do the obvious. The order of our keywords is important. When I submit images to Alamy, I write a quick caption. After they pass QC, usual the next morning, I write a fuller caption, then fill out everything else. More often than not my keywords don't spill over from Essential. I always open one or two extra windows in Safari to look up things I'm unsure of. Once in a while, the minimalist approach fails me. (My recent post about St Peter's Basilica discusses one subject that remains a keyword conundrum.) Here an example of a tough one: Type in the words "mixed message" singular on Alamy's home page. The third image of the 1,105 is mine. I think that shows that my CTR is pretty good, the Vatican Basilica aside. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
long journey Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 Has to be less than a couple of mintues otherwise you're losing money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
losdemas Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 Far too much time. I am trying to reduce it and use the synonyms box in Lightroom beyond it's designed purpose (adding spellings, plurals, etc.). E.g. if I enter the keyword 'black', then colour colours color colors automatically get entered. Long term, it's a time saver, but under constant review! What really soaks up the time for me is Alamy's 'unique' keywording system. Cutting and pasting; (re-)ordering words so that they can be utilised effectively; trying to ensure that misplaced words don't conflict with each other and bring up incorrect search results; utilising all the boxes to their full extent (this doesn't necessarily mean filling them, though). <sigh>. Then I go back and review what I've done on a regular basis according to results thrown up by Your images in AlamyMeasures 2.1. More and more I try to adopt Ed's minimalist approach, but find the pedant in me insisting on Wim's 'thorough' model! I am constantly baffled by Jeff's incredible output: how do you manage it Jeff?! Not only do you take 000's of images, process them, upload and keyword them, but it's done in double-quick time... If no research needed, less than 1 minute Yet you're the chap who, a little while back in another thread, bemoaned the limitations of the 856 character limit in CompKeys! I reckon you've got a troop of little elves sitting at your computer! Dear Aunty Alamy, can I please go out and take some pictures now?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gervais Montacute Posted July 4, 2013 Author Share Posted July 4, 2013 Ed, do you not bother that much with anything other than 'essential' keywords? I wonder if the rest of the boxes are really a big help at all. Jeff are you the same? Just 'essential' keywords only? (he asks hopefully) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
losdemas Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 Jeff are you the same? Just 'essential' keywords only? Gervais, read my post above! Or read Jeff's post here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizair Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 About 1-5 minutes each for the most part, but occasionally much more if research is required. I find it hard work, but it has to be done. Ken Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panthera tigris Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 Mine is species controlled so a common species or one I know is about 4-5 mins as I have to check latin spelling on web. If I cannot ID the animal at family level it never gets finished or posted. Some images take weeks as I troll the internet and send emails out. I can literally spend hours and hours and hours on harder to ID species. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Rooney Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 Ed, do you not bother that much with anything other than 'essential' keywords? I wonder if the rest of the boxes are really a big help at all. Jeff are you the same? Just 'essential' keywords only? (he asks hopefully) I'm glad you asked, Gervais. I looked through a lot of my stuff just now, and what I found is that I use the Essential box plus a line, sometimes two, in the Main box. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wzfoto Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 Takes a few minutes.. i m pretty sure i m working below min wage with such performance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Julesimages Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 2 or 3 minutes normally ( unless like others have said I need to research some details). Maybe I should take longer? More sales? Who knows! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dov makabaw Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 I take 1 to 2 minutes on average. Sometimes one can cut and paste from an image with similar subject. Other times I need to do research and can take 5 or very exceptionally 10 minutes. wzfoto says " i m pretty sure i m working below min wage with such performance " I know I am ! dov MultiQuote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Kilpatrick Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 Anything from no time at all (apply a number of saved keyword sets in MediaPro and they concatenate) to a few minutes, up front. About 30 seconds per file in Alamy Manage Images, that's for cutting Comp into Main and Ess. Sometimes I'll write a completely new set of Ess but I do not waste time deleting words from Comp/Main if my new set happens to duplicate. You said you are not good at adjectives. That's good, because apart from a few obvious things like colours adjectives are not big in searches. If you were weak with nouns, different matter! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Jenkins Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 Between 1 and 3 minutes generally for keywording. I have a template in front of me as a guideline and just adhere to it. Sometimes I need research on a species, location or similar but try not tobe TOO verbose - that's what the forum's for I wonder if you take one hour are you risking too many and drowning the shot? WhereWhat (incl latin names for species) - key whats - not everything visible!Who How ManyMood/Emotion? - just one or two words - funny, sad, etc nj Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Todd Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 I used to try and fill every box with words but realised over time that my images were coming up in searches that weren't relevant so I've started to go the other way now. I make the caption first then after QC I expand the keywords from that. Usually spend only a couple of minutes per image as I keep a list of words I've previously used for cut and paste into similar images then just add anything else I can see being useful. One problem I've noticed is that if you try and caption in batch you are restricted in the number of characters you can use. If you do it individually you get the full 600 characters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Rooney Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 Ed, do you not bother that much with anything other than 'essential' keywords? I wonder if the rest of the boxes are really a big help at all. Jeff are you the same? Just 'essential' keywords only? (he asks hopefully) I'm glad you asked, Gervais. I looked through a lot of my stuff just now, and what I found is that I use the Essential box plus a line, sometimes two, in the Main box. The "Essential Keywords" box is far from enough for me. Most of the times, even the "Main Keywords" box isn't sufficient. I think it is very important to understand that there are several ways for a client to find an image. Let's take "Canterbury Cathedral" for example. What is the client looking for? Specifically "Canterbury Cathedral"? Gothic architecture in the UK? Religious architecture in Europe? Tourist sights in Kent? In South England? British UNESCO World Heritage Sites? Medieval buildings in Canterbury? Add a few derivatives and synonyms like medieval, mediaeval, town, city, building, buildings, England, English, Britain, British, religious, religion, etc. and you're well on the way to fill the 300 characters box Cheers, Philippe This post, Philippe, has encouraged me to take another shot at the dreaded St Peter's Basilica . . . God help me. I'm always bemused when I read from you and wim and some others that "English is not my native language." You guys are doing better with English than many of those who speak nothing but English. It's frightening to think of myself answering a post using Italian. Vietnamese? I can order a sandwich and a bowl of soup or a beer, say hello to a young lady, and tell someone to go away. David K's advice on avoiding adjectives is something we can find in many interviews with top creative authors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Kilpatrick Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 Ed - I think anyone wanting Canterbury Cathedral will know its name, and anyone wanting the other categories will have a list. Buyers don't often look for terms as broad as gothic architecture because they get such a huge search result and it's random. They may look for gothic arch, and in the past I've sold examples of Roman versus Norman versus Gothic simply because this is the standard textbook illustration. My buyers have generally known exactly what part of what church they wanted down to an exact description. Then again, they may just want the building and not care if it's gothic or anything else - typical exterior views for tourism. So they will not be searching using words like architecture. You still have to include these words but not in esskeys ever, I think. Language is funny. I realised last week in France that all my shots of vineyards (which I generally keyword with winery, vinyard and a few other likely spellings and terms) miss out the keyword vignoble. It's very easy to forget words or not know them at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Rooney Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 Welcome back to the world of Scottish cuisine, David. Canterbury Cathedral is more straight forward than San Pietro. I just did (again) some test searches on various versions of "st peters." "St Peters Tiber" has three of my images on page 2. B4T4C8 is one. I will now go back to my impossible-to-guess point of view and suffering from the weather. Basta! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doc Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 About a minute or two if straightforward, maybe 3-5 minutes if needs some googling or wikipaedia help, or I need to look up AoA. Its unusual for me if there are more than 2 or 3 lines of words in the "main" keywords, and "comprehensive" keywords are vanishingly rare Kumar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
losdemas Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 I agree Jeff. Maybe I have less faith in researchers than others! The other day, the top four searches in AoA by UCO were something like car, woman, beach and london. If that's not broad, random and vague, I don't know what is! Maybe it was a bored researcher on their lunch break? Maybe it was someone new or just plain useless (they exist in every walk of life!)? Maybe it was someone (a designer?) looking for inspiration (my feeling)? I don't know, but there are a lot of them: today's AoA reveals the top searches by UCO as: car (123 UCO!!!) dog (36...) cat (24) alamy london paris apple rome iphone new york Anyhow, I try to take account as much of the researchers shortcomings as my my own (and, God knows, I have plenty !) Apologies - I just realised I've gone totally off-topic..sort of Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Coombs Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 As long as it takes to get it right! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Ventura Posted July 6, 2013 Share Posted July 6, 2013 1 to 5 minutes for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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