George Munday Posted December 16, 2016 Share Posted December 16, 2016 Something strange occured in my last submission (by FTP) and I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced it. When I keyword my images I use Photoshop Bridge. Once done a check in 'File Info' reveals that the keywords are seperated by a semi-colon and a space. eg shrine; solitary; crucifix; etc When they reach "Manage Images", the semi-colon is removed and there's a single space between each keyword. eg shrine solitary crucifix etc - which is how it's been for years. On this particular upload each keyword is seperated by a single comma and no space. eg shrine,solitary,crucifix, etc Has something changed in the last 7 days that I'm unaware of? It's not the end of the world, but I'd appreciate knowing if this the new norm, or there been an error in the upload. Many thanks George Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M.Chapman Posted December 16, 2016 Share Posted December 16, 2016 There are lots of changes going on at the moment as the new Manage Images and new Search Engine are being introduced. So anything's possible.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Munday Posted December 16, 2016 Author Share Posted December 16, 2016 Okay thanks Geoff and Mark. I guess I can work around it, just takes longer... Maybe the powers-that-be will advise at some point.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M.Chapman Posted December 16, 2016 Share Posted December 16, 2016 Okay thanks Geoff and Mark. I guess I can work around it, just takes longer... Maybe the powers-that-be will advise at some point.. Do you mean you're going to remove the commas that Alamy appears to have added? If so, you might want to leave them there - as it may help when your keywords are moved from the old to the new system. Especially if you've used any phrases in your keywords. If you want some insight into the changes going on see this blog from Alamy and also try wading your way through this thread on the forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Munday Posted December 17, 2016 Author Share Posted December 17, 2016 Thanks Mark...Sound advice. Thank you for the link to the relevant blog page, it sounds like it could be pretty good when complete. (thinks...I should have been looking anyway!) So, I think my "work around" is going to be ... leave the existing keywords, watch whats happening on the blog, enjoy the Christmas break. Hope you all do too! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephen Barnes Posted December 18, 2016 Share Posted December 18, 2016 I've just uploaded two batches, one of 33 through reportage, and another of around 350 images through stock. The first batch has the comma issue and it takes much longer to keyword them. I'm hoping it gets fixed before my large batch is approved! It doesn't make sense for Alamy to fiddle with the current uploader that has been working for years, and now only has a limited shelf life.I'm not looking forward to the new system - while it will make keywording a lot more consistent, i really don't fancy having to go through my existing images to check for errors in the migration process! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marianne Posted December 19, 2016 Share Posted December 19, 2016 I just sent contributors@alamy a message asking how to handle it. I uploaded a photo for the current contest last night and found the commas today too. Also asked when we'll actually see the new keywording tools. I'm holding most uploads until then. Will report back when I hear. Meantime, I'll read the blog. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digi2ap Posted December 19, 2016 Share Posted December 19, 2016 Yes, I have also noticed the comma issue and it substantially slowed my trying to organise the keywords once in MI. My hope is that the new MI interface is up and running at the beginning of 2017 and will make it much easier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Posted December 21, 2016 Share Posted December 21, 2016 I wish Alamy would tell us how we should be keywording. In another thread about re-ranking, they tell us to keep on uploading properly keyworded images, yet they do not tell us what, under the new system, "properly" means. It may, understandably, be taking some time to roll out the new system, but Alamy could (and should) be telling contributors now how to keyword, such as what is required for phrases, whether or not individual words within a phrase need to be repeated to be searchable on their own with equivalent priority, how commas or other delineation will work, etc. None of this is proprietary: it is simply the information that contributors need in order to avoid wasting their time when the system changes. Telling contributors that the system is changing but not telling them how to prepare for it, instead expecting them potentially to waste their time with re-keywording if their recently uploaded images could have been more advantageously keyworded in a different manner under the forthcoming system, is not treating contributors in a business-like manner. I have over 11,000 images on-line and many, many thousands more on which I am working all the time, whenever I get the opportunity. Usually I upload prepared images in small batches, firstly to get them on-line as soon as possible, and secondly so as not to be faced with a dauntingly massive keywording chore all at once: I spend a lot of time on my keywords, boring though it is. I can do nothing about my images that are already on-line, and if these need adjustment for optimisation under the new system, so be it. But the thought that I may make new uploads, keyword them, and then have to re-keyword them again in the near future once Alamy makes the ground rules clear is a step too far for me. I have not uploaded any images for over a month now, and probably will not do so until Alamy has clarified the position or rolled out the new system, or if I do, I will not deal with the keywording until the new position has been clarified. In the meantime, I have a large batch of images waiting to be uploaded, gathering metaphorical dust (I hope the actual sensor dust has been removed already and will not return!). Graham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted December 21, 2016 Share Posted December 21, 2016 ...whereas I am just getting on with it and doing as I have always done, and getting views and zooms on images which have been online for a day or two. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Betty LaRue Posted December 21, 2016 Share Posted December 21, 2016 ...whereas I am just getting on with it and doing as I have always done, and getting views and zooms on images which have been online for a day or two.Mark, I took a look at your port to see where you've been lately. My eye was caught by a crane-like machine on the first page. Curious as to what it is called, I zoomed it. You only have as caption and keywords, Lisbon Portugal. If that's all that's meant, disregard my post. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted December 21, 2016 Share Posted December 21, 2016 ...whereas I am just getting on with it and doing as I have always done, and getting views and zooms on images which have been online for a day or two.Mark, I took a look at your port to see where you've been lately. My eye was caught by a crane-like machine on the first page. Curious as to what it is called, I zoomed it.You only have as caption and keywords, Lisbon Portugal. If that's all that's meant, disregard my post. I keyword in MI and it sometimes takes a few days. It's easier to go "ready" in batches and tidy up later. So I may have incomplete annotation for a day or two. Worth mentioning it, thanks, as I occasionally miss a couple. BTW it's an old crane from the Belém electricity museum, now MAAT. There are some seabirds taking a bath in the puddle in the foreground and the 25th. of April bridge and Franco's statue of Christ beyond. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Betty LaRue Posted December 21, 2016 Share Posted December 21, 2016 ...whereas I am just getting on with it and doing as I have always done, and getting views and zooms on images which have been online for a day or two. Mark, I took a look at your port to see where you've been lately. My eye was caught by a crane-like machine on the first page. Curious as to what it is called, I zoomed it.You only have as caption and keywords, Lisbon Portugal. If that's all that's meant, disregard my post. I keyword in MI and it sometimes takes a few days. It's easier to go "ready" in batches and tidy up later. So I may have incomplete annotation for a day or two. Worth mentioning it, thanks, as I occasionally miss a couple.BTW it's an old crane from the Belém electricity museum, now MAAT. There are some seabirds taking a bath in the puddle in the foreground and the 25th. of April bridge and Franco's statue of Christ beyond. I understand. Good way to get them on sale immediately with location and keyword later. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted December 21, 2016 Share Posted December 21, 2016 Just caption and location in esskeys, plus the main subject. I don't use the location field as such. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Brooks Posted December 21, 2016 Share Posted December 21, 2016 Something strange occured in my last submission (by FTP) and I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced it. When I keyword my images I use Photoshop Bridge. Once done a check in 'File Info' reveals that the keywords are seperated by a semi-colon and a space. eg shrine; solitary; crucifix; etc When they reach "Manage Images", the semi-colon is removed and there's a single space between each keyword. eg shrine solitary crucifix etc - which is how it's been for years. On this particular upload each keyword is seperated by a single comma and no space. eg shrine,solitary,crucifix, etc Has something changed in the last 7 days that I'm unaware of? It's not the end of the world, but I'd appreciate knowing if this the new norm, or there been an error in the upload. Many thanks George I keyword using your method and, up until yesterday’s submission, I had exactly your former result. Manage images, for the first time, translated yesterdays submission the same way as it translated yours. This saved me a lot of work because a phrase submitted as ; Rouge National Urban Park; came out today as ,Rouge National Urban Park, where previously it came out as Rouge National Urban Park Previously I had been doing extra work to add quotes around the phrase to get “Rouge National Urban Park” Because of the above I believe the sky is not falling, and will continue to upload. I think the “general consensus” referred to is more a point of view held by a few. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M.Chapman Posted December 21, 2016 Share Posted December 21, 2016 Something strange occured in my last submission (by FTP) and I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced it. When I keyword my images I use Photoshop Bridge. Once done a check in 'File Info' reveals that the keywords are seperated by a semi-colon and a space. eg shrine; solitary; crucifix; etc When they reach "Manage Images", the semi-colon is removed and there's a single space between each keyword. eg shrine solitary crucifix etc - which is how it's been for years. On this particular upload each keyword is seperated by a single comma and no space. eg shrine,solitary,crucifix, etc Has something changed in the last 7 days that I'm unaware of? It's not the end of the world, but I'd appreciate knowing if this the new norm, or there been an error in the upload. Many thanks George I keyword using your method and, up until yesterday’s submission, I had exactly your former result. Manage images, for the first time, translated yesterdays submission the same way as it translated yours. This saved me a lot of work because a phrase submitted as ; Rouge National Urban Park; came out today as ,Rouge National Urban Park, where previously it came out as Rouge National Urban Park Previously I had been doing extra work to add quotes around the phrase to get “Rouge National Urban Park” That's reassuring to know. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlessandraRC Posted January 5, 2017 Share Posted January 5, 2017 I had a number of images on my not read queue and I have been living off that. Today my first real upload in a month came back from QC and it was the first time I noticed those changes. I left the commas there but copied and pasted them again to have spaces. Tomorrow night when the images show up on my port I will see what happened.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Posted January 6, 2017 Share Posted January 6, 2017 I gave in and uploaded a large (for me) batch which has now passed QC. As for everyone else, I am seeing keywords separated by commas but not spaces, except for spaces within phrases. On the positive side, I like the principle of comma-delineated phrases, but still want to know from Alamy officially whether or not a single word within a comma-delineated phrase will show up on searches for that word alone (as opposed to the entire phrase), and if so, with what priority, or whether it is necessary to repeat, as separate keywords, words within phrases which I would want to show up on a search encompassing less than the entire phrase. On the negative side, the actuality of keywording on-line images has become even more unwieldy. Without spaces between keywords, the system does not recognise individual words. Double click on a word to select it (e.g. to move its order by cutting and pasting, or select it for moving to the essential keywords field), and what you get is everything selected, not just the word itself. In fact, if you have a couple of phrases with spaces in them, what is selected is the last word of the phrase before the point at which you have clicked to the end of the first word in the next phrase (i.e. it selects from the previous to the next space, as per normal convention), which is entirely hopeless. The only way to select individual words now seems to be by dragging to select the word: time-consuming and RSI inducing. I usually sort out my keywords in Manage Images using my laptop and trackpad (often in front of the TV with a glass of wine to relieve the tedium), but without a mouse I found this impossible and gave up after the first couple. Even if you copy the keywords and paste them into a text editor to organise them externally and then paste them back in, you have to replace commas by comma-space before you can use the usual selection conventions and then remove the spaces to get back to the comma-no-space format, and even this does not give you the correct character and word count that you need to ensure that your keywords fit into the chosen field. Life is just too short to bother with all of this. I hope something will be done to sort all of this out and to make the system more useable. Graham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted January 6, 2017 Share Posted January 6, 2017 Are you actually seeing the new system? I'm still seeing the old one. Edit: or are you just referring to the treatment of keywords added before upload? I don't do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Munday Posted January 9, 2017 Author Share Posted January 9, 2017 Hi ... I should preface this by writing that I'm looking forward to the new system. At 71 years young, my philosophy is Viva la Change. And the inability of the old system to produce keyphrases, was just one of many small problems that the new one will fix. I'm sure it will be rolled out as an when it's fully debugged. Anyway to figure out what to do until the new system has been rolled out, I wrote to Alamy contributor relations and this is their very prompt reply. It answereds my questions succinctly and I figured might help others...... We used to strip out commas you embedded in your metadata, now we will be using commas on the new system we have stopped doing this. At the moment separating keywords with a space is still fine and will be recognised as a separator with the new system, but if you would rather leave the keywords as they are with commas and no spaces that is also fine and will be recognised by the system. If you want to add multi-word tags (phrases) it makes sense to use commas to separate each tag. EG: America, USA, New York City, United states, times square, buildings, people This way the new system will recognise "New York City", "United States", and "Times Square" as single tags. Using " " marks around words or [ ] will also transfer to the new system as a single tag. We would not suggest waiting for the new tools, you should continue to keyword and get your images on sale as you have always done and once the new tools go live all your information will transfer across. It also seems remarkably logical. Roll on the roll out! George Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinS Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Thanks, George. Great info! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYCat Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Hi ... I should preface this by writing that I'm looking forward to the new system. At 71 years young, my philosophy is Viva la Change. And the inability of the old system to produce keyphrases, was just one of many small problems that the new one will fix. I'm sure it will be rolled out as an when it's fully debugged. Anyway to figure out what to do until the new system has been rolled out, I wrote to Alamy contributor relations and this is their very prompt reply. It answereds my questions succinctly and I figured might help others...... We used to strip out commas you embedded in your metadata, now we will be using commas on the new system we have stopped doing this. At the moment separating keywords with a space is still fine and will be recognised as a separator with the new system, but if you would rather leave the keywords as they are with commas and no spaces that is also fine and will be recognised by the system. If you want to add multi-word tags (phrases) it makes sense to use commas to separate each tag. EG: America, USA, New York City, United states, times square, buildings, people This way the new system will recognise "New York City", "United States", and "Times Square" as single tags. Using " " marks around words or [ ] will also transfer to the new system as a single tag. We would not suggest waiting for the new tools, you should continue to keyword and get your images on sale as you have always done and once the new tools go live all your information will transfer across. It also seems remarkably logical. Roll on the roll out! George Thank you for sharing this. I am still wondering if the individual words within phrases need to be repeated where appropriate. If I put in "Grizzly Bear" should I also put "Bear". Has that been answered anywhere? Paulette Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Brooks Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Thank you for sharing this. I am still wondering if the individual words within phrases need to be repeated where appropriate. If I put in "Grizzly Bear" should I also put "Bear". Has that been answered anywhere? Paulette Based on Pearl’s method, I will start to use keyword phrases such as “grizzly bear”, “grizzly bear eating”, “Ursus arctos”, “silvertip bear”, bear That would be 5 supertabs which all have the equivalent weighting of the old essential box, but would never fit into the old essential box due to its 50 character limit. This is one of the strengths of the new system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Munday Posted January 12, 2017 Author Share Posted January 12, 2017 Delighted that my additional post was able to help... I reckon it would take one hell of a powerful algorithm - if one exists - to link disparate keywords amidst a whole pile of them and turn them into a phrase. Idon't think I'll be holding my breath. Although having said that I hope it will differentiate those within inverted commas, because I've been doing that ever since I started. But one thought occurs ... when I look back at my earliest images, they're good pics, but the years of subsequent keywording illustrates that those existing keywords are somewhat lacking. It seems a good opportunity to remedy that, I just hope the job of changing individual keywords to phrases and/or adding new ones is intuitive and fast. Fingers crossed.... George Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stokie Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 I've sometimes used single quotes ('xxxx') for phrases, hopefully it will pick up those as well as double quotes. John. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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