The Image Manager thread

[Paul Thompson]

I thought the idea of being able to create multiple word tags would help prevent false hits for customers

ie - If I could keyword "Spurn Point" as one keyword it would prevent customers finding an image of a place on the Humber when they are looking for a person with their hand shaped to point or similar

But it seems I am still going to get views for the word "point" only

Again, seems no point changing 11000+ keywords then, in a way that is a bit of a relief

 

Am I right in thinking that it makes no difference if I have 2 tags saying "spurn" and "point" or just 1 saying "Spurn Point" is any weight given to the 2 word tag?

[tarsierspectral]

 

Why oh why do we have to deselect images when we click on another? 

 

Because that's how it allows you to do batch editing! If selecting a new image deselected the previous image, you would never be able to select a batch.

 

It is a mindset change... a few months from now, I'm sure we'll mostly all be used to it and take most of what th etool does and how to do things totally for granted.

I find the 'Clear selection' option on the top-right of the middle panel to be my best friend!

 

It could potentially be a very valid improvement to add an option which allows users to choose whether hitting the 'Save' button also deselects an image which would help reduce the occurrence of the problem you just encountered.

 

 

Yes, but why can't it be like EVERY other system we are used to where you CTRL (Cmd) click to select multiples?

[MDM]

 

 

Why oh why do we have to deselect images when we click on another? 

 

Because that's how it allows you to do batch editing! If selecting a new image deselected the previous image, you would never be able to select a batch.

 

It is a mindset change... a few months from now, I'm sure we'll mostly all be used to it and take most of what th etool does and how to do things totally for granted.

I find the 'Clear selection' option on the top-right of the middle panel to be my best friend!

 

It could potentially be a very valid improvement to add an option which allows users to choose whether hitting the 'Save' button also deselects an image which would help reduce the occurrence of the problem you just encountered.

 

 

Yes, but why can't it be like EVERY other system we are used to where you CTRL (Cmd) click to select multiples?

 

 

It is a very odd decision to go with a user interface that doesn't conform to the norm. The UI should always be simple and intuitive to use. As for the tablet argument, I expect that the vast majority of contributors are using and will be using computers for the foreseeable future rather than phones or tablets.

[Stu]

Can we do this all again when the rest of us get the news tools?

[Matt Ashmore]

 

 

Why oh why do we have to deselect images when we click on another? 

 

Because that's how it allows you to do batch editing! If selecting a new image deselected the previous image, you would never be able to select a batch.

 

It is a mindset change... a few months from now, I'm sure we'll mostly all be used to it and take most of what th etool does and how to do things totally for granted.

I find the 'Clear selection' option on the top-right of the middle panel to be my best friend!

 

It could potentially be a very valid improvement to add an option which allows users to choose whether hitting the 'Save' button also deselects an image which would help reduce the occurrence of the problem you just encountered.

 

 

Yes, but why can't it be like EVERY other system we are used to where you CTRL (Cmd) click to select multiples?

 

 

 

iPads don't have a CTRL (Cmd) key.

 

The new image Manager is meant to be platform agnostic and work on table PCs as well as a normal PC or Mac. A mobile phone doesn't have a big enough screen to fit everything on and be usable.. but my iPad mini works fine.

Part of the attraction to the new Image Manager for me was that I could use my iPad to keyword images out and about or even just in front of the TV.

[Graham]

I have been reading the latest Alamy advice on tagging, in preparation for when I am moved on to the new system (still on old version of MI).  The advice given on tagging deals with stemming and suggests not including plurals unless there are more than one of the items concerned present in the image.  This is what they say:

 

"This means that if the plural is important to the image then you should add it as an additional tag. Consider this carefully though – adding a plural implies that there are multiples of something in the image and if there isn’t, then you are potentially giving the customer irrelevant results which can harm your ranking in the future."

 

Yet in the blog "What Alamy customers searched for in 2016", which breaks down the list of most frequent search items in 2016 (top 100 Unique Customer Occurrences (UCO)), "Landscapes" comes in at #56.  I cannot see how one could ever have more than one landscape in an image, and in fact apart from this post, I would never have thought of including "Landscapes" in the plural as a keyword (or tag).  #56 of the searches for a whole year on Alamy suggests, however, that this is a very commonly used search term.

 

I am confused as to the best approach to adopt: I do, for example, routinely use "animals" as a keyword even if there is only one animal in the picture, to capture searches such as "animals of [location]".  If in fact this is a typo on the Alamy blog, and this should be "Landscape" in the singular, it would be very helpful if this could be clarified and corrected.

 

I am not sure whether this thread is the best place for this observation, but it seemed as good as any since it is mainly about tagging and issues relating to it, of which this seems to me to be one.  It would be interesting to know what others plan to do about the inclusion of plurals in tags when there is only a single example in the image concerned.

 

Graham

[KevinS]

Shift-Click and Control-Click both work for selecting a batch within a submission on my MacBook Air. If you need to select a batch from more than one submission, the old system was better as AIM doesn't allow this. Even with my small (<10) submissions, I don't find this to be a problem. Creating supertags and adding new tags seems pretty quick to me. If it wasn't, I'd be ok just leaving the old ones as they are.  

[tarsierspectral]

Shift-Click and Control-Click both work for selecting a batch within a submission on my MacBook Air. If you need to select a batch from more than one submission, the old system was better as AIM doesn't allow this. Even with my small (<10) submissions, I don't find this to be a problem. Creating supertags and adding new tags seems pretty quick to me. If it wasn't, I'd be ok just leaving the old ones as they are.

Deselect is a problem. Normally you just click somewhere outside your selection and items are deselected. Not here. You must click deselect button.

[Jill Morgan]

 

Shift-Click and Control-Click both work for selecting a batch within a submission on my MacBook Air. If you need to select a batch from more than one submission, the old system was better as AIM doesn't allow this. Even with my small (<10) submissions, I don't find this to be a problem. Creating supertags and adding new tags seems pretty quick to me. If it wasn't, I'd be ok just leaving the old ones as they are.

Deselect is a problem. Normally you just click somewhere outside your selection and items are deselected. Not here. You must click deselect button.

 

 

Adding a simple "deselect all" option at the top would be nice.

 

Jill

[KevinS]

It's already there. "Clear Selection" followed by a blue X

[Jill Morgan]

It's already there. "Clear Selection" followed by a blue X

 

Well, what do you know, totally missed that.

 

Jill

[Avpics]

Folks, take time, get used to the layout. Accept change. Having spent a couple of days on it, you do get used to a different way of working. One thing I have to say is that - and it will be bad news for members with many thousands of images - is that each image does need to be visited for editing. I've found many instances of search terms being corrupted when transferred to the new layout. "Red Bull Air Race" has become Red, Bull, Air, and Race. Four words that should have stayed together you would have thought. Anything beyond four words has similarly been separated, but I think that was always an issue with longer phrases? As previously mentioned, the system finds punctuation confusing. I've found many instances of now having words such as 'on', 'of', 'a' and 'and' as search terms. 

[Matt Ashmore]

Folks, take time, get used to the layout. Accept change. Having spent a couple of days on it, you do get used to a different way of working. One thing I have to say is that - and it will be bad news for members with many thousands of images - is that each image does need to be visited for editing. I've found many instances of search terms being corrupted when transferred to the new layout. "Red Bull Air Race" has become Red, Bull, Air, and Race. Four words that should have stayed together you would have thought. Anything beyond four words has similarly been separated, but I think that was always an issue with longer phrases? As previously mentioned, the system finds punctuation confusing. I've found many instances of now having words such as 'on', 'of', 'a' and 'and' as search terms. 

 

Totally agree.

 

And the "good news" to counter your "bad news" is according to Alamy's new blog on keywords:

 

http://www.alamy.com/blog/tagging-images-on-alamy

 

.. it doesn't actually matter from a perspective of what the search engine does whether you have one tag reading "Read Bull Air Race" or four tags reading "Red", "Bull", "Air", and "Race".   

[Reimar]

 

 

 

^ that's the word clipping I mentioned in another thread. Happening a lot. Potentially a major issue as not only are words missing but others (clipped) are appearing and searchable thus creating false searches.

 

We can confirm this isn't a major issue - its a display issue where the keyword field is clipped and then re-ordered alphabetically in the image details view. 

 

The original word that has been clipped is still searchable as normal. 

 

We're working on a fix for this.

 

Cheers

 

Alamy

 

 

How about removing duplicate tags? I now have way more than 50 tags making it impossible to add phrases for reasons I explained here.

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

+1

 

 

Me too.  Here is my latest correspondence with Alamy about this.  Start at the bottom. Not encouraging:

 

Corin, you are wrong to say “this has never been a function with the AIM".  Myself and others (see forum discussions) found this to work wonderfully on Monday.  So clearly it’s possible.  AIM automatically deleted duplicate keywords when any change to an image was saved.

I’m surprised you’re not aware of this.  Perhaps your IT department can explain this finding.

Without this function, I can not make changes to 92% of my images.  Deletion of duplicates manually is not workable.

Can you get a second opinion?

Reimar

 

From: (CR) Corin [mailto:crcorin@alamy.com]

Sent: January 26, 2017 4:02 AM

To: 'Reimar Gaertner' <reimar@pppoe.ca>

Subject: RE: Deletion of duplicate tags in new MI

 

Hi Reimar,

 

This has never been a function with the Alamy Image Manager. We understand this may be frustrating and time consuming but unfortunately we cannot automatically remove duplicated keywords for you.

 

We can provide you with a spreadsheet of all your current keywords but unfortunately you won’t be able to use this spreadsheet to make any changes within the new format. You will have to update all images in AIM.

 

Thanks

Corin

 

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From: Reimar Gaertner [mailto:reimar@pppoe.ca]

Sent: 25 January 2017 16:04

To: Alamy Contributor Relations <contributors@alamy.com>

Subject: Deletion of duplicate tags in new MI

 

I know you must be swamped with issues surrounding the new MI, but I have one simple request that will help myself and many others.

 

Two days ago the new tool automatically deleted duplicate tags in an image when a change was saved.  Yesterday and today this function no longer works. 

This is a particular problem for images with more than 50 tags due to duplicates.  No edits can be made to these images and finding and deleting duplicates manually for each image is unworkable.

 

Can you please turn that functionality on again?

 

Thank you.

 

Reimar Gaertner

[Reimar]

Your right Philippe. Alamy seems to think we were all hallucinating on Monday:

 

 

OK Corin.  IT is not sure what happened.  I can only reiterate that duplicate keywords WERE DEFINITELY deleted (I’m not blind), and STAYED deleted in these images (about two dozen) to this day.

In my opinion, the technical development team needs to do more digging because this is a critical issue for me and others.

 

Reimar

 

From: (CR) Corin [mailto:crcorin@alamy.com]
Sent: January 26, 2017 11:20 AM
To: 'Reimar Gaertner' <reimar@pppoe.ca>
Subject: RE: Deletion of duplicate tags in new MI

 

Hi Reimar,

 

I have had multiple opinions on this and spoken with the head of the technical development team. They have all explained that this would not have happened as the system does not and has never physically had a function to automatically remove duplicated keywords.

 

We are not sure what happened in your account on Monday but we can say that the system definitely didn’t remove the duplicates.

 

Thanks

Corin

[Allan Bell]

 

Folks, take time, get used to the layout. Accept change. Having spent a couple of days on it, you do get used to a different way of working. One thing I have to say is that - and it will be bad news for members with many thousands of images - is that each image does need to be visited for editing. I've found many instances of search terms being corrupted when transferred to the new layout. "Red Bull Air Race" has become Red, Bull, Air, and Race. Four words that should have stayed together you would have thought. Anything beyond four words has similarly been separated, but I think that was always an issue with longer phrases? As previously mentioned, the system finds punctuation confusing. I've found many instances of now having words such as 'on', 'of', 'a' and 'and' as search terms. 

 

Totally agree.

 

And the "good news" to counter your "bad news" is according to Alamy's new blog on keywords:

 

http://www.alamy.com/blog/tagging-images-on-alamy

 

.. it doesn't actually matter from a perspective of what the search engine does whether you have one tag reading "Read Bull Air Race" or four tags reading "Red", "Bull", "Air", and "Race".   

 

 

 

Thus using up three tags out of your 50 limit. You could add three more multi word tags when using your first multiword tag.

 

Allan

[RedSnapper]

"From: (CR) Corin [mailto:crcorin@alamy.com]
Subject: RE: Deletion of duplicate tags in new MI

 

This has never been a function with the Alamy Image Manager. We understand this may be frustrating and time consuming but unfortunately we cannot automatically remove duplicated keywords for you. "

 

 

 

As an early Beta tester of the IM, and frequent beneficiary over the last two months of the way the IM *did* automatically delete duplicate keyword tags, I can categorically state that this comment from Alamy is wrong.

 

 

 

km

[Jill Morgan]

"From: (CR) Corin [mailto:crcorin@alamy.com]

Subject: RE: Deletion of duplicate tags in new MI

 

This has never been a function with the Alamy Image Manager. We understand this may be frustrating and time consuming but unfortunately we cannot automatically remove duplicated keywords for you. "

 

 

 

As an early Beta tester of the IM, and frequent beneficiary over the last two months of the way the IM *did* automatically delete duplicate keyword tags, I can categorically state that this comment from Alamy is wrong.

 

 

 

km

 

I remember when I worked for the Toronto Sun (in advertising) one day while working on one of my customer;s ads, 1/2 of the copy was on my screen and the other half was on another person's screen across the room.  I called the "blue room" as we called it, to let them know.  They categorically said that could not happen.  I kept telling them if it can't, then come on up to advertising and see for themselves.  They said we both must have been working on the same ad. Which of course was impossible as this client was under my account so another account rep could not have accessed it.

 

Finally they came up, shaking their heads constantly saying that somehow, even though it can't happen, it did.

 

Jill

[Martin P Wilson]

As someone who spent the majority of their 35 year career in IT and was a programmer and troubleshooter for many years I long ago learned never to use "should" or "can't" in connection with software or technology!

[Alamy]

"From: (CR) Corin [mailto:crcorin@alamy.com]

Subject: RE: Deletion of duplicate tags in new MI

 

This has never been a function with the Alamy Image Manager. We understand this may be frustrating and time consuming but unfortunately we cannot automatically remove duplicated keywords for you. "

 

 

 

As an early Beta tester of the IM, and frequent beneficiary over the last two months of the way the IM *did* automatically delete duplicate keyword tags, I can categorically state that this comment from Alamy is wrong.

 

 

 

km

 

 

This is slightly misleading Keith!

 

A previous test version of the Image Manager did delete duplicate tags, but this was only possible when tags were ordered alphabetically within the tool, something that we reverted back from after further testing and feedback.

 

The version rolled out to those outside the test group has had no code within it at all that removes duplicate tags.

 

If anyone would like to provide examples of this happening and can provide image refs etc for us we will be happy to continue to investigate, but upon clicking save now, there is no code at all in place that can work through the tags to remove duplicates and this has been confirmed by the head of development at Alamy who led the build on this project.

 

As we've mentioned previously and as is stated in the main rules of the forum, it's not possible for us to answer all questions here but the team are always quick and happy to help if you email contributors@alamy.com.

 

Thanks

 

Alamy

[Betty LaRue]

I've been doing searches within my own portfolio.  Say "American Goldfinch".  I get 14 images.  That's manageable. I click on each image, and if any of them have over 50 keywords, I delete duplicates and whatever else isn't necessary.  Maybe 6 of those 14 are over 50. I save each time.  Once ALL are under 50, then I select them all and assign supertags, choose category, and tick the Only Alamy button.  Save.  

 

It's still time consuming, but at least I can assign supertags and do the Optionals at the same time. So I do save a bit of time. I'd rather tick 10 supertags once than 14 times.

edit typo

[Matt Ashmore]

As someone who spent the majority of their 35 year career in IT and was a programmer and troubleshooter for many years I long ago learned never to use "should" or "can't" in connection with software or technology!

 

Yes, it only takes a developer to make a small mistake or do a change without letting people know that he's made a change for these things to creep in... and out again.

 

Depending on how Alamy store their data, it might not actually be that difficult to do.

If they use an Oracle database, the appropriate select and update statements might sort it out.

They also seem to suggest that they can do an export of people's keywords into a spreadsheet (comma delimited) format... get individuals to make changes and then load it back in. It wouldn't take a developer with half a clue more than a couple of days to write a little application to read in this export, remove the duplicates and create a new version without the duplicates. 

 

I guess it all comes down to their priorities and what they have people working on. I know from experience that finding someone with that couple of days spare to make such changes can often be challenging.

[Matt Ashmore]

 

 

Folks, take time, get used to the layout. Accept change. Having spent a couple of days on it, you do get used to a different way of working. One thing I have to say is that - and it will be bad news for members with many thousands of images - is that each image does need to be visited for editing. I've found many instances of search terms being corrupted when transferred to the new layout. "Red Bull Air Race" has become Red, Bull, Air, and Race. Four words that should have stayed together you would have thought. Anything beyond four words has similarly been separated, but I think that was always an issue with longer phrases? As previously mentioned, the system finds punctuation confusing. I've found many instances of now having words such as 'on', 'of', 'a' and 'and' as search terms. 

 

Totally agree.

 

And the "good news" to counter your "bad news" is according to Alamy's new blog on keywords:

 

http://www.alamy.com/blog/tagging-images-on-alamy

 

.. it doesn't actually matter from a perspective of what the search engine does whether you have one tag reading "Read Bull Air Race" or four tags reading "Red", "Bull", "Air", and "Race".   

 

 

 

Thus using up three tags out of your 50 limit. You could add three more multi word tags when using your first multiword tag.

 

Allan

 

 

Yeah.. but at least if you do nothing, you are no worse off.. that's the point I guess. True it's a couple more tags used up out of your 50... but as a stopgap measure, doing nothing with some of these old images might suffice.

[IDP]

 

 

"From: (CR) Corin [mailto:crcorin@alamy.com]Subject: RE: Deletion of duplicate tags in new MI

This has never been a function with the Alamy Image Manager. We understand this may be frustrating and time consuming but unfortunately we cannot automatically remove duplicated keywords for you. "

 

 

As an early Beta tester of the IM, and frequent beneficiary over the last two months of the way the IM *did* automatically delete duplicate keyword tags, I can categorically state that this comment from Alamy is wrong.

 

 

km

 

This is slightly misleading Keith!

 

A previous test version of the Image Manager did delete duplicate tags, but this was only possible when tags were ordered alphabetically within the tool, something that we reverted back from after further testing and feedback.

 

The version rolled out to those outside the test group has had no code within it at all that removes duplicate tags.

 

If anyone would like to provide examples of this happening and can provide image refs etc for us we will be happy to continue to investigate, but upon clicking save now, there is no code at all in place that can work through the tags to remove duplicates and this has been confirmed by the head of development at Alamy who led the build on this project.

 

As we've mentioned previously and as is stated in the main rules of the forum, it's not possible for us to answer all questions here but the team are always quick and happy to help if you email contributors@alamy.com.

 

Thanks

 

Alamy

So why don't you revert it back so the tags are in alphabetical order and duplicates are removed? I can only see advantages. What's the problem with that?

Cheers,

Philippe

Firstly, whatever Alamy say, on Monday the new IM was definitely removing duplicate tags when saving. It's an indisputable fact, and multiple contributors aren't imagining it.

 

Having said that, I'm glad the new tool hasn't now got that facility - and for very good reasons. There are almost 100 million images on Alamy and most of them won't be revisited by contributors - particularly agencies and those with large collections. Consequently, there certainly shouldn't be any automatic deletion of keywords or alphabetising when transferring across to the new system. (Not sure if anybody is actually suggesting that?). By leaving keywords in the order they were entered, and not deleting duplicates, the images are still eminently searchable and should provide appropriate results for the buyer.

 

Even for those who want to make revisions, deletion and re-ordering would prove problematic. Let's take an example of a shot of New York City, where you just want to add a couple of supertags. Under the old system, it might have had the keywords "new,york,city,brooklyn,bridge,city,skyline,brooklyn,heights." Word proximity and order would bring the image high up in a search for New York City, Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn Heights- which is what the contributor intended. If, as soon as you started editing, all duplicates were removed (and, even worse, tags were put in alphabetical order), you'd end up with a load of gibberish, such as "bridge,brooklyn,city,heights,new,skyline,york". That image would never be found for the previous search terms.

 

By leaving in duplicates and maintaining word order, it's giving buyers the best chance of getting the image they want. It also means that, for the moment, you really shouldn't need to be doing any mass editing.

 

Having said that, the total lack of thought Alamy seem to have put into the refining of legacy images is pretty disturbing. It's virtually impossible to do batch editing - and trying to revise an image with over 50 tags is long winded and tedious in the extreme. The simplest solution would be to allow old images to be revised without consideration of the number of tags - automatic deletion of duplicates and alphabetising isn't the way to go.

 

Ian D

[Colblimp]

I thought I'd try keywording some images on my iPad. Of course, it's impossible. IM opens, I can see my latest batch of pictures and I can highlight one, or many. However, the section with caption, tags etc, is greyed out - for some reason it won't let me click on this. Any ideas? It's just another example of the massive fail Alamy has produced.