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Jim Keir's Lightroom Alamy Bridge (LRAlamy) Plug-in


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Is anyone still using Jim Keir's Alamy Lightroom plug-in?  Does it still work?  Does anyone know if it is still being supported? I have emailed Jim directly but am yet to get a reply and the last two tickets I raised on his support site (months ago) never got any reply.

 

Also since Alamy changed from keywords (based on a number of characters) to tags/supertags (based on the number of tags) how does it the plugin handle that? Does it handle it?

 

I haven't used the plug-in for some months, In that time there have been a number of changes at Alamy for managing and uploading images.  I've just changed computer and I can't get the plug-in isn't installing correctly.  I can possibly fix that problem myself but I'm reluctant to spend time on it if the product is now "dead in the water"

 

Thanks

Ian.

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Hi Ian

 

I've been using the plug-in for several years. I did get a response from Jim when I asked about the new image manager and he was working on it. I was in contact with Jim yesterday and he'd sorted out some of the problems created by the new AIM and was working on others. If you download the latest file from the website it works well, I've done a couple of uploads with it yesterday, and it worked fine and includes some of the new features of the AIM.

 

I'm sure that Jim is still working on some of the issues that remain, it certainly isn't dead in the water

 

Richard

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I had decided this AM to check about this plugin and here I find a thread about it. I don't think I will ever really be comfortable with the new Image Manager. Just the fact that I am looking at white type on dark bubbles seems to interfere with my ability to see if I have included everything I want. I find myself waiting to see what is on the preview page. I hope more people will post about this and any other solutions they have found to help with keywording with this new system.

 

Paulette

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Hi Ian

 

I've been using the plug-in for several years. I did get a response from Jim when I asked about the new image manager and he was working on it. I was in contact with Jim yesterday and he'd sorted out some of the problems created by the new AIM and was working on others. If you download the latest file from the website it works well, I've done a couple of uploads with it yesterday, and it worked fine and includes some of the new features of the AIM.

 

I'm sure that Jim is still working on some of the issues that remain, it certainly isn't dead in the water

 

Richard

 

Thanks, Richard, that is good to know - I'll preserve in getting it going again on my new computer set-up.  I have certainly found the product to be very helpful in the past. 

 

Ian.

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Will you be so kind as to describe a bit of what it does? The video on YouTube is no longer there. Can you keyword within the plugin or does it just transfer your Lightroom keywords? Even Lightroom isn't as easy for me to work in as black print on a white background. I know the real solution for me is probably to do some serious work on cleaning up my keyword list in Lightroom. Just such a tedious task.

 

Paulette

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Hello All

 

Been using this plugin for many years and could not see me on Alamy without it, for my workflow it saves a lot of time.

 

I spoke to Jim recently and yes it is being supported, I sense a hiccup in the past as in last year, but a support ticket submitted earlier this week was replied to today and there have been a number of updates since the introduction of the new Image Manager, so they are keeping up to date, but will by their very nature always be following.

 

When I spoke with Jim he was absolutely clear that the plugin has a future and support will continue, plus this week I found a couple of good workarounds for the 'discoverability' issues we all appear to be concerned about!  

 

If you have not tried it and you use LightRoom then it is worth a test run

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Hi Paulette

 

A brief outline of the plug-in. 

1. It can reassign keywords from the lightroom keywords to the supertags and tags catefories.  It makes guesses based on things like capitalisation, use of quotes etc.  I used it extensively under the old system and it worked quite well, You had to re-assign some keywords but it was easier than typing into each image. This still appears to work under the new tag system but it's easier to re-assign supertags by just removing the blue star.

2. You can set all the items such as Pseudonym, Primary and Secondary Categories, exclusivity etc. This makes life a lot easier because you can do all this in grid view using the painter tool or selecting a group of images and applying the setting you want.

3. The plug-in gives you collections that show sales, those with eg. a caption missing etc etc, and many other factors.

4. You can use various functions to Set the Metadata or Fetch the Metadata from Alamy.  This makes it easy to update your images data should you need to.( I think there may still be some errors with these until Jim gets the working properly with the new AIM).

 

I've been using the plug-in since Jim started developing it and I have to say I've found it extremely time saving.  It doesn't always allocate the tags in the best way but it does mean that you can get your images on sale in a very short time and then tweak them afterwards.

 

On the whole, I'll be using it before uploading the images to Alamy in the first place because then they will immediately go on sale as soon as they pass QC. They can then be adjusted as necessary afterwards.

 

Best way to understand it is to give it a try, You can download the latest version here: http://www.lightroom-plugins.com/AlamyIndex.php

 

I'm sure that Jim will be sorting out any discrepancies by the introduction of the AIM. There is an pdf handbook which should help but probably refers to the old system, but most of the actions are similar.

 

Hope this helps

Richard

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Thank you very much, Richard. So my keywording will still happen in Lightroom and then can be adjusted in the plugin. Sounds good but I think I probably still have to straighten out my keywording in Lightroom first. I used to just do basics like animal name and scientific name plus the location where I shot it. Then all the other words like animal, animals, wild, wildlife, mammal, mammals, etc. etc. I would do in Alamy using a lot of copy and paste in the old Image Manager since I had many of the subjects already uploaded and keyworded. I kind of liked only seeing simple identification in Lightroom but I guess those days are gone. I appreciate the time you took to describe the plugin.

 

Paulette

 

Edit: When you talk about fetching metadata from Alamy would that mean also keywords so I could fetch keywords I had used on the same subject previously? I'm having a hard time with the new Image Manager because all my older images have too many keywords to be useful in adding to new images. I was using all three sections and repeating keywords so now I have too many duplicates to be able to easily remove them. I immediately get stopped by the "you have more than 50 keywords" message.

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Had to raise support tickets last week...Alamy has made some changes that required 'robot' denial...Jim and his team came back quickly to provide workarounds...Have resubscribed my licence ????

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I've been using the Lightroom Plug-In for several years. Right around the same time Alamy introduced the new AIM I noticed my license had expired. So I renewed and downloaded the latest version, but it doesn't seem to be completely compatible with AIM.

Since upgrading I began to experience some issues with the Plug-In timing out. Then a couple of weeks ago I began to get an error that my login/password is incorrect.

 

Unfortunately I've been busy with other things and haven't had to time to troubleshoot. 

 

fD

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I had that to, but if you go to the website and download the latest version fD, ignoring what it says about version, it works fine, (Alamy changed the login format) still a couple of bugs but since Alamy are changing stuff still I'm sure it will take a bit of time for Jim to sort it.

Richard

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I had that to, but if you go to the website and download the latest version fD, ignoring what it says about version, it works fine, (Alamy changed the login format) still a couple of bugs but since Alamy are changing stuff still I'm sure it will take a bit of time for Jim to sort it.

Richard

 

 

Thanks Gilwen.  I had to replace my computer last month. I've been so busy re-installing my software and trying to get my taxes finished in time that I haven't had much of a chance to figure out why it's not working. I'll try downloading it again and see if that resolves some of the issues.

 

fD

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I had that to, but if you go to the website and download the latest version fD, ignoring what it says about version, it works fine, (Alamy changed the login format) still a couple of bugs but since Alamy are changing stuff still I'm sure it will take a bit of time for Jim to sort it.

Richard

 

I downloaded whatever version is currently on the website and I was able to login without a hitch. I now see this version has fields for Tags, Supertags, word count, QC Failure reasons, Discoverability, etc. I also see it has entries for Restrictions which is a new feature I asked Jim to consider for updates.

So far, so good. 

 

Thanks for letting me know.

 

fD

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Just a quick update on this - I've downloaded the latest version of LR Alamy - it appears to be working fine and I've had a reply from Jim that confirms he has been making updates to cope with the new Alamy Image Manager.

 

I am still testing everything again, but looks like the LRAlamy is definitely alive and kicking!   Phew!

 

Ian.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi.   Another update on Jim's plugin....specifically the "Set Alamy Metadata" feature.

 

With the AIM data conversion, like some of you, I was left with tags that were duplicated, had separated multiword tags, and left orphaned annotation marks.  It was a real amalgam of data conversion errors to be sure.

 

As reported, Jim has been fixing issues with the plugin to work better with AIM.   Working with Jim and team, I am now able to upload (set Alamy data) my pre-AIM LR plugin tags and supertags in order to correct the issues stated above.

 

For those that have used this plugin prior to AIM deployment, you will find that the plugin converts your Essential and Main Keywords to Supertags and Tags, respectively.  And,  your original annotations " " and / or [ ][ are now all converted to [ ] to designate a multiword tag.  Not to worry, this annotation is stripped out upon setting Alamy metadata.

 

As such, for those of you that followed previous Alamy guidance and annotated multiword keywords with [ ] and " ", you will find the ability to upload these unmolested tags back to Alamy, in the way you originally placed them.   Again, this assumes you used the plugin prior to AIM and that you had your Essential and Main Keywords in the plugin (fetched from Alamy).

 

I have tested on a 21 image batch and all seem to be working very well.

 

Big thanks to Jim and team for working with me to clean up my Alamy keywords!  This helps a lot.

 

 

Regards, Scott

 

 

P.S.   The latest verion is 1.0.6188 released May 15, 2017

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  • 3 weeks later...
2 hours ago, Calum Dickson said:

Anybody else having trouble with the plugin being unable to connect to Alamy, complaining of wrong username or password?

Yes, it's been a bit on and off over the last few days for me but the latest version put out today at http://www.lightroom-plugins.com/AlamyIndex.php seems to be working so far.

The plugin is getting regular updates as new issues are fixed but it isn't currently automatically updating in Lightroom due to the constant changes still happening. I found that whenever I have had an issue, the newest version from the above link has usually fixed it.

Update @12.40pm: I spoke too soon and it's stopped working again!

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This sounds exactly what I need but I don't have Lightroom but I do have Photoshop. Does anyone know of any alternatives to this, I am particularly interested in tagging/keywording offline and syncing to Alamy when connected.

If not then you would recommend I get Lightroom to do this?

Many thanks

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2 hours ago, Tim Jones said:

This sounds exactly what I need but I don't have Lightroom but I do have Photoshop. Does anyone know of any alternatives to this, I am particularly interested in tagging/keywording offline and syncing to Alamy when connected.

If not then you would recommend I get Lightroom to do this?

Many thanks

I'm not aware of any such plugins for Photoshop. If all you want to do is keyword offline then simply keyword & captioning your images in Photoshop before uploading to Alamy will achieve this goal as Alamy will read the appropriate IPTC metadata from your images. You will still need to select your supertags on Alamy however.

I would definitely recommend Lightroom for it's powerful digital asset management database tools and I personally find it's image processing interface more intuitive than Photoshop's ACR although it is the same underlying engine but I know many prefer ACR's interface. Definitely worth investigating what it can do for you but I would not recommend Lightroom if, at the end of the day, all you want to do is keyword your Alamy images as Photoshop already does that.

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13 hours ago, Tim Jones said:

If not then you would recommend I get Lightroom to do this?

Some might disagree but I cannot imagine doing any type of stock photography without using Lightoom.  There is a learning curve, and the workflow is much different than a typical Photoshop workflow but IMHO it is well worth the time involved in setting it up and learning it. 

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Thank you for your help and answers. I will look into Lightroom as beyone Alamy I am looking for a more organised way to see my images on PC. One more question, the plugin discussed here allows tag's, does it include any othre Alamy fields such as location, number or people etc?

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