Alamy Lightroom Bridge

[Russell]

I don't think I'm completely stupid (you may feel differently) but having spent a lifetime in IT, I don't think this software works.

 

The "trial" is totally useless. So I ignored it and invested £25 for a licence.

 

I'm now trying to persuade it to download from Alamy the data relating to my current portfolio. Load "all" only matched a small subset of the images, so I've tried various ways to persuade it to match others. For example I have 20 or so images with filenames beginning "Kent". In the "Example Ref:" box I tried typing Kent* or Kent or Kent*.* or Kent*.jpg , I select the images in Lightroom log-in, select "fetch data for selected" and click export. Nothing is found!! If I type the Alamy Ref in to one of the images, it works for that one image - but I have no intention of doing this for hundreds of images. The whole point was to be able to retrieve the Alamy date programatically, not have to key it in.

 

Can anyone please, please give me a clue how to get this plugin to work and upload my existing portfolio from Alamy??

 

Much appreciated if you can.

 

Russell

 

 

[Julie Edwards]

What are your filenames on Alamy?

What are your filenames in Lightroom?

 

Give me some examples and Ill see what I can suggest.

 

(The software works fine ;-) ) 

[Matt Limb]

15 minutes ago, Julie Edwards said:

What are your filenames on Alamy?

What are your filenames in Lightroom?

 

Give me some examples and Ill see what I can suggest.

 

(The software works fine ;-) ) 

 

Have to agree with Julie - it works fine, been using it for over five years, no great issues.

[Russell]

Thanks for looking & commenting both. In my example above, the files are all .jpg files in lightroom. The filenames all follow the pattern Kent 2015-sequence number.jpg. As I said, I've tried all the varients of Kent*.jpg Kent*.*, etc. that I can think of, having previously selected the images and using the "fetch data for selected" option.

 

Any thoughts much appreciated.

[Julie Edwards]

13 hours ago, Russell said:

Thanks for looking & commenting both. In my example above, the files are all .jpg files in lightroom. The filenames all follow the pattern Kent 2015-sequence number.jpg. As I said, I've tried all the varients of Kent*.jpg Kent*.*, etc. that I can think of, having previously selected the images and using the "fetch data for selected" option.

 

Any thoughts much appreciated.

 

There was a specific reason I asked for exact filenames. Are changed as part of your upload process? I.E. You say they are called Kent*.jpg - but is that on Alamy? In Lightroom? which? If you were in IT you know its all in the details...

 

If they are the same on Alamy and Lightroom then you do need any filters in the "bridge"

[Russell]

Hi Julie,

 

My process is a follows:

 

1) I shoot RAW (Canon) so I import into LR files named nnnnn.CR2

2) Having processed the raw files, I select those that I wish to send to Alamy, and Export them to an \alamy\unsent folder with a subject related text name and sequence number e.g. Kent - Vineyard - 1, Kent - Vineyard -2, etc.

3) I submit the contents of \alamy\unsent usually via FTP so the filenames seen by Alamy are the text based descriptive filenames

4) When the images pass QC I move the contents of \alamy\usent to \alamy\passed QC leaving the unsent folder empty.

5) Obviously the Bridge cannot match the .CR2 file names to anything on Alamy. Therefore I imported into LR the folder \Alamy\passed QC containing the descriptive filenames as seen by Alamy.

6) I then tried to match using Export in the Bridge in a number of different ways. Selecting "All", specifying the passed QC folder in Alamy, selecting specific images in the passed QC folder, and together with a name (as in Kent* and variants).

 

So far, the Bridge has managed to match less than 50% of the images in the LR passed QC folder and I just cannot work out why it won't match the remainder.

 

Any thoughts much appreciated.

[Julie Edwards]

The aim with the bridge is always to match with your original RAW images. Inn your workflow that will not be possible (and therefore the bridge will be of less value i feel).

 

 If your uploaded images do not have a filename that relates to the original image then it won't be able to match...

 

Lets say you original image is names 11223344.CR2 and the exported image is named Kent_123.JPG, then the software will not know how to match the images.

 

However if you exported your uploads as KENT_11223344.JPG , then you could use the prefix option of KENT_ in the bridge to match the images.

 

My process is all images are renamed on import (ingest) to include the date. When I export the images for ALAMY i add an ALA_ prefix which enables the matching to the original RAW image....

 

...

 

For matching I do not limit the bridge... let it match the whole catalog... maybe having a separate catalog for you uploaded images would work? Then you just let it try to match all alamy images with all the images in the cat... Give it time though as after a few thousand it slows down drastically..

[Russell]

Hi Julie,

 

As I said, I understand that the Bridge cannot match the .CR2 images. What I'm trying to do here is "catch up" with my legacy images on Alamy. The Alamy filenames are identical to the ones in the LR passed QC folder and logically should match.

 

I may well change my workflow process for new images to be more compatible with the Bridge.

[fotoDogue]

Like Julie, when I "Fetch Alamy Metadata" I usually just set it to go through all my files in Lightroom. It seems to go through every file uploaded to Alamy anyway.

I had to do this several times in the beginning for it to retrieve all the data to include all of my files in the "Submissions" Smart group.

It takes a long time so I often leave my computer to do it overnight.

 

FWIW all of my filenames are date based but I've haven't had any problems with .NEF, CR, TIF, PSD, or JPG extensions.

[Sally]

I initially had problems trying to get this to work with my Alamy portfolio. As long as the file names are the same in Alamy and LR then it should work OK, but I found that I could kickstart it by manually copying one of the Alamy references into one of the images of the selection that I was trying to match. 

 

It is definitely worth persevering with it, though. Once it works, it’s great. You can also get help if you log a request on the website. I have done this a couple of times and always got a good response. 

[Russell]

An update ...

 

Having finally understood how the Bridge works, I decided that it wasn't going to be possible to download the Alamy data for all of my images matching it to the original raw files. So I embarked on a programme of collecting the data on all of the images which had sold or been zoomed by pasting the Alamy reference into the appropriate field in the raw file exif and using the "fetch alamy metadata" function for selected files.

 

All went well until mid-morning on Monday the suddenly I started getting errors Server 500, Server 200, and then Incorrect CSV file format.

 

Contributor relations say it's nothing to do with Alamy, Bridge support now say that there were changes on the Alamy side and they will need to fix the Bridge code.

 

So if you're getting unexplained errors that is probably the reason.

 

I'll post again when/if there's a fix.

[Russell]

A further update. The LR Bridge software team have now released a fix version 1.0.6771 .

 

What excellent service from the developers. I've emailed them my thanks.

[CHP]

46 minutes ago, Russell said:

A further update. The LR Bridge software team have now released a fix version 1.0.6771 .

 

What excellent service from the developers. I've emailed them my thanks.

Is the new version posted yet?  When I download I still get version 1.0.6646.

 

Clarence

[Russell]

Hi Clarence,

 

I was given a link to the Beta site https://www.lightroom-plugins.com/beta_download.php

 

I assume that you'll be able to load from there with all the usual caveats ("test software, no liability, etc.") but it works for me.

 

Russell

[CHP]

1 hour ago, Russell said:

Hi Clarence,

 

I was given a link to the Beta site https://www.lightroom-plugins.com/beta_download.php

 

I assume that you'll be able to load from there with all the usual caveats ("test software, no liability, etc.") but it works for me.

 

Russell

Thanks.  I didn't realize it was a beta version.  I will probably wait for the official update.

 

Clarence

[Russell]

It looks like 6671 is now the official released version.

[Stephen Lloyd]

I've considered this software for sometime having read about it in Professional Photo (UK) magazine. Until reading this forum I'd ont got around to doing it - but two days in and i'm already reaping the benefits of my £25 layout, so cheers folks. Much appreciated.