The site looks great, is fast and responsive. Just the uploading, especially the descriptions, keywords etc...are a pain. Although I agree with weighted keywords. But why do i have to add manually how many people are in the picture? That is what model releases are for, right?

The site looks great, is fast and responsive. Just the uploading, especially the descriptions, keywords etc...are a pain. Although I agree with weighted keywords. But why do i have to add manually how many people are in the picture? That is what model releases are for, right?

+1000
Drives me mad uploading there.  Also I use IrfanView to keyword my images and this is the only site that it doesn't export all the keywords to so I have to go and manually  add more.

Even adding the model releases takes more clicks than anywhere else!!

James from Alamy has been chatting to us about upcoming changes here:

http://www.microstockgroup.com/alamy-com/why-are-prices-not-what%27s-shown-on-the-site/msg306178/?topicseen#new

They could at least make the keywording area of the site work. Since yesterday the "manage images" area doesn't load the images, at least not in Firefox. So you don't need to worry about manually editing all the files any longer, the new site won't let you!

I wonder why they still haven't opened up the video side of the site to all contributors?  They were already late to the market but now they've only offered video buyers a small collection for such a long time, I wonder if they will ever take it seriously?

After another commission cut and very poor sales so far this year, my motivation to carry on uploading to alamy is low at the moment.  I hope the new look site will help and my zooms are quite good lately but another month without any sales other than novel use and I think I'll stop uploading.

I�ll try that, thank you.

... the UI seems to be designed to make me waste as much time as possible.

It sure does.

Making us cut/paste all our keywords from one box to another - every single time, on every photo, year after year...  come on people.  FIX THIS.

Well, since it's not working right now, I'll post here. The place I always start is My Alamy. To have to click on My Alamy to get to the My Alamy link to get to My Alamy since redundant, repetitious and redundant.

Agree with others on the submit process. Would be nice to at least be able to set some defaults. For me it's always a photograph. I don't mind the extra work on keywords if it actually makes a difference, but as I've always had a hard time seeing what sells and why on Alamy, it's hard to be convinced of that.

It hasn't affected me in a while, but the ' we accept all of all the batches submitted, or you're stuck for a month is hard to take. I have heard the logic that all images from a single shoot will be the same quality but A) that isn't true and 2) I never submit all images from a single shoot - I'd rather submit variety. So the fact that the food image I shot 3 months ago isn't up to standard has nothing to do with the model shot I took last week.

Sales took a dramatic dive after the search change so not happy with that. Also, novel use is a horrible joke.

OK, that's all I got. Site is back up now.

The site looks great, is fast and responsive. Just the uploading, especially the descriptions, keywords etc...are a pain. Although I agree with weighted keywords. But why do i have to add manually how many people are in the picture? That is what model releases are for, right?

ditto :-)

on the other hand the rants of their CEO in the Alamy Blog now are prominently linked in the home page, i'm afraid this is the last straw for what was left of their idea of interacting with contributors.

so, no more forum apart for the few oldies still writing there, and censorship in their corporate blog, FB page, and Twitter page.

it's funny how much all these companies love the idea of being "social" while acting 100% anti social when  the slightest criticism hits their as-s.

I don't really care about anything but sales, and my Alamy sales this month are pathetic.  Wonder if the site redesign has anything to do with it?

I don't really care about anything but sales, and my Alamy sales this month are pathetic.  Wonder if the site redesign has anything to do with it?

+1

Thank you very much for being involved here. I believe companies that engage with our critique in a positive way will have the best longterm success in the market. I know we keep nagging and complaining, but we only want alamy to be the best it can be .

I'd like to thank everyone here for their comments in this thread - we read all the feedback we can, not just on our own site and find it all very useful.

Best wishes

James Allsworth.

And thank you for coming into MSG and being upfront about what you are currently doing and listening to our feedback.  means a lot when you consider other agencies who ignore this forum and the (mostly) quite good ideas and alternatives offered up by some pretty experienced artists.  Really makes a big difference.

Enable the site to read metadata for Title, Caption and drop all the keywords into Comprehensive, we can edit from there. People will send you vast praise and thanks. 

I like the Essential Box limit which makes people think about what words really count and matter, instead of their favorite 500 words that are often distant or irrelevant. (spam) But making it easier to add keywords and some EXIF data, would be very kind of you.

We import the IPTC metadata when we upload your images, but only extract the caption, description, keyword and date fields depending on which version of Photoshop you are using.

IPTC headers in Photoshop 6 & 7

• The caption field corresponds with our caption field which is limited to 128 characters. If you add more than 128 characters in Photoshop we will transfer your data to our description field. You will then need to add a new caption.
• The keyword field corresponds with our comprehensive keyword field. We limit the keyword field to 856 characters and we truncate any words over this amount.
• In the IPTC keyword field add each word individually as there is a cut-off point of 32 characters (including spaces) beyond which Photoshop will truncate a list of keywords. Click Add after you�ve entered each keyword.

IPTC headers in Photoshop CS and above

• The description field corresponds with our caption field. We limit the caption field to 128 characters and any additional IPTC data overflows to our description field.
• The keyword field corresponds with our comprehensive keywords field. We limit the compehensive keywords field to 856 characters and any additional IPTC data is truncated.
• Separate your keywords with semicolons in Photoshop to ensure they transfer correctly.

James Allsworth
Alamy

Quote from: Xanox on March 27, 2013, 13:58

by the way, just banned from their forum again for complaining about the forum being now invisible from home page !

good, deleted the alamy forum from my bookmarks.
good riddance guys, and dont worry the few forumers left over there will soon move here with some time.

Hi Xanox - You were banned because this was yet another registration of yours on our forum, in a string of anonymous names and multiple registrations, where you have previously been banned for continuously breaking the forum rules. You keep changing your name, but the ban will remain I'm afraid.

The forum is still linked to the homepage via the "for sellers" link at the top of the page and we welcome contributors to use it. We are also working on a new and improved version which we are very excited about to launch soon.

James Allsworth
Content Executive and Social Media Manager
Alamy

hilarious, I've been to the Alamy site one time and came across Xanox and his poisonous words (mostly bagging out micro and MSG in general) and now, this person is HERE. I think your reputation precedes you i'm afraid, if even I know about you.

Quote from: uvox4 on April 04, 2013, 03:54

I disagree. I would like the keywords dropped into Main Keywords and the Essential and Comprehensive keywords removed. That is what people really want, one set of keywords.

Yes please.  Plus one to that.

Me too. 

mtkang - thanks for explaining how to work batch edit - saves a lot of time. How I managed to overlook that feature until now is beyond me.

Quote from: mtkang on March 27, 2013, 05:40

Hi Cobalt,

I find alamy is one of the best submit interface.. there is a batch submit features..just 'manage images' and highlight the thumbnail in same series, 'shift' or 'control' to select mulitple images..and pull to the tab under..

you can then edit them in batch.. I used adobe bridge for my keywords and it import as the third keyword tab..so I usually move them to the 'main keywords' and 'second keywords' tab.

OMG thank you so much.  I had no idea that you could batch assign the attributes.  That will save me so much work.

I use IrfanView to put in my Iptc data and Alamy is the only site it doesn't work properly for.  It only imports a few of my keywords so I have to go and copy them in one at a time.

Quote from: gillian on April 04, 2013, 04:00

hilarious, I've been to the Alamy site one time and came across Xanox and his poisonous words (mostly bagging out micro and MSG in general) and now, this person is HERE. I think your reputation precedes you i'm afraid, if even I know about you.

i'm done with their forum, i'm a "born again stocker".

lol, good for you.

I use IrfanView to put in my Iptc data and Alamy is the only site it doesn't work properly for.  It only imports a few of my keywords so I have to go and copy them in one at a time.

I use Exifer and sometime edit order with Irfanview. My data is uploaded correctly in each image (caption and keywords, dropped into the comprehensive field), but even if I have two images with exactly the same data, when I try to edit both together, then the original data disappears.

Unfortunately, I can't see that the files highlighted as 'creative' in the areas of my interest are any more 'creative' than the non-creative ones, any more than the 'best of' were any 'better' than the rest.
Except that some wildlife images are definitely 'creative' in terms of what the tog imagines (or spams) the creatures actually are, as opposed to what they really are. (Though part of that is the same old problem of the search engine, e.g. throwing up whale sharks on a search on whale.)

Quote from: uvox4 on April 04, 2013, 03:54

Quote from: RacePhoto on April 02, 2013, 12:42

Enable the site to read metadata for Title, Caption and drop all the keywords into Comprehensive, we can edit from there. People will send you vast praise and thanks. 

I like the Essential Box limit which makes people think about what words really count and matter, instead of their favorite 500 words that are often distant or irrelevant. (spam) But making it easier to add keywords and some EXIF data, would be very kind of you.

I disagree. I would like the keywords dropped into Main Keywords and the Essential and Comprehensive keywords removed. That is what people really want, one set of keywords.

No, please keep that, I really like that system. At least in theory, it is much better for relevance.

I'd agree. People want a better search experience for buyers and then want to lump everything into one field to make it dumber?

Yes it's a little more effort, but when someone searches for something and I know my personal choices for the most important keywords are going to be weighted towards my image. I like it! Cuts down on keyword spam also.

Looks like I haven't tried to import keywords in a couple of years, because they were getting truncated, so I had to cut and paste anyway. Time to try again. Also try the other fields that are being read. I'd be happy if that works. One less manual effort, but since I use the bulk edit and drop down selections, it's not that terrible. That new editor was a really nice addition.

Reminding myself:  caption, description, keyword and date fields

I must be missing something here.

When I submit an image, Alamy puts all my IPTC keywords in 'comprehensive keywords'.  I then have to cut/paste them all into 'main keywords'.  I don't know if I have any images with so many keywords that they won't fit in 'main' so I have little if any use for 'comprehensive'. 

So why are some of you so enthusiastic about the current system?  It's just an annoying waste of time for me.

Alamy has done a great job and is still my favorite site for adding photos! If the photo is good, low noise and no artifacting then it's good to go. No BS of the other sites like istock, Dreamstime, Fololia etc claiming bad composition and so on and who determines that?
Here is a good one from Dreamstime:
(Poor lighting due to lighting conditions (wrong time of day, dull skies, harsh shadows etc.) and/or camera limitations / Poor contrast or incorrect exposure.)
The photo was rejected on Dreamstime, Fotolia, Graphic Leftovers and a few others, it was taken in my studio so I don't know where the dull skies come into play.
The photo was accepted on Alamy and has sold 3 times since March 16th 2013 and has made a little over $600 which half goes to me. Not bad for a crap photo according to the companies that I would have made a dollar fifty from.
So thumbs up to Alamy!

I don't see a lot of difference from the point of view usability.
The face is different, but the rest (the managing part) is always the same.

It looks like these persons using a lot of make-up to change there external aspect, put staying the same *inside*�