Complexity - Thanks for the input. For navigation and complexity.. I rely on Paul to 'simplify' things and you may have noticed the homepage in particular has been made more friendly this week. It's like looking at your face in the mirror, work on a design for years and you just can't see the forest for the trees anymore.. so it's good you vocalize confusing aspects - it's all crystal clear to me because I created the business.
FTP - I replaced the initial FTP system which seemed to go on vacation after a week or so. I'm uploading as I write this, works fine.
Keywords -We never lose a keyword, the data is all in there. Retrieving any unused existing keywords from your original metadata will be possible shortly. There are many factors at work here as we roll out features, and many are interdependent. On
http://www.microstockgroup.com/index.php?topic=3025.msg27715#msg27715 I mentioned that we just brought into effect 'word breaking'. This had to be done first before we can release a new keywording tool for the artists, because how the word breaking has evolved plays a big role in what forms of keywords we will accept. Encouraging mass user imports of keywords before we can set the 'rules' officially would likely mean more screwups, time cleaning up the database, etc.
For keywording concepts in general, self-quote from my post from a few weeks ago:
IPTC and EXIF are scanned and stored, every last piece of it. The way our tagging/keywording works is this: We have 20 inputs, the first 18 are filled by existing IPTC keywords (if they are in the file). The 19th tag is for color vs black and white, 20th tag is the aspect description (Profile, Landscape, Square).
If there are no IPTC keywords stored in the photo, we choose the first 18 tags ourselves using our wit, and increasingly, the Controlled Vocabulary database. We also edit the first 18 IPTC keywords as needed - for example, some contributors have 'color' already in there, or their own inventory names: these are redundant and are replaced with descriptive tags.
Now, on your Art Manager (
http://www.zymmetrical.com/account/art-manager/) page, you can Update Tags. Which in reality, is an additional set of 20 tag slots you can use. In the near future, this will show your original IPTC/EXIF data for easy drag and drop insertion.
So.. does this part make sense? In a nutshell, there are 20 core tags input by us. We may or may not use any existing IPTC data in there (usually most get used). These cannot be changed by the artist. Then there are an additional 20 tags that can be completely controlled and changed by yourself, in your Art Manager.
We also translate the first 20 keywords into 7 languages for you.
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