I thought it would be impossible to make the uploading process to Alamy worse than it was, but they seem to have managed it. I suppose it's great if A) you don't want to bother doing anything more after you've uploaded, regardless of how much visibility your work loses; or, B) you upload hundreds of similar images all at once and can bulk process them all at once. However, if you do small batches of different subjects, keeping track of what has or has not been fine-tuned after upload is a nightmare, and trying to fine-tune it batch-by-batch is clumsy and awkward. Everything is going on sale RM which usually needs to be changed, a less-used pseudonym is inappropriately stuck on everything and I have to go through a great pile of batches to try to find anything and work out if it has been updated post-uploading or not.
If you don't keep a note of all the batches and whether or not you have dealt with them, you end up with files on sale with no "super" keywords, which presumable means they have no chance of getting a good search position, ever.
At least the old system kept files off-sale until you knew you had dealt with necessary adjustments.

and the categories pointless.

Quote from: stockastic on April 07, 2017, 18:53

I quit submitting new photos for stock, and closed accounts at all the agencies, except Alamy and GL.   Apparently Alamy has now changed their keywording scheme such that - if I don't go through all my old files and set 'super' keywords, they'll  never be seen.  Or something like that... am I even close?

No, not close.
Your essential keywords are automatically set as supertags. But all tags are searchable.
You'd have to do your own tests to see what happens. When I added all the required and optional info to a particular test file it dropped heavily in search within two days. It has since risen, but still around 20 places lower than it was before. Other tests also dropped in search, so I stopped optimising according to their instructions.
Their discoverability slider is pretty stupid: you need to have 50 keywords to reach maximum discoverability. That will be relevant for some files, but absolutely not all; so it's just encouraging spamming. Thankfully, you don't need to add spam to be discovered.

At the moment, it's just a half-baked idea which doesn't work the way it should. Whether it will be further developed or just left to fall to the wayside as some of their previous ideas did, we'll just have to wait and see.

Something has changed since earlier in the year, in that with a Wacom stylus, I find it extremely difficult to click on the exact pixel in the star to promote a tag to a supertag, in case at some time it matters. It is slowing me up no end, and is a known 'thing'. Clearly it wasn't tested by a range of creatives, 'apparently' it's OK with a mouse. (I know some people prefer mice).

Something has changed since earlier in the year, in that with a Wacom stylus, I find it extremely difficult to click on the exact pixel in the star to promote a tag to a supertag, in case at some time it matters. It is slowing me up no end, and is a known 'thing'. Clearly it wasn't tested by a range of creatives, 'apparently' it's OK with a mouse. (I know some people prefer mice).

For what it's worth, I have trouble with clicking on the stars with my Wacom tablet too - but I don't think it's new. I also had all sorts of problems with selections via the tablet with the old interface as well (and my tablet works just fine elsewhere).

Mostly I find the mouse (which I keep on the desk just in case but never use outside of for Alamy or if the Wacom driver crashes!) works just fine, but I use it so rarely it's hard to know.

Given how long it took them to deliver this new uploader, I'd hoped for something better...

Quote from: Travelling-light on June 01, 2017, 13:21

Quote from: ShadySue on May 31, 2017, 12:15

Something has changed since earlier in the year, in that with a Wacom stylus, I find it extremely difficult to click on the exact pixel in the star to promote a tag to a supertag, in case at some time it matters. It is slowing me up no end, and is a known 'thing'. Clearly it wasn't tested by a range of creatives, 'apparently' it's OK with a mouse. (I know some people prefer mice).

It isn't OK with a mouse. I have to hit the star 3-4 times to get it to work. I even bought a new mouse, to see if it helped.  I have trouble with my wrists, due to all the mouse work I do, and this is not helpful.  I have had contact with Contributor Relations today, and apparently there are no plans to change it.
They also say that Supertags are working as intended.

That post on their forum referencing Cassandra Syndrome, of which I must confess I hadn't heard previously, seems pretty apt. "The Cassandra metaphor (variously labelled the Cassandra 'syndrome', 'complex', 'phenomenon', 'predicament', 'dilemma', or 'curse') occurs when valid warnings or concerns are dismissed or disbelieved." (Wikipedia).
Sadly, Alamy has a history of being rather oblivious to contributor concerns such as this. It's particularly disappointing that it took so many years for them to launch an 'improvement', which is much worse than the poor uploading interface they had before.

I thought it would be impossible to make the uploading process to Alamy worse than it was, but they seem to have managed it. I suppose it's great if A) you don't want to bother doing anything more after you've uploaded, regardless of how much visibility your work loses; or, B) you upload hundreds of similar images all at once and can bulk process them all at once. However, if you do small batches of different subjects, keeping track of what has or has not been fine-tuned after upload is a nightmare, and trying to fine-tune it batch-by-batch is clumsy and awkward. Everything is going on sale RM which usually needs to be changed, a less-used pseudonym is inappropriately stuck on everything and I have to go through a great pile of batches to try to find anything and work out if it has been updated post-uploading or not.
If you don't keep a note of all the batches and whether or not you have dealt with them, you end up with files on sale with no "super" keywords, which presumable means they have no chance of getting a good search position, ever.
At least the old system kept files off-sale until you knew you had dealt with necessary adjustments.