MicrostockGroup
Agency Based Discussion => Adobe Stock => Topic started by: Sion on May 29, 2015, 05:29
-
Filling Fotolia categories are getting to be time-consuming.
To start with the categories offered are not comprehensive and there are limited choices to select from.
-
That is a well known issue going back many years
-
123rf doesn't have categories, but buyers still find your photos, aren't they?
-
Agree. With the old interface you could get by without entering categories, but with the new one, not only are you forced to choose, it goes 3 levels deep and many, like with the old system are confusing. If they are going to force us to do this, make it straightforward. I shouldn't have to guess and click through many windows to find something that should be simple.
-
For my own content, no other site has categories as useless as Bigstock.
-
You could get by in the old without choosing? It never let me. I was happy with the drop to one set.
-
For my own content, no other site has categories as useless as Bigstock.
the miscellaneous sub category is a classic
-
You could get by in the old without choosing? It never let me. I was happy with the drop to one set.
If you clicked on the first category and then left it blank, you could continue without choosing categories. You had to click on it so it was highlighted. Not sure how I figured that out, but it worked.
-
For my own content, no other site has categories as useless as Bigstock.
the miscellaneous sub category is a classic
right, but many times I've had batches rejected for inappropriate category when using misc -- BS is marginal anyway, so I just ignore those rather than re-submitting
-
I doubt many buyers actually use categories. So I wouldn't put too much thought into it.
-
caterogries are the thing I hate most when uploading image
-
Especially when we are often forced to fit something into a category because what should be there, doesn't exist. So assuming a buyer actually cares and uses a category, instead of keywords, the work we submitted will be in some inappropriate classification, not what the buyer wanted, it's a waste of time.
caterogries are the thing I hate most when uploading image
-
I was once randomly drawn to the meeting with Oringer and I told him it it useless thing and they should get rid of categories or generate them from keywords but he insisted that buyers really browse images by categories. I think they do not want to generate them because it would take computing resources and they would rather let slaves do the work for them :-)
-
I've never liked categories but can't say buyers never use them. SS categories are easy and make sense. Fotolia's are vague and confusing. It's as if they decided they were going to come up with new and unique categories to differentiate themselves, while forgetting the only purpose is to make it easy for buyers to find what they are looking for.
So instead of a generic Objects category, or one with simple subheadings like Bigstock, you have to figure out to put a gun under Social Issues/Violence and Crime/Weapons and Gun Control and flags under Graphic Resources/Signs and Symbols/Flags, which is also where you would find The Internet and Bubbles.
-
When Peter built Stockfish he did not include categories because he said customers rarely used them on Stockxpert. Maybe it's how the systems are built that dictates how categories are used, but I would consider Peter very knowledgeable around categories and their effectiveness for buyers.
-
I've just discovered the 'Chilling Out' and 'Imaginary Animals' categories. I think I can put everything into one of those two.
-
The fotolia categories are driving me crazy. There is no category for objects or just still life and the drop down menu is often unlogical.
It is a really, really painful way to upload like this.
Seriously, if they want more content, why not make it easy and elegant?
-
The fotolia categories are driving me crazy. There is no category for objects or just still life and the drop down menu is often unlogical.
It is a really, really painful way to upload like this.
Seriously, if they want more content, why not make it easy and elegant?
Try to find "Halloween".
-
The fotolia categories are driving me crazy. There is no category for objects or just still life and the drop down menu is often unlogical.
It is a really, really painful way to upload like this.
Seriously, if they want more content, why not make it easy and elegant?
Agreed. It is quite illogical. Quite like istocks controlled vocab. It is very specific on some words then totally lacks a solution for another word/subject
-
I recently made a little research on categories for every agency and found some funny things:
1. There is no consistency from one agency to another. Trying to understand them is a nightmare!
2. Sometimes they have the same thing in 2 or 3 different places: "Miscellaneous" and "Other" for Depositphotos, Bigstock has A category called "Miscellaneous" containing 2 subcategories, "Holidays" and... "Miscellaneous", in fact they love this word so much that they placed it in every category. I counted "Miscellaneous"28 times. Wouldn't it be easier to have a single category "Miscellaneous" and remove everything else?
3. Fotolia has some of the most unusual categories, especially in "Science": "Applied and Fundamental sciences", Esoteric (hmmm, interesting science) and... good luck with this one... "Outer space". So, wedding photographers, what are you waiting for? Let's go on the Moon for a photo shooting!
4. For Dreamstime "Sports" is part of "Industries"
5. Fotolia is so specific that they created a subcategory called "Eggs". I wonder how many eggs they have inside
6. For Bigstock "Insects" are part of "Nature" not "Animals", obviously because you can't find them in the Zoo, only in nature!
7. And Bigstock again with a tricky one. "Sexy" category contains "Men", "Women" and..."Miscellaneous" This might be for Transgender? Or Dildos? Hard to say...
-
using Categories is a total nonsense in 2015.
we should write a detailed article where we rant against the use of Categories and why they must go and then forward the links to all the top agencies .. they won't care but maybe someone will take note ... most of these agencies are usually run by businessmen who have no clue about our workflow.
-
The subcategories of Plants and flowers / plants are the following:
bamboo
clover
fern
other
raspberry bush ;D
Lol! I suppose we should be thankful they gave us the "other" option.
-
I recently made a little research on categories for every agency and found some funny things:
1. There is no consistency from one agency to another. Trying to understand them is a nightmare!
2. Sometimes they have the same thing in 2 or 3 different places: "Miscellaneous" and "Other" for Depositphotos, Bigstock has A category called "Miscellaneous" containing 2 subcategories, "Holidays" and... "Miscellaneous", in fact they love this word so much that they placed it in every category. I counted "Miscellaneous"28 times. Wouldn't it be easier to have a single category "Miscellaneous" and remove everything else?
3. Fotolia has some of the most unusual categories, especially in "Science": "Applied and Fundamental sciences", Esoteric (hmmm, interesting science) and... good luck with this one... "Outer space". So, wedding photographers, what are you waiting for? Let's go on the Moon for a photo shooting!
4. For Dreamstime "Sports" is part of "Industries"
5. Fotolia is so specific that they created a subcategory called "Eggs". I wonder how many eggs they have inside
6. For Bigstock "Insects" are part of "Nature" not "Animals", obviously because you can't find them in the Zoo, only in nature!
7. And Bigstock again with a tricky one. "Sexy" category contains "Men", "Women" and..."Miscellaneous" This might be for Transgender? Or Dildos? Hard to say...
And in Bigstock's world, there are Rivers, but no Lakes
-
The subcategories of Plants and flowers / plants are the following:
bamboo
clover
fern
other
raspberry bush ;D
Lol! I suppose we should be thankful they gave us the "other" option.
But in others, where nothing ever fits, there are no other categories. All areas under Industry come to mind. And as someone else said, trying to figure out where you put Objects is tedious and a waste of time.
-
I specialize in photographing North American wildlife.
On FT, when I click Animals > Mammals, my sub-sub-category choices include such critters as:
Bats
Camels and dromedaries
Cheetas
Donkeys
Goats
Hippos
Kangaroos
Koalas
Mice
Monkeys
Other Pets
Pandas
Pumas
Rhinos
Wolves
Missing from the list -- and therefore forced to list as "Other" -- are extremely common North American critters like these:
Coyote
Elk
Moose
Pronghorn
Buffalo/Bison
Ground Squirrel/Prairie Dog/Chipmunk/Marmot
Raccoon
Opossum
Armadillo
And many, many more.
Frustrating to me? You betcha! Helpful to would-be buyers? Not much.
How much better it would be if under "Mammals" we had more general categories like the following, which would be applicable to mammals worldwide, not just in one continent or another:
Carnivores (bears, coyotes, wolves, foxes, etc)
Rodents (rabbits, squirrels, prairie dogs, chipmunks, etc)
Ungulates (deer, pronghorn, bison, elk, camels, hippos, giraffes, zebras, etc)
Mat, any chance you can persuade the powers-that-be at Adobe to make these sub-categories more generic, and thus less frustrating to contributors and more useful to buyers?
-
Or how about just mammals? It doesn't matter. If I, or anyone with more than a week's experience with computers who needs a picture of an armadillo, is going to search on armadillo. They aren't going to drill down through numerous, arbitrary and confusing nested groups of categories.
-
Or how about just mammals? It doesn't matter. If I, or anyone with more than a week's experience with computers who needs a picture of an armadillo, is going to search on armadillo. They aren't going to drill down through numerous, arbitrary and confusing nested groups of categories.
I completely agree with that! "Mammals" would be a fine stopping point.
But when you've got a great North American critter image and the only options for sub-sub categories are critters like camels and giraffes versus "Other", you're stuck in "Other Limbo."
Mat, this is such an obvious and easy-to-fix problem. What are our chances??? ;D
-
I agree too. The way I see it the main point of categories ist to be able to search with a keyword within a category. That way you can better clarify what you mean. Let's say you're looking for a wooden background and you type in wood, background and get lots of forests. Now some people would change the keywords, e.g. add "texture" or "-forest", but others would keep the keywords unchanged and search inside a backgrounds category.
If that's true, the categories don't need to be too specific at all. Even one subcategory isn't really necessary, but if they like it precise then one subcategory would be more than enough. For landscapes they have done it and that's great, so much better than before, but most categories are terrible.
-
The fotolia categories are driving me crazy. There is no category for objects or just still life and the drop down menu is often unlogical.
It is a really, really painful way to upload like this.
Seriously, if they want more content, why not make it easy and elegant?
Try to find "Halloween".
I give up. Any clues???
-
I've reached the tipping point. After weeks of struggling, along with declining sales, I'm not wasting more time on this. If I don't know where to find the buried category going in, I delete the image. Not wasting more time, energy or frustration on this. The old system was horrible and this is not an improvement.
If only there was some way to test usability of a system before releasing it to the general public.
-
Filling Fotolia categories are getting to be time-consuming.
To start with the categories offered are not comprehensive and there are limited choices to select from.
Agreed. Adobe has pared some down and merged the two types, but they still lack generality. My solution: Save everything in the queue as Other or Background
-
There isn't an Other at the highest levels, and only random categories have them at the 2nd level. Part of the problem. No consistency.
-
If Only......And I Mean..IF ONLY people who design these things were the people who used them we would have great websites to work with. but, I assume thats never gonna happen.
-
There isn't an Other at the highest levels, and only random categories have them at the 2nd level. Part of the problem. No consistency.
See, totally confusing. They need to just get rid of them.
-
Fotolia has now made 2nd and 3rd tier categories optional. Thank you for a big improvement. There are still too many confusing top level categories and no clear place to put 'objects' but this helps a lot.
-
Fotolia has now made 2nd and 3rd tier categories optional. Thank you for a big improvement. There are still too many confusing top level categories and no clear place to put 'objects' but this helps a lot.
Yea, Mat! Adobe/Fotolia is improving!!!
-
It took me a few uploads to find "Christmas" and so I put some in another category - I had tried the "Religious and Other" but when I drilled down and got to the "International ...." it didn't seem to make sense, so I went back up to "Food" since I had cookie-cutters - close enough even though they are cooking tools.
With no object category, however, I had to keep trying when I uploaded Christmas Decorations and finally found it. Hoping Halloween is there since I'm planning to get my pumpkins up this week 8)
Everything also seems to start with a country which is not good for still life.
-
It took me a few uploads to find "Christmas" and so I put some in another category...
This is an especially big problem when you're just learning FT's system. You have no idea what all the possible categories are so you wing it. But later, when you finally see the big picture, it's too late to make changes without first deleting already-accepted images and having to submit them for approval again.
Having the option to fix previous errors would be another huge step forward!
-
It took me a few uploads to find "Christmas" and so I put some in another category...
This is an especially big problem when you're just learning FT's system. You have no idea what all the possible categories are so you wing it. But later, when you finally see the big picture, it's too late to make changes without first deleting already-accepted images and having to submit them for approval again.
Having the option to fix previous errors would be another huge step forward!
Absolutely! I just can't be bothered deleting and re-uploading, but it would be great if you could go in after an image is accepted - or even before it is reviewed - and tweak the categories and keywords. I think the ones I mentioned are still waiting for review so I should probably just delete and start over. I uploaded over 100 images there yesterday and the indexing takes so long - I hate to have to start again. At least "Graphic Resources" - "Backgrounds" jumped out at me. I think that's an excellent name for the category though it sounds like when you drill down it gets a bit funny.
-
It took me a few uploads to find "Christmas" and so I put some in another category...
This is an especially big problem when you're just learning FT's system. You have no idea what all the possible categories are so you wing it. But later, when you finally see the big picture, it's too late to make changes without first deleting already-accepted images and having to submit them for approval again.
Having the option to fix previous errors would be another huge step forward!
As far as I know, you can change categories on already accepted photos.
-
It took me a few uploads to find "Christmas" and so I put some in another category...
This is an especially big problem when you're just learning FT's system. You have no idea what all the possible categories are so you wing it. But later, when you finally see the big picture, it's too late to make changes without first deleting already-accepted images and having to submit them for approval again.
Having the option to fix previous errors would be another huge step forward!
As far as I know, you can change categories on already accepted photos.
Great news! Please tell me how.
-
Click on your image and then click on "index it" ?
-
Click on your image and then click on "index it" ?
You're right! That works. I didn't realize it, so many thanks for the tip.
Now… can you tell me how to change the Title/Description for an image that's already been accepted?
-
I can't tell you because you can't change it. Re-ordering keywords, price setting and category changing are the only things you can change on already accepted images, as far as I know. The rest is locked.
-
That's good news. Thanks! I already deleted and re-uploaded but it will be good for the future.
-
I can't tell you because you can't change it. Re-ordering keywords, price setting and category changing are the only things you can change on already accepted images, as far as I know. The rest is locked.
Thanks for the additional tips. You can tell I'm a newbie to FT. This helps.
-
I'm starting to upload to Fotolia my many images of North American cacti.
Category: Plants and Flowers (Good start!)
Choices:
Flowers
Mushrooms
Plants
Seeds
Trees
I select "plants" and on the next level down I find:
Bamboo
Clover
Fern
Other
Raspberry Bush
Really? Those are the only kind of plants that Fotolia buyers might ever wish to find?
Fortunately, this level is now optional. But it could be a whole lot more useful.
-
You don't expect there to be list of all plants that exists on planet earth now, do you? Bigstock is even worse. They don't have "mammals" in their list.
-
You don't expect there to be list of all plants that exists on planet earth now, do you?
Well, no. Of course not.
However, a big, generic category like "cactus/cacti" would definitely be more useful than, say, something as specific as "raspberry bush" or "clover." No?
-
I agree. It sure is kind of weird. I guess they've run out of ideas.
-
I agree. It sure is kind of weird. I guess they've run out of ideas.
Actually, I don't think they've thought much about categories in a long, long time.
And since FT started in Europe, they weren't anticipating North American categories at all. Maybe that will start to change as Adobe develops a broader base of contributors and buyers.
-
what is the use of category while they are not accepting our files. Fotolia is going down superfast
-
Can any buyers out there tell us if they actually USE categories to search seems a redundant concept to me