Author Topic: Do you enjoy adding meta data? (Read 15886 times)

Mogwai · « **on:** January 16, 2016, 20:48 »

I'm curious how keywording is for other people. I create images in large amounts and keywording is a very mentally taxing process for me because my brain does not handle redundancy well. In fact, some of my errors / rejections are result of a mind that keeps forcing itself into auto-pilot during submission process. This goes double for Istock's disambiguation system.

What is the experience like for you? Similar? Different? How do you approach keywording not only for effective sales but also (if you are like me) to avoid the mental fatigue it brings?

60D · « **Reply #1 on:** January 16, 2016, 21:24 »

Check out this thread:
http://www.microstockgroup.com/software/xpiks-open-source-software-for-microstocker/

Xpiks makes things comparatively easier.

Mogwai · « **Reply #2 on:** January 16, 2016, 22:10 »

I'm a little burned out on the open-sourced hucksters filtering into the industry, but I'll check it out.

hartlet12 · « **Reply #3 on:** January 17, 2016, 01:47 »

Quote

I'm curious how keywording is for other people. I create images in large amounts and keywording is a very mentally taxing process for me because my brain does not handle redundancy well. In fact, some of my errors / rejections are result of a mind that keeps forcing itself into auto-pilot during submission process. This goes double for Istock's disambiguation system.

What is the experience like for you? Similar? Different? How do you approach keywording not only for effective sales but also (if you are like me) to avoid the mental fatigue it brings?

It's asier for me to produce images than uploading it in agencies specially in Istock. Keyword suggestions from shutterstock is a big help for me.

Niakris · « **Reply #4 on:** January 17, 2016, 02:12 »

There are tons of services that help with keywording, find the one that you like the most and you'll save tons of time.

Dumc · « **Reply #5 on:** January 17, 2016, 05:37 »

What I do is find some similar photos on fotolia or shutterstock or whatever agency and then check them keywords an copy those that I find apropriate for image that I am going to upload.

PZF · « **Reply #6 on:** January 17, 2016, 06:43 »

Enjoy keywording??? Good heavens - no!
Tedious second only to watching paint dry...maybe...but it's a close run thing!

Lana · « **Reply #7 on:** January 17, 2016, 07:48 »

I kinda like it but in the same time I often find myself feeling impatient through the process, drifting away, starting to distract myself with something else, clicking random links in internet, but then I've always thought that I'm a little bit ADHD since I was a kid

Well, maybe beacause it sounds better than procrastinator

Mantis · « **Reply #8 on:** January 17, 2016, 09:12 »

fk no.

noodle · « **Reply #9 on:** January 17, 2016, 10:58 »

I enjoy it as much as i enjoy poking myself in the eye

jamiehooper · « **Reply #10 on:** January 17, 2016, 15:43 »

I actually love the creativity of figuring out WHY someone could use my image, and then adding passwords to attract them. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the subject, but the emotional or storytelling content. I use Lightroom to mass-keyword (auto-alphabetically) ; but since Adobe decided that FT should have the words in order of relevance open them in Bridge and re-arrange keywords in the images I think will benefit the most.

Photography is satisfying, but keywording is where the money is made.
And, come'on...stock is not about art or creating a great image. It's about sales.
Fortunately, it's possible to both love what you do and make money.

Mantis · « **Reply #11 on:** January 17, 2016, 15:52 »

Quote from: jamiehooper on January 17, 2016, 15:43

I actually love the creativity of figuring out WHY someone could use my image, and then adding passwords to attract them. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the subject, but the emotional or storytelling content. I use Lightroom to mass-keyword (auto-alphabetically) ; but since Adobe decided that FT should have the words in order of relevance open them in Bridge and re-arrange keywords in the images I think will benefit the most.

Photography is satisfying, but keywording is where the money is made.
And, come'on...stock is not about art or creating a great image. It's about sales.

True but that doesn't mean you have to enjoy every aspect of it, you just need to be good at every aspect of it. One of the reasons I don't like key wording is that I take my time so it is time consuming; I do a bit of research to make sure I am getting useful tags but I don't over obsess with it. After 8-9 years of doing it, you also learn how to do it well without over-investing time, so I only spend a few minutes per image/video.

Tror · « **Reply #12 on:** January 17, 2016, 18:11 »

Quote from: Niakris on January 17, 2016, 02:12

There are tons of services that help with keywording, find the one that you like the most and you'll save tons of time.

Can you or anybody else recommend some of them?

zorba · « **Reply #13 on:** January 17, 2016, 20:15 »

Quote from: Mogwai on January 16, 2016, 20:48

I'm curious how keywording is for other people. I create images in large amounts and keywording is a very mentally taxing process for me because my brain does not handle redundancy well. In fact, some of my errors / rejections are result of a mind that keeps forcing itself into auto-pilot during submission process. This goes double for Istock's disambiguation system.

What is the experience like for you? Similar? Different? How do you approach keywording not only for effective sales but also (if you are like me) to avoid the mental fatigue it brings?

I hate it.

This is one of the things microstock "superstars" start to outsource first.

It has to be done in the right way. And it's absolutely crucial. But ... MY GOD, I hate it. $:-\$

My technique:

1) keyword the group for what it's shared
2) freely keyword and insert title/description for images on which this is simple and obvious.
3) completely review this process in deep-meta in my native language and add some other keywords.

1.1 swear

2.1 swear, moan

3.1 moan, swear, cry

Then I have some automated tools

to check for some common errors ... but it's not complete. I count on Xpiks to collaborate on this problem (too many - too few words or keywords, no "a" trailing character on title/description, change the separator for some agencies not to have subsequent errors ("this keyword" becomes this, keyword), unwanted alphabetic order, two "title" fields have to be equal ... and so on.

Hongover · « **Reply #14 on:** January 17, 2016, 23:01 »

Yes and no. It depends on how big the batch is. If it's less than 10 files, I tend to enjoy it. If it's more than 10 and I don't have a lot of time, it's mentally exhausting.

The great thing about keywording for me is that I learn a lot of stuff. One moment I'm learning about architecture, the next I'm learning about the the history of the Lourve, because it's related to an image I'm keywording. It gets distracting, but it's something I really enjoy.

When it's more than 10 files, I can't enjoy it. I have to get it done and I have to rush through things. It's like a race against time and I need to move on to something else.

PixelBytes · « **Reply #15 on:** January 18, 2016, 00:18 »

I just had to check into this thread to see if ANYONE actually enjoys adding meta data to their images. Anyone who does, please contact your local psychiatric referral hotline.

May try out some of the recommended tools. Would be great to see some of the hair I've torn out during the tedium of keywording grow back. Maybe then I will look more like George Cloony and less like Wallace Shawn!

ravens · « **Reply #16 on:** January 19, 2016, 01:44 »

Quote from: hartlet12 on January 17, 2016, 01:47

Quote
I'm curious how keywording is for other people. I create images in large amounts and keywording is a very mentally taxing process for me because my brain does not handle redundancy well. In fact, some of my errors / rejections are result of a mind that keeps forcing itself into auto-pilot during submission process. This goes double for Istock's disambiguation system.

What is the experience like for you? Similar? Different? How do you approach keywording not only for effective sales but also (if you are like me) to avoid the mental fatigue it brings?
It's asier for me to produce images than uploading it in agencies specially in Istock. Keyword suggestions from shutterstock is a big help for me.

I don't mind keywording itself but am not that excited when the SS keyword stealing tool freely shares my work with lazier contributors.

pixo · « **Reply #17 on:** January 21, 2016, 11:24 »

I have mentioned akiwi before. But we have recently released a new version of our semi-automatic keywording tool: http://www.akiwi.eu/

Usually only a few clicks are needed to get a good starting set of keywords for an unknown image.

samards · « **Reply #18 on:** January 22, 2016, 04:28 »

Well, I've made my own open source software for tagging the pictures - in java, so I can tag on every platform (microsoft, linux, etc), at any time

so it made my life a lot lot easier, I don't have to do it right after I'm already exhausted from postprocessing...

Mantis · « **Reply #19 on:** January 22, 2016, 09:03 »

Quote from: pixo on January 21, 2016, 11:24

I have mentioned akiwi before. But we have recently released a new version of our semi-automatic keywording tool: http://www.akiwi.eu/

Usually only a few clicks are needed to get a good starting set of keywords for an unknown image.

That's a nice little tool. Great job!

cflorinc · « **Reply #20 on:** January 22, 2016, 09:42 »

I just released a few minutes ago the android app for tagging and uploading. I made a test myself and managed to add a title, description and 50 relevand and good selling pictures in 1 minute and 35 seconds.
Submission to 8 agencies in less than 2 minutes? Hell yeah! The picture is automatically uploaded to SS, FTL, DST, 123RF major agencies but every agency that supports ftp will be added soon. You can download it from here. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app.pixendr
Please help me with a good rating to keep this app for free. There might be some crashes from time to time but I am working on it. Have fun uploading. I do!

dino · « **Reply #21 on:** March 08, 2016, 04:08 »

I would rather see something like this for desktop/browser. I think people here don't take photos with their mobile phones. Or something that you can pull your photos from your dropbox and push them over to agencies.

theendup · « **Reply #22 on:** March 08, 2016, 04:56 »

I use "suggest keywords" option on shutterstock and copy-paste keywords to other sites. But selecting the meanings of the keywords on istock takes so much time and really annoys me.

sgoodwin4813 · « **Reply #23 on:** March 08, 2016, 09:43 »

I hate keywording, but do learn a lot during the process. I use Wikipedia a lot to get information about places and species.

So far nobody has mentioned the MSG keywording tool Leaf made (http://microstockgroup.com/tools/keyword.php). It's free, fast and works great.

wordplanet · « **Reply #24 on:** March 08, 2016, 15:01 »

I find the process can be tedious, but since I do a lot of travel and nature photography, I learn a lot when I'm keywording and I enjoy that aspect, though my natural curiosity means I spend a lot more time than I need to - often getting lost in the history of someplace and learning far more than I need for keywording.

I have some lovely botanical and bird books, but mostly do my research online and have a ton of sites bookmarked for various kinds of images. I'm also a freelance writer, so I enjoy the research aspect.

Arranging them in order for FT and differently for Alamy and cutting down from 50 to 30 for some sites, is a PITA and obviously the part that even those of us who may enjoy the research hate. If I have large numbers of images with similar keywords, after I keyword in LR I sometimes make a document in Pages so I can rearrange the words and get a word count, then work from there after upload. That is boring and tedious but with a small port my RPI is high, so I know it's important and I've always felt that good keywording helped my sales.

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Author Topic: Do you enjoy adding meta data? (Read 15886 times)

Mogwai

60D

Mogwai

hartlet12

Niakris

Dumc

PZF

Lana

Mantis

noodle

jamiehooper

Mantis

Tror

zorba

Hongover

PixelBytes

ravens

pixo

samards

Mantis

cflorinc

dino

theendup

sgoodwin4813

wordplanet

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