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Messages - Freezingpictures
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176
« on: May 01, 2009, 01:32 »
The first one is by far not as nice as the second one.
The first one is older than the second one.
The first one has ZERO downloads, the second over 100.
This shows, that the search is not working properly. I assume it is because some kind of magic combination of keywords, in addition to the keywords beach and woman.
Unless quality is assigned at review time, this is something a search tool can not see. Older with no sales MAY or MAY NOT be more relevant than one with lots of sales - I agree that sales/views must have a weight, but not a very high weight, otherwise new images will in general fall way behind in a search.
I think Racephoto is right about relevance also being related to proximity, it makes sense. The first image is in fact a woman at the beach. The second (beautiful image by cdwheatley, btw) is more a beach scenery with a woman. Not that this isn't what a buyer typing "woman beach" may be looking for.
Madelaide, the difference simply is that in the first one the woman is more prominent in the image and in the second one the beach is more prominent. I am pretty sure that the buyer prefers the second one, no doubt about that. And I am pretty sure beach woman is the keyword under which the second one has got most of its dls, while the first one got ZERO dls. As I said new images deserve a chance to show up in the front, I am all for it. When it shows up in the front the quality can be measured, and the image can proove that it is exactly what buyers are searching for (Quality measure views and dls). But if there is no interest it should move back. Maybe the rest of the keywords of the first image are more related to "beach woman" and maybe the amount of keywords and proximity counts. But I do not think that DT's search engine can do a perfect job with this and than add to this that there is not one perfect keyworder that people keyword very differently, this cannot work right. Both images should have the same ranking from their keywords, they should have the same positioning, at least pretty closely. The other keywords should not matter so much as they currently do. Now put into addition to that the interest of buyers for the image and how old it is. Clearly the second one should win and should have moved far ahead in ranking before the first one. Seeing how old that first image is and never has been bought, it should have moved much further back, clearly there is no interest in this image for buyers, so what is it then doing so high up in the search? Dreamstime's concern should be to show the buyer what he or she is searching for. While the images are now doubt relevant to the search term (In fact most times highly relevant), very often the images are NOT relevant for the buyer in terms of what he is actually searching for. What the buyer is search for is GOOD QUALITY IMAGES relevant to the keywords and sadly that is often not what he is getting at DT, at least not in the amount he should be. I honestly wish Dreamstime would catch up to iStockphoto. Commission is by far better. But if I would be a buyer and compare this two agencies and do a few sample searches, I would clearly decide for iStockphoto. iStockphoto's stepped far ahead of every other agency due to its new search engine. I really really want Dreamstime to succeed. I do believe we all would benefit from it in the long run. And of course there always will be people hurt and complain if search engine changes. But if you produce qualtity images you should not worry about a search engine which is a bit stronger on quality, and DT's leadership should stand up towards quality and bring this message to buyers and contributors alike. Currently Dreamstime sacrifices quality for keyword relevancy. The buyer wants quality relevant to keywords and this is lacking at DT.
177
« on: April 29, 2009, 11:35 »
Nonetheless, let us know your thoughts, again this is a permanent improvement process.
For heavens sake, don't change it Achilles! I got a great month at DT with no uploads, while SS broke down, with no uploads. There is a great mix now of old and new shots downloaded from DT. New contributors should get downloads too, if they have the patience to wait 2-3 months.
What might have helped is I slowly start to re-keyword, re-title and re-caption my older port at DT. Relevancy is obviously deduced from repeat keywords in title and caption, so everybody should pay attention to the titling. Fancy titles, like "Look here!" serve no purpose.
@Freezing: The similars are gone mostly, and it's ok there are shots with 0 downloads on the front page. Everybody deserves a chance. An eductated buyer can still decide to change the search preference to "downloads", which reflects a Darwinian principle of survival of the best, as defined by the buyer.
Yes maybe everybody deserves a chance, but if you look at the images which are up front you will notice that some are relatively old and have 0 dls and are low quality. Beach woman is again a prime example. BTW many similars. The similars happen, because they have exactly the same keywords. DT search relevancy is much too strong on keywords over every other factor, like dls, views etc.. I am not saying an image can be up front when it has 0 dls, I am saying it can get a chance, a short time, if it does not get downloaded it should go down in the search. Look, an example are these two images. Both have beach and woman in keywords, title, description. This one: http://www.dreamstime.com/woman-on-the-beach-image4565219is ahead in search of this one: http://www.dreamstime.com/woman-on-beach-image6429099The first one is by far not as nice as the second one. The first one is older than the second one. The first one has ZERO downloads, the second over 100. This shows, that the search is not working properly. I assume it is because some kind of magic combination of keywords, in addition to the keywords beach and woman.
178
« on: April 29, 2009, 09:05 »
Serban, thank you for taking the time for answering!
I did some more searches as you suggested and you are right you do have some very relevant searches. It seems the majority are relevant apart from a few exceptions if you use more than just one keyword. Still, quality is lacking I would say. While I agree, new images must have a chance to be found I think it is a bit exaggerated at DT, because you can find too much of low quality images with 0 dls on the first page. Maybe the time they could be found on the first pages should be shortened by quite a bit so that if they do not get downloaded in a certain time period, they get moved back faster. In this way even new contributors will have a chance. Thanks for listening!
179
« on: April 29, 2009, 02:23 »
It's true, for the relevancy sorting, there are many similars or images with lower quality, it's what we try to improve now and the latest tests show a great improvement (they would be online in a few days from now though).
Any update on the search engine? The default search is still "very low quality" compared to e.g. iStockphoto and now in addition also less relevant. It is more than two weeks ago since you said that there would be great improvement in a few days from now. I understand, if there were complications, I am just curious what the status is. Thanks!
180
« on: April 28, 2009, 09:16 »
Why don't you get the Elemtents version? Its much cheaper and can do a lot.
181
« on: April 28, 2009, 02:25 »
Here in Europe we have a student version and a student version for commercial use, which is slightly more expensive than the normal student version but still far under the original price.
182
« on: April 28, 2009, 01:56 »
m@m, I am totally with you about selling chickens and vacuum cleaners on this site.
However a buy & sell section like on Fredmiranda, where you just sell/trade/buy photo equipment would be awesome and a valuable service to the MSG members. I do not think it would be "offtopic".
In fact I recently bought something from a member here and that that person was a longtime member here enabled me to trust him. It would be just an additional service MSG would offer. You can easily restrict the access to that section like for example only to full members, so that people who are new cannot post there or even do not see it until they are full members. The Fredmiranda system seems to work very well. If you hate to buy/sell/trade your gear on MSG I suggest to ignore that section, if Tyler decides to create it.
183
« on: April 24, 2009, 07:22 »
Agree that's a good idea. "Spam forum" keep it all in one place. With most of us in the same line of work a used equipment forum would be great. It would be nice to buy/sell/trade with credible folks than taking chances with craigslist/ebay. Anyone interested in a large format printer?? 
Don't throw stones its merely a test.
To have a buy/sell/trade section would be awesome. In fact I recently just bought something from a MSG member. But sorry no need for a printer But I am thinking of selling my Tokina 12-24... 
184
« on: April 24, 2009, 03:10 »
Just bought my 5D II as well, coming form a 30D  . Wow what a difference. When I press the shutter I can feel the difference when the heavy mirror and the shutter moves. The colors are better the depth of field is smaller. I have the feeling it also focuses better. The viewfinder is huge compared to the 30D. You finally can inspect your file for sharpness. The high iso setting with the comparatively low noise is also amazing. But yes, 25 MB raw file size is a drawback. I need to buy a new hard disc (fortunately they are becoming cheaper and cheaper) and maybe also a few new CF cards. I filled up a 4 GB card with just 120 files.
185
« on: April 23, 2009, 01:37 »
Had yesterday the day with most downloads since December. If that trend continues I am happy What I also discovered is that I have a much wider variety of images being downloaded, which I believe is a good thing, even if some bestsellers suffer from it.
186
« on: April 21, 2009, 12:46 »
Don't forget we had easter and many were on spring vacation, so no wonder there is a lot of red.
187
« on: April 19, 2009, 06:08 »
What worries me in any sites search is when on first two pages, you get loads of similar shots or series and when you check it out, they all got zero or maybe one DL.
Thats occupying important space.
Thats true. I just tried "animal". You would not believe DT is one of the leading microstock agencies looking at the results. Its not even a very relevant search. Compare that with the iS search. Seems that iS now has not only much better images but also much more relevant images on the first pages. However after a short break sales are back for me, so I cannot complain about that, but I still hope DT will at one time be able to rival iStocks search engine for the sake of us independents and the future of DT itself.
188
« on: April 17, 2009, 08:05 »
Not yet
189
« on: April 17, 2009, 04:10 »
It was not my best day, not even of this week, but still pretty good. If this is now the average of a business day of a week, then I guess I am happy for now.
190
« on: April 15, 2009, 19:19 »
I understand what you are saying and in fact I have those sales from boderline keywords at DT as well, but far more seldom <5% it seems. But if you consider a keyword irrelevant it is spam. You probably mean more borderline keywords, which are maybe not spam but not the most relevant.
However you have to account that other contributors have the same drawback. So it should theoretically not diminish your sales. Those who will loose out are the ones who spam. And if it makes the buyers more happy it should be the way to go. I occasionally buy images as well and I can tell you I am so much more happy with iS new search.
191
« on: April 15, 2009, 19:04 »
OK, I will write here few examples:
My image of crescent moon was bought with keyword "fantasy"
My image of grapes in a basket was bought with word "mediterrannean wine"
My image of seals was bought with word "galapagos"
The image of adult male goose was bought with word "gosling"
The image of boy spreading his hands in the forest was bought with word "lungs"
The image of turkish shoes was bought with word "islam"
The image of shooting star was bought with word "stella" (italian word for star)
The image of a butterfly standing on a grass was bought with words "butterfly flight"
etc...
So, obviously buyers use strange terms to find certain images, and after that they buy them. In the same time, I am sure IS would reject all those images if I use these words as keywords. Am I right?
And what are then the most relevant keywords if buyers use these words to buy these images??
You will always have buyers who search for something totally different or which remotely familiar and still buys the images. The reasons are: They just like your image or they did not found anything better. For the buyer it is much much better if the search is actually more relevant. For example when most buyers search for Islam they would buy a different image than your shoe image. Of that I am sure. So which images should show up further in the search? Of course those which are more relevant for Islam. Your images should rank high for Turkish shoes, because thats what they are. And when a buyer types in Turkish shoes I think one can assume he is actually searching for those.
192
« on: April 15, 2009, 18:28 »
This is by far the best system I have seen so far. As far as I know it sorts according to what buyers bought or viewed in the past, after typing in his keyword. So this is the most relevant search you can get for the buyer. Even if my sales will go down, I cannot complain, because this is so much more beneficial for the buyer. So while I do not know how it will turn out for me iStock turned in the right direction, namely what the buyer wants.
Now the other agencies really have to make some steps forward to compete with their searches.
194
« on: April 14, 2009, 05:12 »
Hi Beate, I am sure you have some interesting stuff to share but in the day and age of free podcast and vodcasts I am not sure how successful your idea is.
Why not try this direction of free stuff through itunes and get some sponsers. Examples are this week in photography, photoshop tv, pro photo show etc.
195
« on: April 13, 2009, 17:00 »
I know you did not ask about this, but if you do not need a zoom, I highly recommend the 200 2.8 prime. It's not very expensive and is not very heavy and beats any 70- 200 zooms in quality. It is similar build as the legendary 135 L, just a tad longer.
196
« on: April 11, 2009, 06:23 »
For my last payment, which I received yesterday or a day before yesterday I had to wait ~9 days.
197
« on: April 10, 2009, 02:52 »
Freezingpictures & Sharplydone, you missed my point. I was referring to the one-slot-only type of results, which would restrict your results even more. Meaning it would be worse than what you see now. I've chosen your portfolios because you are more focused than others, not because of performance in search.
The performance within the search results is a whole different discussion. First, one needs to have the right keywords and the correct metadata (and of course "right" keywords is a matter of personal taste). Second, the search algorithm is by far the best in the industry imho, but still far from being perfect. With this test we try to balance things for everyone, avoiding issues like similarity, or favoring just the old vs favoring just the new contributors.
As for the relevancy: "beach woman" should produce results of a single woman on a beach. Not families nor couples.
Try to search once more and see how many single woman on a beach you see in our results vs. others. Then compare the percentages. Feel free to sort by downloads with us and you will see much better looking images, with way less relevancy.
It's true, for the relevancy sorting, there are many similars or images with lower quality, it's what we try to improve now and the latest tests show a great improvement (they would be online in a few days from now though).
If you mean theoretical restrict then yes, I get your point. And I am happy that your agency does not have this policy. Yes true and I do think DT has the most relevant search. However while other agencies might not be as relevant they do have a much better search result based on quality and popularity. In my experience most buyers stick to the default search. If buyers would use all features of Dreamstimes search it would be no problem I guess. But they seem not to use them. I believe the first impression is very very important, and while Dreamstime's search is relevant the impression of quality is not very good I must say. But as you say you plan a change in search, so I am looking forward to how it will be and hope
198
« on: April 10, 2009, 02:31 »
Same boat here under "beach woman" search, I think I get first hit on page 3, kinda depressing.
matter of fact, most of the best beach shooters are missing from that search.
Another great example, I just checked "beach woman" on the other big 4 agencies. As a buyer just looking at the default search, Dreamstime would by far be the last place I would sign up.
199
« on: April 10, 2009, 02:24 »
Freez, there is something in the search tool that sometimes give the distorted results mentioned before. In some cases results are very balanced, in others they aren't. DT management knows how the search tool works, so maybe they can make it give a more balanced result everytime.
Let me add that I find DT gives the more relevant results - that's fundamental. I am only suggesting sorting images in a way that they may show more variety.
True its more relevant, but at the same time much more "crappy", especially if get down to searches which are more specific than lets say like business and (..I wanted say nature until I checked the search). The problem with DT's search is that those who manage to get a specific keyword as often as possibile in title, keywords and description will get his image show up on the first page for that keyword, nor matter how the quality is. So of course those who know this and want their images show up on the first pages take a relevant keyword. But contrary to other agencies the quality and/or buyers popularity factor in this search is very very weak. You get the impression that Dreamstime has not as good a library as other agencies if you compare them on the default search. Of course thats not true, but thats the first impression of the buyer. You do not even get the feedback of these buyers, because they simply never sign up. As with the case of Sharply my images as well are much better placed in every other agency of the big Five. And I do not remember a time when DT ever was better than the fourth place in earnings although I do believe they have the potential to be better. I like Dreamstime, and will continue to submit there, but I do think they have a lot of work to do to catch up with other agencies with their search engine.
200
« on: April 09, 2009, 17:13 »
Achilles,
The problem is that I can have two excellent penguin shots, correctly keyworded, but they will for some reason appear in page 10 of the results, where a buyer may never go. Of course Freez's 1000+ penguin images shall have a very good exposure, but things should be more balanced, IMHO. Check the "female doctor" example I gave, with 19 of the 20 first results not just by the same photographer, but from the same series.
Well I wish I had 1000+ penguins  Currently I could care less about a slot system on Dreamstime it would not make a difference anyway, check it out. Search for penguin and tell me how you like the search result. Its not about my images. There are of course other contributors with nice penguin images .Look at the general result of the penguin search. The search result could be much better, without a single of my images on the frontpages.
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