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Improved annotation tools and syntax

Permalink Comments (39)15 August 2008 at 16:11 by Alan Capel - Head of Content
Posted under News

Many contributors are quite rightly asking where the new annotation tools are. Specifically the need for bulk tools is becoming more and more critical. We wanted you to know that we have a working prototype in development.

Screenshot 1 of prototype batch tools
Screenshot of prototype batch tools
Click to see large screenshot (150Kb)

I absolutely sympathise with contributors who feel that the current tools are not up to scratch. Many of us in the Content team have gone through the pain of keywording and it is clear the current set up is inadequate.

The new tools will enable you to work on multiple images at the same time.

Screen shot 2 of prototype batch tools
Screen shot of prototype batch tools
Click to see large screenshot (115Kb)

Our recent announcement about stemming has also raised questions about the additional annotation options such as " " and []. We can confirm that we will be implementing this work and that the removal of the 'do not stem' ^ syntax is an isolated case.

No firm time frames at present as these developments are running alongside a number of other projects.

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Add your own commentComments (39)

  1. 15 August 2008 at 16:35 BILL brooks

    Photographers need to have a Alamy metadata template that they can use offline on their own computers in Photoshop, Bridge, Lightroom, or Aperture to insert Alamy metadata into their original archive file before they submit that file to Alamy. Alamy could then access the Alamy information when they receive the file and photographers would only have to check that the info is correct in "Manage Your images". Photographers need to imbed the metadata in their own files not in Alamy's files so that photographers own the metadata. With so many good programs that already do this, isn't Alamy simply reinventing the wheel, when providing a simple metadata template would do the job?

  2. 15 August 2008 at 16:36 Tony Watson

    Thank you for keeping us in touch.

  3. 15 August 2008 at 16:37 Ilan

    Any time line for the introduction of this long awaited tool?

    Where I come from (previous life) a statement without a due date is not a statement it is a wish

  4. 15 August 2008 at 16:46 IanMurray

    For me this is excellent news and a nice little boost just before the weekend in a sales drought spell.

    Time for beer and barbie!

    Cheers Alamy



  5. 15 August 2008 at 17:16 Clive Rowley

    ..... Just Bring it On!

    Thanks, Alan. I can't believe the difference that this will make. I still have neary 3,500 to re-annotate and it will just be so much easier.

    The old system was more user friendly in that several images could be viewes and keyworded on the same screen, but one image per screen was/is purgatory.

    The template shown above looks good. Please may we have an early Christmas/All Souls/Michaelmas/Autumn present - then you will recieve the (hopefully early)Thanksgiving!

  6. 15 August 2008 at 17:26 flying dog

    The examples above are for Mozilla, as I don't have Godzilla, just Internet Explorer, hope that will work - if I can even work it out - copy and paste is my limit at the moment!

    BTW - thanks for the last sale, I can now have bread with my water ;-)

  7. 15 August 2008 at 18:27 Rabboud

    This is truly puzzling.

    Improving your search engine so that clients can have immediate, relevant results is not "cost-effective".

    What is the logic then in developing NEW tools to give contributors the ability to make mass changes to their images online?

    You are the operators of an unedited image library containing inventory in the MILLIONS with suppliers numbering in the THOUSANDS.

    You have ONE search engine.

    Which is easier to do in order to offer clients relevant search results:

    1. Improve the search engine; or

    2. Spend months developing new batch tools, wait months for your suppliers (contributors) to re-keyword their images, so they can add esses and all so that the efficacy of your search engine will be brought right back to what it was before you turned stemming off?

  8. 15 August 2008 at 19:16 Chris potter

    Good news....hopefully!

    Oh, Ian...I trust you are referring to a BBQ and not a small plastic doll? No chance of lighting charcoal here with the wind and rain...!!

  9. 15 August 2008 at 19:31 IanMurray

    Chris,

    The doll isn't plastic. Thankyou for asking!

    Rabboud - you are mixing and matching to make yourself grumpy.

    Ian Murray

  10. 15 August 2008 at 19:33 IanMurray

    Rabboud,

    The problem is the English language.

    Ian Murray

  11. 15 August 2008 at 19:34 Keith erskine

    Thanks for the update. Please ensure that whatever traspires is 1. SIMPLE and 2.EFFECTIVE.

    I too use Internet Explorer on a PC. I am old and have little patience!

    Keith Erskine

  12. 15 August 2008 at 19:41 Jaybee

    Thanks for this Alan.

    Glad to hear the "" and [] will eventually see the light of day.

    Great news on bulk changes - that will make life so much easier. Bring on the beta!

  13. 15 August 2008 at 21:13 David robertson

    Thanks Alan, that really is good news.
    I'm really pleased that the "" and [] annotations are to be implemented too.

    Can't wait!

  14. 15 August 2008 at 21:27 Rabboud

    IanMurray,

    "The problem is the English language."

    So what now, we switch to French and everything's fixed?

  15. 15 August 2008 at 21:30 Fabian gonzales

    Some ideas to consider when implementing batch keywording:

    * Search fields on top to quickly narrow images displayed by:

    - Date range
    - Caption
    - Location
    - Existing keywords
    - Pseudonym

    * Ability to select images in-place (e.g. via click-to-highlight or a checkbox) instead of having to drag-and-drop all over the place.

    * Edit fields at the bottom, with option to replace existing keywords, add new keywords, and delete keywords

    * Edit Fields for specifying MR, PR, number of people, pseudonym, etc.

  16. 15 August 2008 at 22:02 clickbrr

    I can't be the only overeducated photographer who doesn't know what the double asterisks and closed brackets actually mean. I know they are meant to cut down on anomalies like 'ski' and 'skies' but I think some of us need what we used to call a cog sheet or a translation or a new copy of an Enigma machine from Bletchley. Let me quote from Pope:-
    "Success let others teach, Learn thou from me, Pangs without birth, and fruitless industry" - from the Dunciad.

  17. 16 August 2008 at 00:15 IanMurray

    Rabboud,

    Try switching to 'brain in gear' mode.

    The problem is not the specific language itself.

    Why not stop writing shite?

    Ian Murray

  18. 16 August 2008 at 01:10 Wim wiskerke

    What will the new batch tool really do?


    I remain extremely skeptical.

    I still think it is both utterly stupid and ridiculous to go without stemming in this day and age.
    Stemming is good. Good stemming even better. Stemming is also easy. Stemming is one of the things a computer is really good at. Even with a whole thesaurus of exceptions. No problem: all a computer does all the time is comparing one thing to another.
    Stemming also greatly benefits the client.
    A lot of clients would not just appreciate it if they got the same results for colour/color or centre/center.
    (Yes I know AlamyStem was unable to do that. It used to do that in the beginning though. It just fell by the wayside.)
    Most people in the world use a spellchecker that will tell them colour; harbour and centre are wrong. Most will even never use these because their software will automatically change it for them.
    So I think clients rightfully expect AlamySearch to bring up all the *wrong* colour-keyed pictures if they request *fall colors US*. And even some British researchers would probably appreciate it if their *fall colours America* would not give them the British 3494 , but all the 7015 color-labeled ones as well.
    Therefore a good explanation of the current limitations of AlamySearch would be appropriate towards buyers. They are not just Alamy's clients, they are our clients as well.
    BTW peddling limitations as features only seems to work around Redmond.

    Talking about limitations: if Alamy does not want to, or is unable to take into account the opinions of their contributors, so be it.
    However the effect of drastic measures would be a lot more manageable for us if they were communicated in a timely manner. With a transition period in which both the old and new system remain valid.

    About the new batch tool; I would really like to know if we will be able to use it to re-key our collections with esses and conjugations and stopwords and numbers. What are the features? What will it really do?
    When will we see it live? Will it be worth the wait? And yes I think we do want to assess that ourselves.

    A comprehensive overview of the current keywording rules for ourselves is also long overdue.
    An honest overview please. In 1 place. With a timeline. What is expected to go live when. What was tried and failed. Like probably *word order* and *proximity*.
    Insight in real queries would be extremely useful for contributors too.

    I remember that here on this blog there were valuable suggestions in the thread *Search Engine suggestions welcome* and there are suggestions in the threads about stemming now.
    If you would use this blog more actively you might tap into some of the real knowledge and creativity that is out there among the 5,415 contributors.

  19. 16 August 2008 at 01:17 RAbboud

    IanMurray,

    "Why not stop writing shite? "

    That's how I trap and expose the human hemorrhoids -- they stick to it like, well, you know.

    Alamy does a lot of things right. I get a check every month as a testament to that. I think part of the value of a blog is being told when they are doing things wrong.

  20. 16 August 2008 at 08:50 Alex segre

    It would be really useful if this tool can bring up all your images which are keyworded, say, WOMAN and add to them the keyword FEMALE without changing anything else in the field.

    It's not clear from the illustrations above if it will do this.

  21. 16 August 2008 at 09:01 IanMurray

    Rabboud,

    It really is not 'truly puzzling'.

    What is so hard? :

    team A works on this

    team B works on that

    Annotation tools will help contributors tune their keywords to the search engine.

    You try and change the keywords at some other well known outlets and see how much joy you get. Alamy put everything in our own hands.

    Try and see the glass half full and try not to be so ridiculously simplistic.

    Why the constant complaining as a first reaction to anything?

  22. 16 August 2008 at 10:28 kevin

    I agree with comments

    # 1. Ability to imbed metadata offline with an Alamy template

    # 18. What are the batch tool features expected to do exactly? Target release date?

    # 20. Batch tool search facility enabling the ability to target and group images and then add keywords in batch mode. (being able to erase offending keywords in batch mode would also be good)

    I still don't understand though, Alamy's logic in breaking away from the international IPTC standard as virtually the same results could have been achieved in a much less invasive, time and work intensive manner.

    1. CAPTION - "ESSENTIAL KEYWORDS"
    The IPTC caption of a picture will generally have many of the most important keywords needed for a search, so giving the IPTC caption the same weighting as Alamy's "Essential keywords" would do exactly the same job as the introduction of Alamy's new "Essential keywords" field.

    2. KEYWORDS - "MAIN KEYWORDS"
    Using the IPTC keywords field for Alamy's "Main keywords" field, with the same weighting it's given now is simply using the IPTC keyword field as it was designed to be used.

    3. DESCRIPTION - "COMPREHENSIVE KEYWORDS"
    Turning off search engine recognition of the description field or giving it the weighting of Alamy's "comprehensive keywords" would have saved contributors a lot of work.

    Perhaps I'm just missing the point entirely though.

  23. 16 August 2008 at 14:37 wim wiskerke

    kevin,
    you make perfect sense.
    Not adhering to international industry standards is always expensive and counterproductive.
    It will always bite you in the long run.

    Unless you indeed *are* from Redmond or live on 1600 Penn.

  24. 16 August 2008 at 15:54 RAbboud

    IanMurray,

    "Why not stop writing shite?"

    "Try and see the glass half full"

    Certainly a manure connaisseur like yourself must hold up his glass every once in a while and ask what is it half full of?

    Alamy management has a background in IT. They have a dedicated team working on the search engine. If you click on ABOUT ALAMY on the bottom of any page you will learn just how much they rely on technology to solve problems.

    A stemmer is not rocket science. You have algorithms and free source code all over the internet. It is not prohibitively expensive to adapt them to differentiate between a sky and a ski -- in fact, some already do that. Give the code to any IT monkey and it is as easy as pie.

    The line about not being cost-effective to maintain a stemmer or improve it is bull and Alamy knows that. I am confident that they are capable of much better things and I think they are being lazy on the backs of their contributors. So, I'm here to give them a kick in the butt and get moving with some REAL improvements.

  25. 16 August 2008 at 17:18 IanMurray

    Rabboud,

    The difference between us appears to be that I trust what Alamy says and you don't. If I didn't trust them I wouldn't continue with them.

    I don't expect this beta tool to be perfect but I am excited by it. Used in conjucntion with Alamy Measures it will allow us to tweak our keywords and be proactive.

    I apologise for describing your words with the 's' word but it gets so wearisome reading these constant whinges.

    I am imagine that Alamy staff must get really cheesed off at how their hard work seems always to be greeted by the doom and gloom merchants.

    Yes, Alamy sends you and me a cheque each month. What about some thanks and a vote of confidence in them now and again.

    On another major site I had a picture of a girl flying a kite. They did the keywording and it didn't show up if I searched for 'girl flying kite' only if I entered 'girl fly kite'. It took weeks and several emails to correct that simple thing. Condsider how much better this sort of thing is with Alamy.

    Being told by you that they are lazy and need a kick in the butt is some reward!

  26. 17 August 2008 at 10:48 Stephen Power

    Thanks to Alan for the update on what looks like a very promising new development.

    Thanks to Ian and Rabboud for a good laugh on a miserable Sunday morning.

  27. 17 August 2008 at 10:50 Alan gallery

    I hope that the presets can be applied on a per pseudonym basis. I know that many contributers would find that helpful.

    Please tell me that there is a Editoral tick box/preset in the new annotation tools.

    I recognise that the main effort in developing Alamy is in improving the experence for buyers and improving sales. This is as it should be.

    Thanks for keeping us up to date and for all the work that the development teams are puting in.

  28. 17 August 2008 at 13:32 RAbboud

    IanMurray,

    "The difference between us appears to be that I trust what Alamy says and you don't. If I didn't trust them I wouldn't continue with them."

    The real difference between us is that you don't know what is involved in coding a search engine and I do.

    You can already make batch changes to your images on Alamy and tune your keywords to your heart's desire. The fact that you cannot get your head around using a simple tool like Excel is your problem, not Alamy's.

    "I am imagine that Alamy staff must get really cheesed off at how their hard work seems always to be greeted by the doom and gloom merchants."

    Ian, your reputation as the photo forum online antagonizer precedes you. I told them that it was a puzzling move to continue work on batch tools when they couldn't even get the search engine right. *THIS* makes me a "doom and gloom merchant"?

    "Yes, Alamy sends you and me a cheque each month. What about some thanks and a vote of confidence in them now and again."

    I already do that in private. I'll do it in public when they blog about something I'm thankful for.

    I'm sure that Alamy also notice that they get to keep 35% of what they send me every month. I'm quite certain that they appreciate that vote of confidence year after year.

    "On another major site I had a picture of a girl flying a kite. They did the keywording and it didn't show up if I searched for 'girl flying kite' only if I entered 'girl fly kite'. It took weeks and several emails to correct that simple thing. Condsider how much better this sort of thing is with Alamy."

    Are you being serious?

    THEY are doing the keywording. YOU tell them there is a problem. THEY fix the problem. And now it works.

    With Alamy:

    YOU are doing the keywording. THEY KNOW there is a problem. THEY tell YOU THEY are NOT GOING TO FIX IT. They tell us they are working on tools so that WE can fix it -- but they won't say when.

    On that same major site, if you enter "ski" you get a pageful of actual skis with an option to further clarify whether you want to see "ski (equipment)" or "skiing (winter sport)". You enter "sky" and you get a pageful of images incorporating a sky with no skis in sight.

  29. 17 August 2008 at 15:05 IanMurray

    Rubens,

    Obviously the sooner Alamy listen to Rubes Abboud the better for all of us.

    In the meantime I am looking forward to seeing how this new contributor tool works and repeat how pleased I am to read the news about its development.

    Thanks Alamy

  30. 17 August 2008 at 22:33 IanMurray

    For those who want to learn more about how to do it correctly Ruben Abboud's website is here:

    http://www.theimagenation.com/

    Enjoy

    Ian Murray

  31. 18 August 2008 at 01:24 Fabian gonzales

    Rubens, Ian,

    Can you both please take your arguments off-line? I don't see how this back-and-forth exchange is contributing anything to the bulk keywording discussion.

  32. 18 August 2008 at 10:50 IanMurray

    Absolutely correct Fabian. Huge apologies. Point well taken.

    Back to the topic. I hope that we will be able to allocate images to pseudos in batch mode. That would be a great convenience.

    Ian Murray

  33. 18 August 2008 at 11:07 Stephen power

    Cue Ruben...

  34. 18 August 2008 at 13:10 H freeman

    Can I just reiterate was said in post number one (above):

    "Photographers need to have a Alamy metadata template that they can use offline on their own computers in Photoshop, Bridge, Lightroom, or Aperture to insert Alamy metadata into their original archive file before they submit that file to Alamy".

    This is SO long overdue that many wonder what the hell Alamy IS doing. It takes, what, 30 mins to create the template....a little longer for Alamy to sort out the back-end parsing.

    What is the problem Alamy?

    - H

  35. 18 August 2008 at 14:51 Keith erskine

    Further to Kevin's comments, I firmly believe the the Description field should not be searched at all, as I use this for "background information" (Not key-words). Words and stems used here are frequently appearing in searches and adversely affecting my scores by finding inappropriate images.

  36. 18 August 2008 at 16:24 Tony Collins

    Before you get irrevocably committed to a system can I plead that some discussions are had with a group of critically minded contributors to identify any glitches or missed opportunities. Alamy cannot afford any more PR fiascos. On the face of it drag and drop looks to be unnecessarily laborious. Why not a simple checkbox/select all function?

    I would like a search function that permits exclusions also. For instance say I want to add "GB" to all my images keyworded "UK" Will I be able to exclude all those with GB already to avoid duplication?

  37. 21 August 2008 at 10:16 Mark baigent

    Thanks Alamy for the heads up..

    I strongly agree with "Photographers need to have a Alamy metadata template"

    I would like an "editorial only" button

    With a 1000 images still to re keyword the new system will be welcome.

    Mark

  38. 21 August 2008 at 20:32 Mark scheuern

    Well, that cheers me up. The update and sneak peek is much appreciated.

  39. 02 September 2008 at 11:06 Danx

    Very very very good!
    Compliments

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