Alamy stock photography - Manage images - Captions, keywords and descriptions

Captions, keywords and descriptions

You add captions, keywords and descriptions to your images so they can be indexed by our search engine and found by customers. By keywording accurately you can influence your AlamyRank as the accuracy and relevancy of the words you use to describe an image determines which search terms find it and which don’t. Your AlamyRank can suffer if you use irrelevant keywords.

Link to “Mange images” in “My Alamy”Annotating your images

Go to My Alamy.
Under “Organise images”, click “Manage images”.
Complete the fields next to each image.
Alternatively, you may wish to use IPTC headers in Photoshop.

“Manage images” screen shot showing annotation fields
Click to see large screen shot (102Kb)

Annotation fields and their significance to the search engine
Name	Explanation	Characters	Significance
Caption	A short factual description of the image used by customers to summarise its content.	128	Low
Essential keywords	The most important words and phrases for the image. Although you have 50 characters, try to limit yourself to just 35 - about 6 to 8 words only. To protect your intellectual property these are not visible on the website to others.	50	Very high
Main keywords	The next most appropriate words and phrases. To protect your intellectual property these are not visible on the website to others.	300	High
Comprehensive keywords	Any other words and phrases. Put all the remaining terms that apply, but which are not as significant as main or essential keywords.	856	Medium
Description	Explanatory or background text relevant to the image. More appropriate for historical, reportage and editorial images than for conceptual or commercial material.	2000	Low
Location	Put the location where the image was taken using the convention of street name, town, city, state, province, country. This information can make or lose a sale.	100	Low
Date taken	If you know the date taken please use this field, put the date the image was created not the date it was scanned or submitted. If you feel the date is of particular significance, for example “England winning the Football World Cup in 1966” then also put it in the Caption and Essential keyword fields depending on the date’s relevancy.	–	–

Keywording do’s

Only use spaces to separate keywords. There is no need to use commas as well as you will use up valuable character space.
Add words with the same meaning. If you add “mother”, also add “mum”.
Consider UK and US variations, so in the example above, add “mom”.
Check your spelling!
You can further enhance the accuracy of your keywording by using additional annotation options.
Describe your images in a methodical way when keywording:
- Literal - e.g. “boy, girl, children, beach, sun, sand, sky, car, shadow”.
- Attributes - e.g. “happy, smiling, walking, blue, young, old”.
- Location - be specific, e.g. “The White House, Washington DC, USA”; or generic, e.g. “office, school, home”.
- Interaction - e.g. “chasing, playing, moving, touching, shouting, flying”.
- Concepts - e.g. “heat, power, happiness, strength, humour, teamwork, tranquility etc”.
- Broad subjects - e.g. “lifestyle, travel, sport and business”.
- Techniques - e.g. “predominant colours or shapes, black and white, grainy, blurred, digital manipulation”.
To save time, copy and paste keywords between your own images.

Keywording don’ts

Do not steal another contributor’s keywords or we will remove all the keywords in your collection in accordance with Clause 10(k) of our Contributor Agreement.
Do not add irrelevant keywords to give your images greater exposure in search results as this will ultimately damage your AlamyRank.

IPTC headers

We import the IPTC metadata when we upload your images, but only extract the caption, description, keyword and date fields depending on which version of Photoshop you are using.

IPTC headers in Photoshop 6 & 7

The caption field corresponds with our caption field which is limited to 128 characters. If you add more than 128 characters in Photoshop we will transfer your data to our description field. You will then need to add a new caption.
The keyword field corresponds with our comprehensive keyword field. We limit the keyword field to 856 characters and we truncate any words over this amount.
In the IPTC keyword field add each word individually as there is a cut-off point of 32 characters (including spaces) beyond which Photoshop will truncate a list of keywords. Click Add after you’ve entered each keyword.

IPTC headers in Photoshop 8/CS

The description field corresponds with our caption field. We limit the caption field to 128 characters and any additional IPTC data overflows to our description field.
The keyword field corresponds with our comprehensive keywords field. We limit the compehensive keywords field to 856 characters and any additional IPTC data is truncated.
Separate your keywords with semicolons in Photoshop to ensure they transfer correctly.

Manage images