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Meditations on keywording

By Chris Ferrone February 09, 2006

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Many photographers long for the good old days when they shot on film.  Once they had done their real work and the shoot was over, all they had to do was put a short caption on a sticker on the slide mount for submission to their agency.  Some clients long for those days, too, when they could call a stock agency and rely on the researcher’s in-depth knowledge of the agency’s files to find just the right image.  The world of digital stock photography exemplifies how technology designed to make life simpler has, in some ways, made it much more complicated.  The “on-line” stock photo industry has pushed much of the responsibility for keywording onto the photographers.  It has also pushed much of the responsibility for image research onto the clients.

Keywording has arguably become the most essential part of licensing images on-line, after image quality.  Poor keywording can either cause picture researchers to never see that just-right image, or to see so many wrong images that they never return to the offending web-site. Yvan Cohen, of OnAsia Digital Services, points out the direct relationship between good keywording and revenue; “High quality keywording enables users to retrieve the image they want from a huge database of images. Accurate search results save time, improve the user experience and ultimately create more opportunities for sales."

While most agree that one can’t exaggerate the importance of good keywording in the business of marketing images, not everyone agrees on how to go about it. Paul Henning, of Keywords-To-Go describes the object of the game as “anticipating the majority of ways a client would describe an image.”  The team at Keywords-To-Go accomplishes this by seeking, as Paul puts it, “all the relevant keywords and none of the irrelevant keywords” that might apply to an image.  In using “all the relevant keywords,” he means use all singulars and plurals that might apply (a researcher might use the keyword “flowers” even though what he or she wants is an image of one single blossom) as well as similar words with the same meaning, such as bicycle and bike.  The “irrelevant” words will only frustrate the client by bringing up images that have no real bearing on the subject the client seeks.  (e.g., Yes, if one looks closely one can see that the people in the image of office workers are wearing socks, but this is hardly an image of socks and, therefore, the keyword “socks” doesn’t help.)

When applying this approach to keywording, the notion of a minimum or maximum number of keywords per image serves no purpose.  Rohn Engh of Photo Source International, however, goes so far as to suggest including misspellings of keywords on the theory that the spelling ability of art-buyers, like the rest of the world, will continue to decline thanks to spell-check features, much the way our ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide has deteriorated thanks to hand-held calculators.  OnAsia Digital takes the matter of misspelling so seriously they have included incorrectly spelled words in their recently updated keywording thesaurus.  Their proprietary system’s 20,000 terms cover synonyms, alternate forms and misspellings.

Several companies provide keywording services in various forms.  Some have staff who personally keyword images, others sell software that purports to do the keywording almost automatically.  Experts agree, a combination of “human touch” and good keywording software works best.  Alaxander Zane of A2Z Keywording points out that good keywording software will guarantee consistency.  While one person may use the keyword “couch” and another may use “sofa,” a good thesaurus software will apply both words to the image.  On the other hand, if left entirely to software, one might miss subtle but important keywords, especially conceptual keywords. (For example “independence” when applied to an image of a toddler taking tentative first steps across the carpet.)


We at abouttheimage thought a list of those businesses that offer keywording services might help our readers looking for assistance with this vital task.  If you seek assistance with keywording your images, we recommend you check out the web-sites of each of these keyword service providers.  You’ll learn a lot about keywording in general, and a lot about how each company approaches the task of keywording, which will help you decide which might work best for you.

Keywording Services (in alphabetical order):

A2Zkeywording:    www.a2zkeywording.com
Based in Tivoli, New York, A2Z uses a combination of their own in-house software as well as their own experienced keyworders.  Prices range from $2.75 to $3.50 per image, depending on volume.  A2Z also sells their thesaurus software for $299 plus $52 for one year of support.

Adnet Infosystems:     www.adnetinfosystems.com
With operations in Mumbai, India, this company provides affordable keywording and many other technical services to the stock photo industry.

JaincoTech:        www.jaincotech.com
A service provider for all technical aspects of the stock photo industry, Jainco has offices in Ohio and India.  Jainco charges $0.75 to $1.50 depending on quantity and turn-around time required.  They also offer keywords in French and Spanish and hope to add German and Japanese in the near future.

KeywordCompiler:    www.keywordcompiler.com
This NYC-based company provides a free basic version of their keywording software, called KeywordCompiler.  Users can purchase more robust versions of the software, with more sophisticated features: $99 for single user licenses and up to $999 for multi-seat licenses.  The company also provides keywording services for $2.00 per image ($1.50 per image for batches of over 5,000 images.)

Keywording.com:     www.keywording.com
A keywording service with offices in Portland, Oregon and County Kerry, Ireland.  Charges approximately $3.00 per image depending on quantity and depth of keywording required.

Keywords-To-Go:      www.keywords-to-go.com   
Part of StockAnswers, a stock photo consulting firm managed by industry veteran, Paul Henning.  Charges $3.00 to $4.50 per image, depending on quantity. The Keywords-To-Go homepage has an excellent overview of importance of kewording.

OnAsia Digital Services:   www.onasiadigital.com
A service provider for all technical aspects of the stock photo industry, OnAsia operates out of Bangkok, Thailand.  Prices for keywording begin at US$1.50 per image and are negotiable for high volume orders.  They plan to offer keywords in French by the end of 2006.  They will also offer their keywording software package for licensing later this year.

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