Category: Keywording / Metadata
News
SAA and ASMP receive Preserving Creative America initiative award from Library of Congress
The Stock Artist Alliance and American Society of Media Photographers have been selected among eight partnerships awarded for preserving digital media by the U.S. Library of Congress. The partnerships are each awarded to address different aspects of preservation, to help ensure the survival of digital media. The SAA has been recognized previously for the publication of its "Metadata Manifesto" in 2006 and the award be used to develop online resources and professional seminars to promote the importance of metadata for the long-term usability of digital photographs. The ASMP will use its award to expand and promote the Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines, with recommendations for refined production workflows, archiving methods and best practices based on image use and capture methods.
News
Masterfile launches ‘People’s Choice’ search refinement
It seems that the battle to improve search results is a constant struggle for any business with a significant amount of content and stock licensing companies have been trying for years to enhance the basic search techniques which rely solely on metadata to return an intuitive search result. To that end, The Toronto based Stock Agency Masterfile has announced the addition of a new search feature called ‘People’s Choice’ that takes into consideration the compiled actions performed by the sites users. The company states that it has been storing data on user activity for several years and is finally able to release the new feature which functions primarily as a means for the user to refine their search results based on over-all popularity. In addition the company also allows the user to refine their results by the ‘Editor’s Choice’ which brings images flagged by the company’s editors to the forefront.
News
iStockphoto adds consumer video formats and additional languages
The leading microstock site, iStockphoto, Is now converting its video content to include the .wmv and .mp4 video formats to make the content easier to use without manipulation. The company has also added localized sites in Japanese, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Polish and Russian, making the Getty-owned microstock site fully searchable in 12 languages.
News
Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines 2.0
The Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines (UPDIG) has released updated guidelines for digital imaging. The release includes an executive summary with 12 concise guidelines and a Complete Guide for those looking for more detail. The guidelines were produced primarily from the photographer’s perspective but UPDIG has labored to incorporate the concerns of all users of Digital imaging to make the guidelines useful for anyone involved with digital imaging.
News
Researchers teach computers to keyword images
Researchers at Penn State University are claiming to have made a major breakthrough that could impact search engines that rely on keywording or tagging to identify images. The researchers have "taught" computers how to interpret images using a vocabulary of up to 330 English words, so that a computer can describe a photograph of two polo players, for instance, as "sport," "people," "horse," "polo."
News
OnAsia Digital keywording Britain’s National Trust Photo Library
Bangkok Thailand based OnAsia Digital has announced a contract to begin keywording the image collection of Britain’s National Trust. OnAsia Digital had completed a similar assignment for the UK’s National Gallery in 2005. The company launched its keywording service four years ago based on its own proprietary metadata management technology including a thesaurus of more than 30,000 terms. OnAsia Digital boasts that it has keyworded over 200,000 images and has stated plans to release a desktop version of its keywording technology before the end of 2006.
News
PACA releases metadata standards
The President of the Picture Archive Council of America (PACA), Roger Ressmeyer, has published a letter to its membership concerning Metadata Standards. The new metadata standards, if they are widely accepted, would aid anyone involved in stock image licensing (Stock Photography Agencies, Photographers, Art Buyers, Etc...), to manage their image licensing activities more efficiently. In addition PACA hopes the new standards would prove beneficial for those who wish to submit their work to any of the anticipated global image registries intended to protect the copyright owner in the event that Orphan Works legislation is enacted. Ressmeyer’s letter, in its entirety, follows:
Features
Meditations on keywording
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.
News
Keyword Mania at Corbis
Corbis is doing an exciting new promotion tied to a keyword game on their site where you look at a set of images and try to guess the common keyword for the set. This game is a pleasant diversion, however, Corbis has turned this game into a promotion where those who answer with the correct keyword are entered in a drawing for a 60 GB iPod Photo
Click here to play the game
Pro.Corbis.com
Features
A Picture Is Worth 1000 Keywords
In the past few years I have noticed a trend among many
photographers and smaller stock agencies to outsource keywording. This brings
us to the fundamental question - How important is keywording? My experience is
that proper keywording is perhaps one of the most important things that can
affect the revenue potential of an image. This is because the primary way for a
potential buyer to see your images is through an online service which typically
uses keywords to determine which images appear in a search. That means that it
is very important that keywording is done by a competent professional with an
understanding of what keywords should be applied to an image. If you don’t know
for sure how to do this you may consider using one of the following outsourced
solutions.
