Taking Stock – Part 2

Keywording

by Angie Sharp LRPS

If you are thinking of selling your images via an online picture library or agency then one of your most important decisions will be which keywords to attach to each image. You may have some amazing pictures on offer but without the right keywords they will never even be seen by potential picture buyers – so it’s well worth investing the time and effort.

There are three areas where you can enter information about the picture –Caption, Keywords and Description - all of which can be accessed through imaging software such as Adobe Photoshop. Some libraries also offer facilities to enter the information via their website, but I would strongly recommend attaching details to the images before submitting so you don’t have to repeat the exercise if you end up submitting the same images to multiple libraries.

• The Caption field should contain a brief summary of what the image is – think of this as a title.
• The Keywords field is where you will include a number of words or phrases to define the image.
• The Description field is used for entering further descriptive information about a particular image if appropriate.

See the following examples of how I have annotated two separate images below:-

Caption - Taxi and bus in Westover Road, Bournemouth, Dorset, England, UK Keywords - yellow taxi bus Bournemouth transport travel town car city Dorset British England English UK GB Britain resort United Kingdom vehicles cab street transportation urban service buildings journey visit ride cityscape townscape Description – blank

Caption - Wollemia nobilis, Wollemi Pine Keywords - Wollemi Pine Wollemia nobilis Araucariaceae old oldest rare rarest rarity woody plant survival Araucariaceae family tree conifer forest dark green foliage protected endangered species ancient fossil jurassic prehistoric cones horticulture Description - Discovered in Wollemi National Park, Sydney, Australia 1994 by David Noble. One of the world's oldest and rarest trees. Grows up to 40 metres high. Some are over 1000 years old. Less than 100 trees now exist in the wild. Oldest known fossil dates back 90 million years, it is believed the pines may have existed 200 million years ago.

Here are a few guidelines about how to choose your keywords:-

• Start by being specific and literal, listing out the objects you can see, e.g. “car”, “beach”, “baby”.
• Try to answer the questions Who? What? Where? When? How?
• When you have covered the obvious, look for more general options – such as attributes (large, blue), interaction (talking), concepts (time), techniques (macro, soft focus), numbers (three), shapes (round).
• Try to think broadly and outside the box.
• Always make sure your keywords are relevant (some libraries will penalise you if you use irrelevant keywords).
• Avoid repetition (known as “spamming”).
• Check for correct spelling.
• Use variations such as synonyms, plurals, US spellings (and foreign spellings if the image was taken in a foreign country), e.g. colour/color, mouse/mice.
• Be aware, however, that some libraries regard “stemming” (plurals and variations) as spamming and may penalise you!

It is important that you understand your library’s requirements and usage of keywords, so always read through their guidelines carefully. For example, one library may require keywords to be separated by commas, another may request spaces between each. You will also need to be aware of their field limits (i.e. the number of characters you can enter).

If you feel the task of adding your own keywords is too onerous another option is to pay a specialist to do it for you. There are more and more companies offering this service now but I have never tried them so cant vouch for whether they are any good or not. One of my concerns would be “how could they know where my images were taken?”.

If you do decide to do it yourself there are many software packages that allow you to attach keywords to your images. You may find the following links usefule:-

Adobe Bridge:- http://blog.epicedits.com/2008/05/03/your-guide-to-adobe-bridge-useful-tips-and-tricks/

Photoshop Elements 6:- http://thephotofinishes.com/adpsel6.htm (See “Classifying your photos”)

Angie Sharp LRPS, Sharp Photographs www.sharp-photographs.co.uk