daniel linnet, Photography, Color image, Horizontal, Indoors, Portrait, Torso, Head and Shoulders, One Person, 24 - 35 years, front view, One Bushman, Single Shearer, Farmer, Shearers, Old Polo Shirt, Clippers, Shearing Shed, outback australia, rural, Hand on Hip, Rural Scene, agriculture, Cowra, Wool
I hate keywording my images! In fact, one of the main reasons I haven’t been a regular contributor to an image library all these years is the amount of time it takes to consistently and accurately describe each image in a manner that would make it easily searchable to potential image buyers. Yes, believe it or not, acurate keywording is indeed an art form, all be it a time consuming one.
If at any time now, or in the future you might be looking at having a crack at earning a few extra dollars from the stock photo market, brushing up on those descriptive terms might be a good idea.
Here are a few links to point you in the right direction.
Liisa Kaakinen is a keyword trainer and cosultant who has a really cool Keyword Test on her site, keywordtrainer.com. It’s a great way to get a start on how to properly keyword your images.
Alternately, if you’re not up for the challenge and need a touch of extra assistance, Imense Annotator can help you out for US$145 p/year.
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1. What is good keywording? – In order for images to be found, sold and used they should be easy to retrieve and logically accessible from as many needs and perspectives as possible. Good keywording characterizes broad as well as specific descriptions of the image without being speculative or too detailed.
2. What is a good caption? – For commercial and creative imagery captions should be concise, literal and accurate. Concentrate on the main message and elements and avoid describing the entire contents. For editorial images captions can be longer; the classic rule of thumb for journalistic images is ‘Who, What, Why, When, Where and How’. Captions for fine art images normally include the name of the artist, work title, year of creation and material.
Reproduced from the Imense Anotator site.
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To access the image Metadata just open the file in any image editor or RAW converter and head staright for the properties, info or metadata tabs. Here are a few links to help out.
“Working with Metadata in Lightroom” – Martin Evening
“Editing Metadata – Adobe Bridge”
“Modifying Metadata & Keywording in CS4″ – Chris Orwig
“Photoshop CS – use Metadata to identify images” – PC Today
“How to Edit Metadata in Aperture 2″ – Video
EXIF, IPTC, XMP Software – Metadata Readers, Editors, Extraction Tools
Feel free to add your useful links as comments to any of our posts.
Happy annotating!
Daniel Linnet
