Get iStockphoto Keywords Tool

Last week, a buyer posted on the iStockphoto forums about the trouble he was having easily getting a list of keywords for an iStock download.

How could I easily get (copy through clipboard) keywords for bought images?

When I go to image detail, there is for example “Vector, Men, Child, Little Girls, Family, Illustration and Painting, Human Hand, Love, Human Hair, Blue, Red …more”, so I cannot copy all keywords easily. When I click “more”, the table with keywords is much more unfriendly for getting keywords.

I need these keywords for cataloguing my images.

So, apparently, this buyer downloads an image, and wants a keyword list to insert into the image in some form so that he can search his hard drive later for that image.  Makes sense.  However, with a recent re-design of the image details page, the keyword list comes up in a fairly uncopyable format.  You first need to pop up the keyword layer by hitting “more” and then if you try and copy and paste that list, it will be full of white space and have to be edited.

I had some spare time this week, so I scripted a little tool on my iStockTool page to return a list of keywords when given a list of iStock image numbers.  For example, entering 10855173 here: http://digitalplanetdesign.com/index.php?page=istocktools gives you this back:

Description: Royalty Free Stock Photo, Over the Shoulder Christmas Smile, copyright Sean Locke, iStockphoto LP
Keywords: Adults Only, Young Adult, Only Women, female1, Female, Women, Adult, People, Long Hair, Beauty, Beautiful, 20s, 30s, Caucasian, Studio Shot, Holiday, Cheerful, Smiling, Happiness, Red, Red Background, Defocused, Selective Focus, Focus On Foreground, Head And Shoulders, Hope, Dress, Copy Space, Shiny, One Woman Only, Toothy Smile, Christmas, Christmas Lights, Palm, Hands Cupped, Human Hand, Holding, Waist Up, Portrait, Looking Down, Christmas Present, Gift, Wrapped, Horizontal, Looking Over Shoulder, Rear View, stock images, royalty free images, stock photography, stock photos, inexpensive, istockphoto

It’s basically a php grab of the meta data in the html page, but could be very useful in a situation like this.  Note, that this list of meta data is the disambiguated keyword list.  ie., I had entered “blur” as a keyword, but this list includes the official controlled vocabulary keyword “defocused”.

Also note, if you have “Grease Monkey” for Firefox installed, user theasis offered this up:

you could install this script: http://www.theasis.co.uk/iStock/show_keywords.user.js

Hope you find this useful.  Have a good week!

Best Match 2.0 Awakens

Over at iStockphoto.com, ever since the Best Match sort algorthythm presented itself, we (the contributors) have been discussing the secret ingredients that make up the equation.  How does an image get presented on the front page of a search return?  Nary a week goes by without a debate on what is “best” when it comes to sorting results.

Now, the answer has arisen, and it’s name is “relevancy”.  Best Match 2.0 was announced back in December, but it has finally come to life with this announcement from Kelly Thompson yesterday:

After a long time in development and several months of internal testing, we’re happy to present our new default search sort: Best Match 2.0.

The algorithm takes many factors into account. One of these, keyword relevance, rates the importance of keywords in the files. Files can have up to 50 keywords, but normally only a few of those keywords describe the primary subject or concept.

We’re not quite sure of the magical mixture that determines a keyword’s relevancy for an image, but it does seem to work very nicely.  Even better, this attribute is adjustable.  Open up your advanced search options at the top of the page.  On the right, you will see the “relevancy” slider, which is only enabled if you have Best Match chosen as your search.

If the slider is moved all the way to the left, you will get a broad sort of the files returned from a search, where the relevancy factor is low.  In the following, I’ve searched on cheese, with a low relevancy factor of ‘0′.

Sure, all those things have cheese in them, and ‘cheese’ is a valid keyword, but is it the most “relevant”?  No, but low relevancy may be good for brainstorming about things with cheese.

Want to see some cheese?  Crank up that relevancy factor to ‘100′.

You actually get pictures of cheeses!  These images have been determined (somehow) to have a high relevancy factor when it comes to the keyword “cheese”.

Here’s something else neat.  You can get an idea of what keywords for an image are actually proving relevant.  For example, go take a look at my Red Carpet images or my Film Strip images.  Click on one of the files and if you look at the keyword listing, the keywords are listed in the order of most relevant to least.

The introduction of Best Match 2.0 should save you time searching, and we all know time is money.  Don’t forget to sort by age as well, to be sure to catch some fresh new stuff occasionally.

Foreign Languages

It’s been a while since my last post.  Partly due to the Thanksgiving weekend, and partly to a family vacation in Florida.  The annual Disney trek, back to my roots.  But I’m back in Missouri now, where it’s 30 degrees, so….

One benefit of the controlled vocabulary (CV) system on iStockphoto.com, is that instead of using an automatic keyword translation system, each keyterm in the CV can be mapped to the correct foreign language term.  So, now, buyers can search (and contributors can keyword) in their native language, and when translated, these translated words and phrases should be very accurate.

If you speak French, for example, and only wanted to deal with French keywords, while keeping the rest of the site in English, you would click on the link at the top of every page titled “Control Panel”.

When the panel opens, you will see an option for “Search Language”.  Once you change this to an alternate language, keywords will be in that language, and the automatic keyword suggestor you get in the search box when typing will be in that language.  That’s it.  The rest of the site will be in English (at this point).

You can set the entire site (not including content, like forum posts or image descriptions) to another language, by using the “language” pulldown next to the “Control Panel” link mentioned above.  In the image above, this says “English”.  This will change site headers and such, your keyword language, your credit purchase currency, and units of measurement to another country’s defaults.  Basically doing this includes the keyword language choice mentioned above, plus the other things you can individually set in the control panel.

So, you can have the site in German, your keywords in French, and your credit purchase currency in US Dollars, if you wish.  The last thing may actually benefit you, because iStock has some set currency exchange rates that do not fluctuate very often.  If you live somewhere other than the US, you may benefit from making credit purchases in US Dollars, and letting your credit card do the exchange, than purchasing in your native currency and getting what iStock charges.

There are often posts about how keywords are in a foreign language, yet the link at the top says “English”.  Hopefully this will help you remember there is another place to check for keywording language.  Bonjour!

Lightbox Contact Sheet and Download

My goal, with this blog, is to help out the iStockphoto.com buyer, something I mentioned way back in my first post here.  A happy customer returns to buy, and that makes me happy .

So, when I saw the chance to dust off my rusty php skills to help a designer, I jumped at it.  A little light programming is a nice break from touching up photos.

In this post on the iStock forum, the request was:

When working on a large project, I may scout several dozen images that I may use, adding them to a lightbox. I’d like to be able to quickly download comps to create a contact sheet for my clients to review, or even print them directly off iStock in a nice layout.

So, I’ve create the lightboxDisplayer, which can be found at http://digitalplanetdesign.com/index.php?page=lightbox (please note, that as of 10/20/2009, the page is now here: http://digitalplanetdesign.com/index.php?page=istocktools).

All you have to do, is enter a lightbox number from the iStockphoto.com lightbox area, or your private lightbox number.  Then, choose what sort you want the contents returned in, the number of horizontal cels, the size of the image, and if the image number below should be linked to the iStockphoto.com image page.  Then, “Get Printable Page” feeds you this:

Which gives you a page for easy printing, or saving, or whatever you want.

Clicking on the “Get Downloadable Zip” will serve up a Windows compatible .zip file.  The images in the .zip file are simply labeled.  “iStock_4783833.jpg”, for example.  I’ve heard it doesn’t work on Macs, but my library functionality at my server host is somewhat limited.  I’ll try to see if I can find a compatible .zip library.

Let me know if you have any suggestions, or if this helps to serve your needs a bit better.

The Creative Network

One of the things that was revolutionary about iStockphoto.com when it started was that it was community driven.  It was a network of designers and photographers that shared imagery for projects, for trade (essentially) and then for royalties.  Around it, especially in the forums, grew a community where people swapped tips and stories.  Eventually, some of the people met each other, and while, still a business, friendships, or even just friendly business relationships arose.

Take that as an introduction to the iStockphoto “Creative Network”.  The Creative Network is essentially a list of other iStockphoto members that allows you to easily keep in touch, or track of, them.  From the civics companion:

The Creative Network is a way for you to keep your friends and colleagues on iStockphoto handy and make communication among members easier.

One thing to note, this is an invitation and approval system.  You can’t just add people to your network anonymously – they must approve of your request (see down below).

Click on that little button at the top of your iStock page, and you will go to your Creative Network headquarters.

As you can see, you have the following tabs:

• Network: A listing of the members in your network that links to their profile, and a mail link to sitemail them easily
• New Uploads: This gives you a random sampling of the newest images per member in your network.  Refresh the page to get another selection of images
• Subscribed Blogs: Get the latest on a member’s iStock blog by clicking the subscribe link at the top of their blog
• Subscribed Threads: Keep on to date on forum discussions by clicking the link in a forum post

Over on the right, you’ll see your “tool” options.

• Add Blog Post: Allows you to easily add a post to your blog
• Add Member: Allows you to sitemail another member to join your network, with a short message
• Manage Network: Gives you another view of your network listing with easy links to mail and remove members as well as another “Add Member” link
• Extended Network: Sort of a “social network” listing, where you can see people linked to your people
• Hide Online Status: You may have noticed that online users are noted as such in the network listings.  You can turn that off
• Allow Network Requests:  You can disallow new network invitations.  I found that I was getting tons of requests from new contributors who seemed to just be automatically adding everyone they saw on the site, so I turned off requests to keep my network a bit tighter – people I was actually interested in and who had made an effort to interact with me a bit.
• Ignore List: I’m not actually sure what this list accomplishes, because I’ve never used it.  Let me know if you do!
• Mail Creative Network: The most dangerous link, because it creates a sitemail to everyone on your network, and people tend to “reply all” again and again.  Be judicious in your use of this function

So, how do people use the network?  Some just use it to keep track of their friend’s new content.  Some use it as a resource group, mailing out questions or critique requests to their network.  It’s really up to you what you do with it.  It is what it is – a mutually agreed upon member list, and you get out of it what you put into it.

It’s Great to Disambiguate

iStockphoto.com uses a controlled vocabulary system when it comes to keywording, which I described in this article.  I just wanted to mention one part of that again, and stress it a bit more.

With the Zero Tolerance Spam policy announced two weeks ago, contributors have again been pointing out a problem with the search user interface.  To illustrate, imagine a “tailgating football party” design, so you search on “tailgating”.

The search engine, for every term in its dictionary, has a default meaning, if there is more than one disambiguation option for a word.  In the above case, for whatever reason, it returns a search with the meaning of tailgating related to “driving” checked.  Now, as a buyer, one might not notice the checkboxes at the top, and assume this is all the tailgating images the site has to offer.  So, one would be missing all the social event images if the boxes are unchecked and checked and resubmitted.

The point of this example, is not that sometimes a bad disambiguation will sneak through, like the BBQ in the first image.  The problem arises with some contributors who will not DA correctly and check off every box, because, even if their image does not relate to the default disambiguation choice, they want it to show up when their keyword is searched on.  ie., checking off every meaning of “border” or “winter” or whatever.  This user interface design almost encourages people to spam, which is why contributors have been asking that either all the choices, or none of the choices be checked by default since the system started.

Without that working the way we wish it would, we have to rely on you, the buyer, to make sure to choose the correct meaning of the terms you have searched on, so as to not encourage these spammers.  And, of course, it will also get you a larger selection of whatever it is you are really looking for!

Downloading a Comp

As I understand it, in the design biz, a “comprehensive” is a rough layout with stand in imagery that is shown to the client for a buy off before the designer actually starts paying for the needed content and spending time finessing the design.

In the “old” days, from what I’ve read, designers would just sketch in the type of image they would end up looking for, or actually rough sketch out an image they had seen, or even get some kind of photo copy from the stock agency that they could work into the design.

Nowadays, of course, it’s much easier, working digitally, and most stock portals allow you to download a “comp image” for use in your rough drafts.  This comp image, of course, is not released to you for use in any sense, other that using it as sort of a demo image.

Comp images, at least those from “microstock” houses like iStockphoto.com, usually have a watermark over them, so they can not be used inappropriately.  Yet, suprisingly, we sometimes still see final projects on the web with the logo over the image.  Higher end houses like gettyimages.com can provide watermark free images, because at the higher prices charged, they have more resources to pursue any infringing cases.

If you or your client need to see a rough layout without the watermark, the iStockphoto XS size is slightly bigger than the typical thumbnail comp, and very reasonable at only 1 credit.  It has been suggested in the past that there be some interface on the site that allows you to apply this cost to a higher sized version of the same image.  Hopefully that will appear in the future.

Anyhoo, when you go to an image detail page on iStockphoto, you’ll see the below.

When you click on that “Download a Comp” link, what you get is the large thumbnail seen above, by itself in your browser.  You can then save this image however your browser facilitates saving images, or for that matter, you can just right-click on the thumbnail on the image details page above, and save from there.

I haven’t found any licensing terms specifically spelling out comp image usage terms, but it seems pretty clear they are only for pre-production use, and not for a final project of any type.

There is also a “Download a Comp” link on the video content pages which is a Flash Video file – .flv .  The comp download link on Illustrations (vectors) gives you a .jpg, just like photos.

Zero Tolerance Spam

Last Friday, Bruce Livingstone announced a new policy at iStockphoto.com .  It’s called “Zero Tolerance Spam”, and it’s aimed directly at improving the buyer experience.

iStockphoto, as a “crowdsourced” business, relies on contributors to keyword their own content to be found in the search.  ie, to find my image of a female cheerleader, I keyword it with “female” and “cheerleader” among other things, so that you can enter those terms in the search box and find my image.

Most contributors are very careful about their keywording, keeping it to what you see in the image, and one or two relevant concepts.  However, some contributors seem to use very poor keywording techniques that appear to be aimed at getting their content seen as often as possible, even in irrelevant searches.

This affects the buyer most directly, by filling up search result pages with irrelevant files, and that causes you to have to click through more pages than you might.  This zero tolerance policy is aimed directly at that.

… there are contributors here who include bad, inappropriate keywords on every single image they upload. Even worse, sometimes the spam is added after a file inspected. There are piles of bad keywords in huge portfolios. We’ve asked everyone to stop, to change, to improve. Lots of people listened. Some didn’t. That’s who we’re going to have an issue with.

Ok, so where are these keyword issues coming from?

1. We are dealing with new contributors who have never keyworded before, so they’re learning the basics.
2. People who have keyworded on other sites, but aren’t quite used to the nuances of what to include on iStock.
3. The iStockphoto Controlled Vocabulary system, which completely mystifies some people.  However, it is necessary to learn how to use it to keyword successfully.
4. Lazy keyworders who refuse to work within the system, keyworders who just don’t care, or people who are out to get their image in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

So, we actually have several problems here.  What are the solutions?

The iStockphoto wiki keywording suggestion system makes an attempt at the first 3 issues.  If you see a keyword that doesn’t apply at all, or is a stretch, or you find inappropriate, you can flag the image from the image details page, and it will be sent to a keyword team member to review.  Hopefully, over time, people who get a lot of wikis, from bad copying and pasting, to stretching concepts, etc., will learn to step in line a bit more to give good buyer results.  Like the people who put “father” on any image of a man by himself.  Or put every holiday on images of flowers or gifts.  This is the “poor keywording” group.

The ZTS policy is aimed directly at the last group, the “Spam” group.  These are the people who put “Christmas” on anything that moves.  Or “business” on anything with a person.  The kind of people who repeatedly cause bad search results.

In 7 days, we will begin contacting contributors and giving them advanced warning. We will be deactivating the portfolios of contributors in clear violation of our keyword policies. Please have a look through your portfolio to make sure that none of your isolated bell peppers are keyworded as ‘Christmas’ or ‘business’. A few errors on a few files are totally understandable and we’ll help you fix those eventually. What we’re pursuing here is the serial spammer. You probably know who you are. If you don’t, I guess you soon will.

In the end, I don’t imagine there will be too many people that get banned.  We’ll have to see where they are drawing the line, and how effective the threat is, and if there are that many people out there that are doing this.  I see some bad results from time to time, but it usually ends up being a person’s certain view of this word or that word.  And the people I’ve found that those who keyword badly over their whole portfolio tend to be foreigners who don’t really understand how the whole thing works.

Anyways, some attempt at returning better results to buyers is better than no attempt, so here’s hoping things happen.  Let me know if you see something different once this all starts in motion.

iStockphoto Forum Changes

Over the weekend, the iStockphoto.com forum discussion area changed a bit, and will change a little more in the days ahead.  There are more details in this thread, but there were two main things I wanted to point out that might affect or confuse buyers who don’t frequent the area.

The previously titled “Support/Guidance & Quick Help” is now simply titled “Help“.  A good place to ask questions, but remember, this is strictly peer provided help.  An administrator may chime in from time to time, but there is no requirement for them to do so.  If you need a definite word from support, use one of the choices on the support page.

The other change, is the area formerly known as “Image, Illustration and Video Request”, is now known as “Request New Content”.   This forum still provides the functionality of asking for help finding an image, like I described in this article, as well as being the place to ask for new content.  Basically, anything about finding a certain piece of content goes there, still.

By the way, as iStock makes the move towards serving the world (aside from just being on the internet ), there is a new German discussion forum here.

Happy Monday!

Content Type Checkboxes

iStockphoto.com sells four (currently) types of media under the iStockphoto banner – photos (raster images), illustrations (vectors), flash files and video.  By default, every search returns all types of content available.  Of course, there is a way to modify this, using the checkboxes at the top of every page.

Which is great.  You can easily filter out content you don’t want, just by unchecking the boxes. ….. or can you?

Well, you can, of course.  The problem is some user interface design that makes it confusing, and somewhat frustrating at times.  Part of the issue is that iStockphoto should see these as options only you can modify, but based on site design, they actually use links to modify your options, making it a bit tough at times to keep your choices.  Two examples below and how to work with the system.

User Interface Inconsistency

When you do a search on a subject and get the results back, the search is sorted based on your choice of sorting methods.  If you have “age” currently selected, and you want to switch to “best match”, you simply change the sort pull down at the top, and the entire search refreshes.

Alas, there is no such refresh mechanism attached to the type checkboxes.  Unchecking or checking any of the choices does not refresh the page.  Alas #2, your search terms have not remained in the search box for easy re-use.  Modifying the checkboxes, and then changing the sorting pull down occasionally will hold your checkbox choice in memory.

So, what you need to do, is change your content type checkboxes BEFORE a search to see the results you want.  If the search has already been run, change the checkboxes, and retype in your search terms.

My Choices Don’t Stick

In writing this article, I had “photos” checked, and then I tried my solution above to modify my content type to Illustration – ie. checking the box off and redoing the search.  Unfortunately, the checkbox did not hold its value.  Nothing I did would cause the Illustration checkbox to stay checked!  I must have some funny setting holding on to things.  So, if all else fails, use the link below to force all your options to be on.

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&text=business&fileTypeSizePrice=
[{"type"%3A"Image"%2C"size"%3A"All"%2C"priceOption"%3Anull}%2C
{"type"%3A"Video"%2C"size"%3A"All"%2C"priceOption"%3Anull}%2C
{"type"%3A"Flash"%2C"size"%3Anull%2C"priceOption"%3A"All"}%2C{"type"%3A"Illustration+[Vector]“%2C”size”%3Anull%2C”priceOption”%3A”All”}]

It then seems to be able to behave as you would expect after doing that.  You can replace the word “business” in the above link, with your search term of choice.  Which leads us to the third issue.

Links that Modify Your Content Type Checkboxes

Due to the fact that all these content types (well, except for Flash) have a sort of “headquarters” page under the iStockphoto brand, they need to be able to turn on that content type when you go to that section.  ie., Click on “Video”, and you won’t see much unless your video checkbox is on.  Ok.  Makes sense.

For some reason, when you click on the “View portfolio” link in a user’s profile, it turns all the checkboxes back on.  I guess this makes sense, in that they want to show you the entire portfolio, but it is frustrating if you just want to see my photos, for example.

As we know, you can’t then, after seeing the portfolio, check off the appropriate box(es) and refresh the page somehow.

One workaround is to go to one of the user’s images, and from there, click on the “View Member Portfolio” link.  This link is not the same as the link in the user’s profile, so it will hold onto your checkbox choices.

Alternatively, you can try the following link if you wish to type in the member’s name:

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&membername=sjlocke

If things are working correctly, you can also view a member’s portfolio, change the media type checkboxes, use the sorting pulldown to switch sorts, and then switch back to the one you want.

Conclusion

While, yes, I wish this would work better, it works well 99% of the time, and the other 1%, hopefully you can force it to work with the above tips.