Comments on: Effective Photo Keywording Step by Step

By: Tom B

Tom B — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:29:33 +0000

I enjoyed this very useful article. One additional point to keep in mind is that all of the different distributors seem to have their own set of unique metadata guidelines. Besides adhering to the great points discussed above, make sure your keywords comply to specific distributor rule-sets governing word/character counts, grammatical rules, prioritization/weighting, etc. This will aid greatly in enhancing the visibility of your collection. The importance of adhering to these principles is discussed in more detail on this site, http://www.worldmetadata.com.

By: Maros

Maros — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:39:16 +0000

I found as a great tool the keywords finder at http://www.findphotokeywords.com. It is free of charge, so you can use it as you wish. M.

By: Kevin Townsend

Kevin Townsend — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 10:16:32 +0000

I really liked this article, which gives an excellent summary of how keywording can help you sell images. A few years ago my photo agency More Images found that it was making better sales for the libraries it represented which used comprehensive keywords. That said, it was also noticed the general standard of keywording was poor. The result was that we started our own keywording company to fil a gap in the market - http://www.keedup.com Whether you get us or other companies to keyword for you, I definitely recommend using professionals. You'll get much better keywords, more consistent keywording, and save time which would be better spent taking photos.

By: Jim Hoerricks

Jim Hoerricks — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:33:52 +0000

Great piece illustrating this little understood process.

Jim Hoerricks
Author - Forensic Photoshop - a comprehensive imaging workflow for forensic professionals
http://forensicphotoshop.blogspot.com

By: Ben Sheldon

Ben Sheldon — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:26:25 +0000

I'm one of two developers of Panlexicon.com and was excited to see the link in your post. I'm really happy to see that you're using it for finding keywords for photos, especially because it was originally written to have a bit of fun with some thesaurus data. (BTW, how'd you run across Panlexicon.com?)

By: Corey Scherrer

Corey Scherrer — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:34:26 +0000

Keyword "correctly" is one of the most aspect areas of our digital workflow process. We send our images to 60+ distributors on almost every continent in the world. Usually the smaller image distributors are sent the same keywords but the bigger stock shops such as Jupiter, Getty, Alamy, Corbis, and Veer require a very specific format for keyword and metadata submissions.

If the budget allows have keywording done by the pros. After dealing with 60+ distributors, some with very specific keyword requirements, a professional keywording team is much more agile and can more easily tailor keywords to specific markets and distributors. We currently us Keywording.com and I can’t speak highly enough about them. In the end they will save you hundreds of hours of headaches.

If the budget won’t allow for professional keywording definitely check out the competition. This will at least get you in line with what other are using. My other suggestion is don’t be afraid to be conceptual. If the goal is to get your pictures sold, think like someone looking for your images. Ask yourself “What would I search for when I need to find the photo?” Most keywording is extremely literal. For example “Heterosexual Couple” is used instead of “Straight Couple” and “Homosexual” is commonly used instead of “Gay” These are basic example but a lot of keyword requirements are equivalent to talking in very proper vs every day English.

If you are using images distributors, especially the ones with specific requirements, they will usually provide a packet explaining how to submit keywording. If not, ask someone who may have these on file.

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Corey
http://www.gogoimages.com

By: Brian Auer

Brian Auer — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 03:46:47 +0000

Really, really, great tips and advice in this article. Keywording is like black magic to a lot of people (myself included). It's tough to do if you don't do a lot of it. Checking out the competition has always been a great source of inspiration for me. If you find 10 photos that are similar to yours, you can add quite a few keywords that you hadn't thought of before.

On a side note, these tips are quite applicable to blogging too. Titles descriptions and keywords are all crucial parts of a blog post, both in the meta tags and on the page.