What are keywords?
Keywords are part of your image's metadata, and are words or phrases that describe the image. When someone searches on Veer Marketplace, they will be shown images with keywords that match their search terms.
Do I have to add keywords?
To give your image a better chance of seeing sales, you should provide keywords for your submissions.
How are keywords added?
You can use the contributor tools to add keywords for one file at a time, or in batches. Or, you can provide embedded IPTC metadata in the software program of your choice (iView, Lightroom, Aperture, etc.) before uploading files by FTP.
If I write an image description, do I still need to add keywords?
Yes. The title and description fields on an image are not searchable, so relevant keywords need to be added in the keyword section.
What kind of information should be included in the description?
Keep it simple. Save the details for the keywords. An image can be used and interpreted numerous ways, so a generic one-line statement is preferable. Instead of "A loving husband and wife stand on a beach admiring a sunset", try "Couple watching sunset".
How do I decide what is relevant about an image?
It may be helpful to ask yourself a few questions to decide what’s important. What strikes you about the image? What makes this image interesting and unique? What story does the picture tell? What parts of the image are important to that story? What are the facets of the image that a customer would be most interested in?
Is it better to be more broad or narrow with my keywords?
It's best to add the most specific terms possible to an image. Our Controlled Vocabulary (CV) will map your specific keywords to a much broader set of keywords. For example, if you have an image of a German shepherd, add the keyword German shepherds. The CV will map your keyword to dogs, animals, mammals, etc.
What is a controlled vocabulary?
A controlled vocabulary (CV) is a set of terms or keywords and the relationships among those terms. The keywords you add to an image will be automatically mapped to terms in the CV. For example, if you've used the keywords cats and cute to describe an image, the CV will help make the connection when a customer searches for tabby and adorable. The CV improves the search experience, reduces the amount of work you need to do.
How do I keyword my own images with ages?
It’s not necessary to be exact unless you know the ages of your models. Instead, add two approximate age groups to an image, using the format 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, etc. Other keywords to consider are elderly seniors or active seniors (70s and above), teens (12-19), pre-teens (10-12), school-age children, pre-schoolers (3-4), toddlers (1-2), and babies.
Can we use slang or colloquialisms in our keywords?
Simply put: no. The terms in our Controlled Vocabulary (CV) are based on proper English. If you use slang terms, your keywords might map to incorrect CV terms. For example, the term chow added to a food shot will actually map to the dog breed Chow Chow. Adding the term chick to an image of a young woman will map to images of baby chickens.
Is there a minimum or maximum number of keywords I can submit with my image?
If you want your image to be searchable on the site, you should add at least three keywords. Between 10 and 20 keywords are best. Although technically there is no maximum, over-keywording an image is just as harmful as under-keywording. Focus on the most relevant and important elements.
If I make a mistake with my keywords, can I change them after I've submitted the images?
Not yet, so keyword carefully! If the error requires immediate attention, send an email to contributorhelp@veer.com referencing your username and the asset ID of the image.
Do I need to include the orientation of my image as a keyword?
No. Horizontal, vertical, black and white, color, square and panoramic will all be included in the data behind the scenes.
The keywords I submitted with my image are not the same as the ones that now appear on the website. What happened?
Veer Marketplace uses a Controlled Vocabulary (CV) for keywords and search. The keywords you submitted with your image have been translated into the keyword language used by our CV. This means that not only is your image searchable by the terms you submitted, but it is also searchable by the synonyms and variant spellings of each keyword.
What are the most important terms to include on an image?
All Images
- Physical objects present in the image
- Include "indoors" or "outdoors" when it makes sense
- Time of day, time of year
- Include ‘nobody’ if no people are depicted
- Technical visual terms such as "abstracts, patterns, colors, still lifes, points of view, light attributes", etc.
Images of People
- Ages
- Ethnicity (Caucasian, Asian, Black Ethnicity, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, multiracial)
- Gender (men, women, girls, boys)
- Facial expressions
- Emotions
- Concepts
- Specific activity or event
- Number of people (one person, two people, three people, groups)
- Portrait or Candid
- Body positions (sitting, standing, leaning, lying down, etc.)
- Direction model is looking (looking at camera, looking up, down, sideways, etc.)
- Length views (full length, half length: upper half, lower half, ¾ length, headshots, etc.)
Landscapes
If the picture is a landscape, ‘scenics’ is a good term to include, as well as a specific location if known. If there is a distinct horizon line, add ‘horizons’.
Solid Backgrounds
- If there is a white background, include keyword ‘white background’.
- If there is a solid colored background, other than white, include the keyword ‘neutral background’. Also include the actual color of the background.
- If the subject is a cutout (easily removable from the background) add ‘cutouts’.
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Glad to hear you found this info on keywording helpful. If any questions come up regarding keywording and our Controlled Vocabulary, feel free to post them here and we will gladly offer more clarification and super helpful tips.
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I have over 400 images accepted so far, but not a single one of them show up in any search results. Why is that?
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Hi Jason -
Were those images transferred from SnapVillage?
If so - we're still working to push a final batch or two live.
If these are newly submitted files (not transferred from SnapVillage) - these will be exposed to buyers in the customer facing launch scheduled for late July.
Veer Marketplace is being rolled out in 3 major phases:
Phase 1: The current customer-facing Veer Marketplace is the Phase 1 preview version - with a static collection of content transferred from SnapVillage. [launched in February, - content was rolled over from SnapVillage over the past few months]
Phase 2: We've just launched the contributor ingest workflow so you can submit your portfolio ahead of the customer release. [went live earlier this week]
Phase 3: A customer-facing launch that unveils a credit-based system, and connects all the pieces and make Veer Marketplace truly and fully live from end to end. [late July]
The sales and royalty reporting tools will be added as we get closer to the Veer Marketplace customer-facing launch (Phase 3).
Content uploaded to Veer Marketplace now will be made searchable for the Phase 3 customer-facing launch.
Thanks,
- Brian
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Thanks Brian. Yes, all but 2 of the images were transferred from Snapvillage. The other 2 were accepted via upload today.
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A few times now the options I've been given on ambiguous terms don't match the keyword I'm applying. For Belfast (capital city of Northern Ireland) I get the option of choosing between somewhere in Maine and another Belfast in some place I've never heard of.
Obviously neither of those is appropriate, but will my images still be searchable under the keyword search Belfast if I choose neither?
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Hi David,
Did the correct Belfast not come up at all as an option for you to choose? We do have three different Belfast locations in our Controlled Vocabulary, and one of them is the Northern Ireland city. If the third option didn't appear for you, then something on our end needs adjusting. I will look into this. Thank you.
Unfortunately, I believe, that unless you choose a clarification term, the term is not actually searchable. For now, do make sure to add Belfast as a keyword on your images, without choosing between "Maine" or "Africa" and add the keyword "Northern Ireland". The system should preserve the Belfast keyword, and I hope that when we refresh it, the keyword will be recognized correctly (since Northern Ireland is also present).
- Sarah
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Hi Sarah,
Thanks for the reply.
No I only got the two options - I've just tried adding the keyword to another image to check and this is what I get back:
Belfast (Maine); Belfast (Mpumalanga Province)
So looks like a problem your end.
Oh and square only gives two options (the shape and the man-made space), however I want to add it as square composition (rather than horizontal or vertical).
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Hi David,
I was also able to replicate that problem and I have confirmed the bug with our Marketplace and Technology teams. They are hoping to have a fix for it available in the next release of the site.
The issue of the keyword "square" is similar (since we do have more options than the two types of squares you mentioned), but for the use you described, you don't actually need to add that keyword. Composition/orientation of an image (horizontal, vertical, square) and color details (black and white or color) don't need to be part of the keywords.
Thanks for your patience as we continue to develop the Marketplace site!
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Hi Sarah and Brian,
I was just wondering whether or not it's possible to do the keywording in any other language than English as well? For example, German. Could you please clarify?! Thanks in advance!
Cheers,
Heike
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Hello Heike,
Unfortunately, at this time, contributor keywording is only available in English.
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-- Marketplace Keyword Update --
I just want to highlight one of the new features that was rolled out for Veer Marketplace which will simplify the keywording of age range and ethnicity:
If you choose to use the model release dropdowns for age range and ethnicity, the appropriate keywords will automatically be added to those images. Save yourself some time – this means that each time you add this release to a file you don’t have to worry about making sure you have the proper age range and ethnicity keywords in place.
Good luck and have fun keywording!
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You have to work on performance.
Currently it's too painful.
Every time I delete a keyword everything freezes for 5-8 sec.
If I have to delete 10 extra keywords in an image - it means 1-1.5 minutes.
its 1.5 hour for 60 images.
Even with my small portfolio of 1500 images accepted on other sites it will take months to upload it there,
just to see if you going to generate any sales at all?
you original design of batch processing is cool,
but performance of keyword editing kills everything
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Sarah, just following up on my earlier posting about the Belfast (Northern Ireland) keyword.
Just tried searching the site on the keyword belfast and only 4 images came back across the entire collection (microstock and full price) - none were mine and one was HMS Belfast (a ship moored on the Thames in London).
Looks like it's still not working.
(oh and ironically, despite the only two options you get when keywording are the Belfasts in USA and South Africa, the other three images that come up in the search are all of the capital of Northern Ireland)
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Hi David,
Yes, I was re-trying that early this week, but it looks like the bug fix was not included with this most recent release of Marketplace. I double checked the "Northern Ireland" and "Ireland" search results for Marketplace and your images do come up on the first page of results. I'm sorry that we can't get the narrower location term on your images right now, but I'm still hoping that we can remedy it in the near future.
Thanks again for your patience, David!
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1 - I read on my tweet that "isolated" cannot be used for overwhites (cut out objects or people with a #FFF or #000 background), but another term should be used. Is that "cutout" or "cutouts" or something else?
2 - Without any people, I use "nobody" as has become a de facto standard on most sites, so that's fine, as Veer seems to do that too.
3 - As an independent, my IPTC keyword metadata are prepared for other sites too, and since there is a lot of divergence on how composite words are interpreted in the metadata reading modules of those sites, I use one word per keyword.
That means that for one person, I use the keyword "one" and the keyword "person" separately.
I saw that Veer has many multiword keywords, like one keyword for "one person". How can we enter that in the IPTC? I use as a separator, but found out works too. How do we then enter multiword keywords in the IPTC keywords? Is there a special character used between the "one" and the "person"?
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@Sarah, concerning speed of keyword editing on-site.
There is a simple solution I use in that case, and that is to delete all, then do the edit in another program, and copypaste it in again.
Since every site uses different kinds of separators between keywords, and I think in the "new keywords" textbox only spaces are allowed, I use my (free!) keyword editing script.
Copypaste your existing keywords in the second window "Clipboard".
Then you can edit/add/delete keywords in the top window just by mouse clicks. Under "Options Window", you can select what type of separators you want: newline, space, comma, semicolon - in this case it would be space.
Then export (green button down) back to the "Clipboard", and copypaste from there in the Veer textbox.
I'm not sure how to handle multiword keywords yet on Veer (see my previous post), but I can update my script as soon as I know.
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Hi Hugo,
Yes, you're on the right track. Instead of "isolated" we use "cutouts". And for photos without people, we add "nobody".
In regards to your prepared metadata, the only thing I can think of to accommodate the multi-word keywords is to add these to your list. You don't have to worry about removing "one" or "people" from your current list. As long as you add the multi-word keyword, the keywording tool will adjust the "one" and "people" so that it searches on "one person".
In terms of how to actually enter multi-word keywords into your IPTC metadata list, I would assume it depends on the editor you are using. The contributor keywording tool recognizes keywords separated by commas (So an example list of terms could be: one, people, one person, men, cutouts, looking at camera).
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Hello, I have uploaded my pictures but some of them don't have keywords and neither of them have a title, when I try to submit, appears a message that says my images aren't ready. Where can I modify the titles and add keywords? I've been looking in the workspace and I can't find any tool to do it. Thanks in advance.
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Any news on when it might be possible to upload accompanying jpegs with vector files for metadata to be extracted?
I think it was alluded to that this was planned for a later release but I haven't heard anything since. I'm holding off on uploading till this happens as it should make everything a lot easier.
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Hi Elí,
Once your photos have been uploaded, they appear in your Workspace under Selected Files. Select the images you want to add keywords and titles to and then click "continue".
This will take you to the Prepare and Submit area, where you can add titles, descriptions, keywords, and releases. To add titles and descriptions, select an image and then click the "edit" button beside Title and Description. Do the same to add keywords and releases for each image. You can select multiple images to add this information to. Once complete, select the image(s) and click "submit". From here the image(s) will be moved into the Pending area of your Dashboard, where they will be reviewed by our Editors.
Hope this helps!
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Hi Christos,
I'm actually not sure when it will be possible for you to upload accompanying jpegs with vector files for metadata to be extracted. I will check with our technology department to see if I can get a estimated time for that feature release.
Thanks for your patience!
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Hi Christos,
I checked in with our technology team and the feature you mentioned IS a future feature that they will develop, but it is not currently underway, so it will be a bit before it is rolled out.
Thanks again for your patience!
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Hi Sarah
Thank you for your reply.
I finally could upload my images with titles and keywords.
Kind regards.
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Hi Sarah,
Thanks for following this up for me so quickly! Good to know it is in the pipeline, I'll have a think about whether or not to wait or start uploading the back catalogue now.
Christos
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You're welcome Elí and Christos! Thanks for your interest in Veer Marketplace!
Christos - you may want to consider going ahead and starting to upload your images now, since it will be a while before the feature is rolled out.
Looking forward to seeing your images!
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Hello Sarah & Brian,
I have just uploaded 10 images and all went smoothly and they are in the pending folder. When I went to the approved folder where I had 121 images rolled over from Snapvillage all the keywords and descriptions have disappeared. The keywords that had been there were very incomplete from the Snapvillage rollover or at least from my IPTC info as uploaded originally. If the keywords are brought back is there anyway to update them with correct and morfe completer keywording once they are in the approved folder? Thanks for your attention. Ed
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Just noticed that the keywords on my accepted images have disappeared on my Dashboard workspace. I'm guessing this is just a bug in the dashboard itself as the images still seem to come back on keyword searches on the site.
Still, probably want to get someone to look into it.
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Hi Ed and David,
I will let the Marketplace development team know that the keywords on approved images have disappeared.
Ed - You may want to email contributorhelp@veer.com and let them know that the descriptions and keywords from your Snapvillage content has been cleared out. There was an issue early on when we first started transferring data over, but it should have been corrected. In terms of the keywords not being as 'complete' as what you had on Snapvillage or in your IPTC info, it might just be a matter of how your keywords mapped in our Controlled Vocabulary. All the variants, plurals, singulars, synonyms, etc. would have mapped to single terms in our CV. You may want to review the FAQs for Keywords and Metadata, if you think this is the case.
Thanks for letting us know about some of the bugs!
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Just an update - The bug regarding missing keywords on approved images has been fixed. The keywords should now be visible alongside approved images on your Dashboard.
Thanks for your patience!
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Not sure if there's a better place to post/send these minor keywording issues, but Georgian prompts three ways in the keywording tool when uploading to the site:
Georgia (Deep South); Georgia (Central Asia); Georgian (Central Asian)
However in my image's case Georgian refers to the 18th/early-19th century architectural style
I've added it as a keyword Georgian Architecture, however it will need to work as Georgian on its own so that it can be combined with keywords like House or Building in Boolean searches.
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Hi David,
Please do go ahead and add Georgian architecture, so that if that particular architectural style keyword is added to the Controlled Vocabulary, the image might be searchable. In the meantime, you can add other keywords like "historic and artistic styles", "architecture" (or "architectural details", if the image is a close-up), the type of building (eg. "houses", "apartments", "office buildings", "churches"), and any specific building parts that the image focuses on (eg. "balconies", "columns", "shutters", "atria", "rotundas").
Hope that helps!
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How can I add keywords after an image has been accepted? I can't see anywhere to edit the metadata?
BTW I notice if you search do a search on Georgian Architecture (boolean Georgian AND architecture) you get back images of georgian houses (e.g. # 1465813). These images have Georgian applied as a keyword - but if Georgian only exists in your vocabulary as either Georgia (Deep South); Georgia (Central Asia) or Georgian (Central Asian) - then presumably it is one of these incorrect meanings of Georgian that's been applied to the images. Effectively it means people who keyword inacurately are at an advantage to those who only apply the correct meanings of terms.
It might be a good idea, for ambiguous terms, to have their parent displayed in brackets beside them to clarify the meaning of the keyword on the record.
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Hello David,
Currently contributors do not have the ability to edit the keywords after the image has been approved. If the error requires immediate attention, send an email to contributorhelp@veer.com referencing your username and the asset ID of the image.
Thank you for your suggestion about having the parent terms displayed right alongside each keyword, so contributors can readily see what each keyword references. I will pass this suggestion on.
Thanks for your patience as we continue to tinker with how best to deal with similar keywords and ambiguous terms!
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no problem, these things take time to develop. I used to manage the keywording team at Getty UK so I know it's a huge task keeping the searches clean (particularly with user-generated keywording), getting the tech guys to implement improvements, updating the CV etc etc.
unfortunately it also means I'm always poking around looking for faults and improvements!
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Thank you, this is good overall information on key wording and descriptions. Very helpful in the questions on age and most important term information
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