Tag / keywording

by schizofrenico

New Canon CR3 format: metatag main disatvantages for microstock photographers?

[WARNING! I’m not a natural English speaker: sorry for my halting English]

Recently Canon introduced a new RAW format: CR3. CR2 has been based on TIFF format, while CR3 has been built on the QuickTime format.

Maybe you’re thinking that file formats are a techy and nerdy thing because you only use a software application that reads and/or writes these values, sometimes they convert these values through other formats (RAW –> JPG) and it isn’t important to you what’s the underlying technology, patents or deals between companies.

As a microstock photographer I’m interested in METATAGS. Metatags are my personal hell because every microstock agency/licensee requires three mandatory meta-tags: title, description, keywords. Sometimes you can avoid title OR description, depending on agency requirements, but before submitting images to agencies, you have to index them using meta-tags.

Many of us are non-exclusive “contributors”: this means we upload and submit images to a number of agencies. The same image on many agencies. And of course, we submit MANY images to MANY agencies. So, every image needs to be indexed. The good news is that EXIF/IPTC data EMBEDDED in images are always auto-imported by the whole of (micro)stock agencies.

But when coming to MOV footage files this is not true. There are only a very limited number of agencies reading the embedded meta-data, most commonly indexed using Adobe Bridge software.

CR3 format is QuickTime based, and the BAD news is that even the most powerful meta-data read/write software in the world, Phil Harvey’s Exiftool isn’t capable of reading/writing CR3 exif/iptc metadata. And so is when it comes to quicktime (MOV) files.

Maybe I’m wrong: I always used XMP sidecar files with CR2 files and it went well when I converted them in JPG files, uploaded and submitted them. So XMP could be the solution.

Working with MOV files there is NO XMP “sidecar” solution. The most important microstock agencies can’t read embedded MOV medatada: Shutterstock can’t. They often offer you a “CSV solution”: you can prepare a CSV file containing the values instead of the metadata embedded fields and upload that CSV in a different moment: another time-consuming operation.

So I need to prepare some auto-extraction of CSV files for each agency format based on some meta-data written into the MOV files by Adobe Bridge. Anyway I guess that kind of data is XMP (not sidecar fille).

by schizofrenico

Fotolia instant per android, finalmente, da oggi.

Finalmente Fotolia si è svegliata e dopo il betatesting ha buttato fuori la versione per Android della app “instant”. Qualche cazzeggio che diventa denaro? Concorrenza? Phoneography a manetta? vedremo. Ma almeno da oggi finalmente abbiamo la possibilità di provare anche con Android.

Recensione quando ne ho voglia.

by schizofrenico

iStock … before in che senso?

eh no, caro iStock, io qui non capissio! Mi dici “In the meantime, we would like to suggest people try and add their most relevant keywords before adding their more general keywords. ” … ma intendi proprio BEFORE in senso fisico… oppure in senso “prima di pensare a mettere le keyword generiche pensa a mettere quelle rilevanti” ?

Perché in un senso significa: NON METTERLE IN ORDINE ALFABETICO! E questo genererebbe peni non edulcorati e infrangerebbe le gonadi maschili.
Nell’altro senso significa “invece di mettere keyword del menga, metti keyword utili!”

E se fosse questo, il significato, direi che siamo tutti d’accordo, dato che “in keywording literalism is king” , recita il manuale.

Ma io voglio capire. Mi state dicendo “non mettere in ordine alfabetico, metti in ordine di rilevanza” oppure solo “metti nel £”$£%&$ di ordine che ti pare, ma usa parole specifiche invece di quelle generiche” ?

Perché la cosa cambia. Tipo perché Adobe Bridge gestisce le parole chiave inserendole in ordine alfabetico. E la cosa mi sfrangerebbe non poco i bluffoncelli.

by schizofrenico

keywords: helping hand, reach out –> tendere la mano, mano tesa

Quando intendiamo in modo figurato “mi tese la mano” in italiano … in generale in inglese quella mano è una “helping hand”e il fatto però di avvivinarsi in quel modo è “to reach out” … ad esempio in senso politico leggo che tendere la mano al mondo islamico si potrebbe tradurre con to reach out to the muslim world.

Nzesammai eh? 🙂

ciao.