Keywording - Controlled Vocabulary

xris

Seems this topic hasn't been handled here in several years and, even then, not in depth.

In light of the pending SM Stock sales feature, I've been boning up on keywording. I've been through the IPTC, XMP and-so-on hoops but have found one topic that seems to get short shrift everywhere -- standardized keywords.

I've read through the Controlled Vocabulary site. http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/ and several others. The whole idea seems pretty straight forward, but I'm wondering how practical and how necessary it is. (Seems to me that putting out $70.00 to add a dictionary to a $130.00 app -- in this case, IDimager -- is a bit steep!)

Besides. Isn't it a bit cumbersome to wade through tens of thousands of words each time we keyword?

I'm a class 10 newby when it comes to this stuff, so any pertinent comments will be most welcome.

:thumb

DavidTO

I think controlled vocabulary is a great idea if you want to make sure that your stock photography is found. The hierarchical nature of it makes a lot of sense. I played with it in the past, but since I'm only keywording my own casual stuff, I quickly dropped it. But if I wanted to ensure that my images were found, I would use it, myself. At least I think I would!

claudermilk

I agree that the controlledvocabulary files are very tempting & likely useful, but being at such a low income stream, I cannot really justify the $70 either. My workaround was to leverage some of the starter category catalogs in IMatch, rework them to what I need & set up a couple of category tree branches that I use for keywording. Since I use a script to grab what's in the categories, I essentially have a controlled voacbulary based on the categories. It's a balance that works for me so far.

Richard

A controlled vocabulary is important if you are exhanging photos/data with someone else, like a stock bureau or news media. If not, it is still preferrable to maintain your own standard list than to just enter keywords on the fly as free text. Many programs today support choosing keywords from a list that you yourself maintain.

xris

Richard wrote:

A controlled vocabulary is important if you are exhanging photos/data with someone else, like a stock bureau or news media. If not, it is still preferrable to maintain your own standard list than to just enter keywords on the fly as free text. Many programs today support choosing keywords from a list that you yourself maintain.

Interesting. Sounds logical. And even perhaps simpler to implement. But when it comes to selling stock, I find myself wondering if a standardized vocabulary would make my pix more visible to stock buyers?