iStockphoto - Stock Illustration Training Manual

4.3 - Metadata

When you upload an illustration to iStock, you will be responsible for adding 3 levels of ‘metadata’ to your file: an Image Title, an Image Description, and the tags you assign to your file. Each of these metadata levels serves a different purpose on our website, and all are required. Without the correct metadata, we can’t accept your file.

Read this article for a more in-depth look at the metadata rules here at iStock.

Titles

When giving your image a title, it’s very important that you don't title your files with leading characters (such as A1, A, AAA, 1, 111, 1A, etc., as in 'A Five Pencils' or '1 Five Red Pencils'.

Manipulating your uploads to appear first in search results by starting every image with 'A' or '1' is not allowed. Your image titles should accurately reflect the subject. Periodic reviews of member accounts occur regularly. Keep your titles short and sweet and try to avoid personalized naming or numbering systems that don’t directly reflect what your illustration depicts.

Descriptions

Please provide us with a good, focused description of your image. The information you provide may help us decide if we can approve your file, and provide the client with additional information. Please provide a verbal description of the illustration, subject, location and any interesting or valuable information regarding your image such as the software you used, whether or not you’ve included alternate file formats, and anything else pertaining to your submission.

Example Description and Title for this file:

Title: Helping The Environment

Description: Illustration of an environmentally conscious woman packing her groceries in a jute bag.

Tags

How well you tag an image determines how often the search engine remembers it while searching. The trick is to appear in relevant searches; getting in front of the right eyes makes or breaks an image. Bloating up your image tags to squeeze into searches where you don’t belong will only irritate members who want to find something specific. With over a million members searching every day, someone wants to find your image. Here’s how to help them.

What Is It?: Describe the subject of your image. You have 50 words to describe all the pertinent details, and the more specific you are, the more likely your image is to be found by the right searches. What is it? Is it a forklift, in a warehouse, moving crates? Two red tulips, close up, beaded with water? A young, energetic, African-American woman, in a business suit, talking on a cell phone, against a white background? Then be sure to tell the search engine.

Describe Everything, Be Specific: Be very specific about the subject. For images of people, include physical characteristics, ages, ethnicity, emotion, and mood. Is the woman grumpy? Is the police officer overweight, or even obese? Is the model effeminate?

Use a few of your tags for everything happening in your image; each of the primary subjects, the background, the action. Your image is like a sentence; be sure to include each of the nouns (the things in the image) and each of the verbs (what they’re doing) as well as the situation. Imagine you are a newspaper journalist, asking questions about the scene, and answer, who, what, how, why, when and where.

Example tags for this illustration: adult, man, blood, puddle, sand, boots, gun, gunslinger, reflection, western, desert, outdoors, high noon, spurs, cowboy, cowboy boots, smoking, violence, killer, murder, chaps, red, vector, illustration, cartoon, duel, spaghetti western

The tags anticipate every angle that someone might describe this character from. We know exactly who he is and what he's doing. People with this scene in mind will find this image, because of the tags.

Of course, there is a law of diminishing returns. Relevancy is the key. Learn to avoid the unnecessary and you won't get into trouble with tag clutter. Here's a good example of knowing what to include, and what to leave out:

The artist could have included tags like hand, foot, shoes… these things are in the picture, but none of them are key elements. Sunset, couple, meadow, love, heart shape – those are the important ones. Avoid the temptation to run off at the mouth.

Be General: No one thinks alike, and no one visualizes in the same terms. Exact details are great, but without general terms, overly specific words can keep your image away from less detailed searches. Someone may search for "fried eggs sunny side up", but are just as likely to search for "breakfast", or even "meal". Include them all. Start with your specific description, and then expand to something more general. And know when to stop.

Synonyms: There are no hard and fast rules for adding synonyms to your tags. On one hand, you want to broaden the possible range of searches that will find your image. On the other hand, you need to remain specific enough that the description is accurate. Padding out your 50 available words with every entry in the thesaurus may bring you more results, but increases your chances of being irrelevant to many of them.

• Include a few synonyms for each of the most important parts of the image. Be creative but realistic.
• Try to imagine all the different words a person might use to describe the same thing. For example: bait, equipment, fishhook, fishing, hook, lure.

What Does it Mean?: Often people search for words that don't correspond to specific things. They want to illustrate a concept and need an image that says it perfectly. Describe the emotion, feeling, or idea represented in an image.

Conceptual Tags: escape, exotic, paradise, relaxation, sexy, thirst, tropical

Conceptual tags are the most likely to stray from relevancy. Decide which theme or concept is best expressed in the image, and pick the best words to describe it. The images above all use just the right variety of words on a single theme. Too many can lose focus, too few will remain obscure. It's a fine art, but easy to master.

How Was It Done?: Be sure to use a few words to describe particular technical or compositional aspects of the image. Members often use modifiers to find particular kinds of images: horizontal, vertical or square orientation, isolated objects, the dominant colors within the file, and so on. You may also wish to include your image style (lifestyle, panorama, crowd, candid, abstract).

Phrases: A search for "girls" returns 3000+ results. A search for "macho gigolo lifting gorgeous girls" gets just 1. If your image fits that description, but you stopped after just "girls", then you won't be found.

Our "macho gigolo lifting gorgeous girls" is a great example of combining different tags strategies to stand out from the crowd. The tags describe:

• the subject (man, macho, gigolo, women)
• his physical appearance (muscular, powerful, fit, strong)
• what they're doing (lifting, excercising, strolling, waving)
• where they are (beach, ocean, sea)
• how they feel (healthy, powerful, happy)
• the kind of picture (cartoon, caricature)
• technical aspects of the image (vector, illustration, vertical)

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