Keywords, Keywords, and More Keywords

Keywords, Keywords, and More Keywords – O’Reilly Digital Media Blog:

I recently came across a cool add-on for Aperture. David Riecks, who currently chairs the SAA Imaging Technology Standards Committee, has a small but very useful product called Controlled Vocabulary.

Okay, this is cool. I’ll be buying this one shortly.

I’ve had getting controlled vocabulary support into Aperture as a low-priority project for a while. For those not familiar with it (for some background, check http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/), it’s a standardized set of keywords that, hopefully, cover most of your keywording needs.

The advantages to me are pretty simple: it’s a way of trying to make sure the keywords you use are the ones potential buyers are searching on, and it makes it easier for potential sales sites to localize those keywords, which makes your photos potentially available in other languages. Both Getty Images and iStockPhoto are supporting this now, so if you’re looking at working with Getty or moving into the Microstock markets, using controlled vocabulary is probably a good idea.

OH, and if you’re trying to decide which IPTC fields you should be filling out on your photos, here is a page with the best description I’ve found of the fields and suggestions of which ones to use

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