Image management help page

 A pseudonym is the name you want to sell your images under; this could be your name or something made up, it can be whatever you want. Just remember it will be used by our buyers to credit you as the photographer. You can create new pseudonyms, delete old ones and set a default under the Defaults and pseudonyms link in Manage Images.

Yes, it’s easy to do, just click on the cog icon in Alamy Image Manager (top right) and edit your license preference.

You can change the license type in the mandatory tab while annotating your images in Alamy Image Manager.

You can mark your images as exclusive by ticking the ‘only available on Alamy’ box under the ‘optional’ tab in the image manager. If you have over 500 images, you can do this in batches of 500 at a time by selecting multiple submissions in the left-hand column using the ‘shift’ key and then ticking ‘select all passed’. You can also set a default for all future submissions under the settings cog icon in the image manager. Remember, if your images are available for sale anywhere else, they would not be classed as exclusive, and you shouldn’t tick the ‘only available on Alamy’ box. This excludes being available to be licensed on your own site. This does not include being opted into our distribution scheme. If you are opted in, and your images are not for sale elsewhere you can tick this box.

You need a release for all people and recognisable property in the image if you want to sell the image commercially. This blog explaining releases might give you a bit more information as well as our model and property releases page.

We don’t need you to upload your releases to us, all you need to do is mark your images as released and we’ll get in touch with you if the customer needs it.

Photographer names and pseudonyms aren’t searchable using the main search box. Once you’re on the search results page, click on the filter tab on the left-hand side and use ‘Search by contributor name’ to find images under a specific name.

Select the images you want to delete and you’ll see the delete button at the bottom of the optional tab in the Alamy Image Manager. 

Please note if your images are already on sale, they will be deleted within 180 days. If the image isn’t on sale yet it will be deleted within 24 hours (once the search engine has refreshed).

If you’ve added captions and tags today, they’ll be online tomorrow once the search engine has updated, this usually happens every 24 hours.

The more searchable information you enter the more ‘discoverable’ your image will become. i.e. tags, supertags & completing optional information. The discoverability bar isn’t reading the quality of your metadata, it just increases with the volume of searchable information you enter. You don’t have to optimize all your images, there will be some that don’t require the full quota of tags – it’s much more important to only add information to your caption, tags and metadata that is relevant and accurate.

Yes, no problem. Just send them to our Image Management team at im@alamy.com with your account details and we’ll apply the metadata for you.

Yes, we can extract information on caption, keyword and date taken. If you have this information in your IPTC the images will be ready for sale as soon as you’ve uploaded, you don’t need to add anything extra in Alamy Image Manager. For more information on what fields to fill in check out our cheat sheets for Photoshop and Lightroom

No, although we license images with captions in multiple languages you should only caption them in English. We’ll translate them into other languages using a machine translation system. If you add your own translations it could confuse the system and lead to your images being demoted in the search results.

We’ve put together a list of recommended keywording companies. If you mention you’re an Alamy contributor, they often give discounts.

No, that’s not a service we offer and you know your images better than us. If you have a large amount of images with your keywords on a spreadsheet you can send that to us and we’ll apply the information for you.

Our customers are increasingly asking for broader rights so we’d recommend selling your images as RF but the decision is yours. You can choose a different stock photo license for each image you upload, but we suggest not giving the same or very similar looking images different licence types.

If images contain people or property they need to have the right releases to be sold for commercial use.

If you choose to sell all your images under one license type, you can set a default by clicking the cog button in Alamy Image Manager.

If you have lots of images from the same shoot, or a similar subject matter that need the same annotation, you can batch edit in Alamy Image Manager to speed things up. You can add captions, tags, license types etc. to a whole series of images. It’s really easy to do, just select the images in your batch and then use the tool in the same way. To help get you started using the Alamy Image Manager see our walk-through tutorial here.

You shouldn’t include anyone’s personal or sensitive data in the captions and tags of your images.

There are a few exceptions to this rule where it’s ok to link relevant information, these are:

If you’re unsure about what you can include then check out our blog for more information.

To help get you started using the Alamy Image Manager, see our walk-through tutorial here.