Keyword Guidelines

When adding keywords to your assets, you should describe what things are, not what they could be. The context must be visible or strongly implied for a keyword to be added. 

Keywords must also be specific to the image or video and not copied and pasted across an entire series. For example, if there is only a laptop in 5 out of 10 assets, the keyword "laptop" should only be added to 5 out of 10 assets.

Start with descriptive keywords:

• Who is in the photo or video
  • You don't need to add: gender, age, ethnicity, and the number of people in the shot; this information is automatically generated from the attached model releases
  • You should add: other descriptors of a subject (plus size, father, anonymous)
• What is in the photo or video
  • Broad subjects (food, business, family)
  • Specific subjects (sandwich, cat, toothbrush)
  • Actions (eating, playing, typing)
• When it is taking place (summer, night, New Year’s Eve)
• Where it was taken (indoors, forest, hair salon)
• How it was taken (overhead, double exposure, timelapse)

Next, consider the implied keywords:

• Concepts (togetherness, lifestyle, friendship)
• Moods (happy, depressed, bored)

This is where we find the most common mistake, which is to stretch the possible concepts that a photo or video expresses. If the context is not visible, leave it out.