We keep an eye on various photo blogs and professional forums, mostly to keep track of the problems that photographer's are faced with, to see if we can help find solutions.

The response to the fotoKeyword Harvester has been overwhelmingly positive. The keywording log jam has been unblocked for many photographers already.

There have been a couple of postings about copying other people's keywords. One posting I saw went something like this, "It just looks like a program to make it easy to copy other people's keywords." 

I'm happy to take a moment here to make clear our response:

The fact that it is possible to use the fotoKeyword Harvester to simply copy someone else’s keywords is no more relevant than saying you shouldn’t buy a scanner because you could use it to copy someone else’s images. The copying of keywords is already happening in our industry, and I’ve done my best to get photographers beyond that.

If I had wanted to write a program that would let you just copy keywords and reformat the block, I could have written it in a few days and had it to market in two weeks. Instead a team of us worked nearly a year to give photographers a program that is an alternative to just copying other people’s keywords.

If other photographers use my image as research for keywording their images, the quality of keywording will improve in the process. This is something that over time may have a “wikipedia" effect where other people’s images might be used as research for my image, but in the future those same photographers might be able to use my image for research on keywording their own images.

Your keywords need to specifically describe YOUR image. It makes sense to look at as many images as possible to see what words are being used to describe similar images, harvest words from ALL sources, combine them, and then use your judgment to remove the words that don't work. I wouldn't want another photographer's specific image keywords on my image. I want a better group of words. I want the best. The fotoKeyword Harvester makes that a fast process.

You start with words you can find in different sources to get as many words as you can, then use your judgment to select the words that will give your images the best advantage. The harvested keywords are a starting point, not the end result. The controlled vocabulary, the Keyword Composer, built into the fotoKeyword Harvester helps you get a true advantage. And creating keyword templates for similar images will save you time in the future.

The bottom line to all of this is that the people who will really benefit from good, accurate keywording are the photo buyers who will be able to consistently find what they are looking for, and because of that photographers will also benefit.

Remember... You can't sell them if they can't find them.