Stop keywording your stock photos
I am … not sure what I fully am. I have a job as an R&D engineer. At the same time, I have a degree in the somewhat related field of seismic imaging, where I’ve dabbled with different algorithms. I also own a camera and have been known to side-hustle with it.
I like that balance — the grind professional artists often go through seems hard. The physics/programming day job is very fun and stable, which keeps me fully a ‘prosumer’ in the camera world. I wouldn’t say my pictures are revolutionary, but I enjoy them, the occasional print gets sold to an acquaintance and here and there I do some shoot for a customer. And, I sell stock photos.
I hate doing stock photos. It’s a labour of volume and tediousness. Every photo needs a title, and for discoverability, at least a good number of keywords that not only convey the contents of an image, but preferably some emotion or understanding of the image, to reach the customers the image is perfect for. This a boring work to me. Submitting more than 3 images is mind numbing, even with the keyword suggestions most platforms use nowadays. I don’t want to click through each of them!
Image recognition machine learning models are exciting to me, for it would take the most boring part out of a workflow that nets me only a few dollars per month. These models take an image, and try to recognise its content in a specific way. That could be objects in the photo, depth understanding, or whatever the model is trained for.
Earlier image recognition models were a step in this direction. You get some hints as to what an image contains, but largely, the output generated by simple image to object models is not appropriate for production work – I do not want the keyword “rock” 32 times. I want something that understands the scene, its intent, etc. I want a human touch.
But a human touch is expensive. It’s either me, which makes it expensive time-wise. I am not sure if there are keywording services, but if they exist, I doubt they’d be worth it. So we need a halfway solution that is affordable, but better than the computer equivalent o a toddler pointing at things and naming them.
The real kicker is combining image recognition with a model that has larger understanding of the world at large, Large Language Models. This is horribly phrased, as LLMs don’t actually understand jackshit. They are amazing at parroting information, and transposing information between situations. Show it twenty discussions on stock photography keywording, and it will parrot great keywords for an image that contains a sunset and a cow. Repetitive work that has been done before, now condensed into a service. Let’s not talk about who did the original work, lest we open that can of worms.
GPT-4 Vision
So, how does one go from an image to keywords ripe for stock photography? How do
we couple a text to image with a LLM? Fear not, the hard part is already
finished. One of the latest models that OpenAI exposes through their API is the
gpt-4-vision-preview, which
interfaces a image recognition input with then typical GPT interaction. The
cost? Well, money.
Original keywords Engadin, Switzerland
Generated title Winter Trek with Dog in Swiss Alps
Generated keywords Winter, Alps, Hiking, Engadin, Outdoor, Mountains, Nature, Switzerland, Snow, Adventure, Travel, Trekking, Cold, Scenic, Landscape, Exploration, Snowy Trail, Dog Walking, Companion, Pet, Leisure Activity, Friendship, Human and Animal, Exercise, Backpack, Cloudy Sky, Footprints, Hiking Trail, Active Lifestyle, Remote Location, Wide Angle View
How the OpenAI exposes their models is through an API. Unfortunately, this means that we need to use a self-programmed tool to get our images into their model, and get their response back. Their business model is that each requests costs a small amount of compute credits, which can be directly bought (or billed) through their website.
My workflow
I normally go about my year, and organise my photos in Lightroom. Once in a while I say to myself, wow I should really get these 100 images onto e.g. Adobe Stock. However, I don’t generally use the tagging system unless for really specific tags, nor do I use captions. Hence, getting my images in a discoverable state will take quite some work. Here enters I-to-T+LLM. To follow along you need to be a bit savvy with computers – the minimal requirements would be to at least install Python 3.
My ideal approach is that I tag each series at least with a location, and
possibly some very general keywords about a whole series of photos. Then, using
a combination of various Python packages (e.g. PIL and a very outdated module
called piexif which should definitely be replaced), I was able to hack
together a script that takes a bunch of input images, queries the image through
OpenAI’s model together with the following request:
I want thirty keywords to describe this image for Adobe Stock, targeted
towards discoverability. These keywords are already present: {existing_kws},
please include the ones that are relevant or location specific. Please output
them comma separated. Please as the first entry, output an editorialized title,
also separated by commas. Don't output any other characters.
Original keywords Engadin, Switzerland
Generated title Starry Night over Swiss Alpine Cabin
Generated keywords Switzerland, Night, Milky Way, Alps, Stars, Outdoor, Engadin, Hiking, Nature, Mountains, Astronomy, Astrophotography, Constellations, Galaxy, Universe, Stargazing, Cosmic, Night Sky, Dark, Stone Cabin, Secluded, Travel, Adventure, Wilderness, Remote, Cosy, Twilight, Serenity, Tranquil, Landscape
The neatest thing? I was able to put all this information back into the file in one go, such that the only thing that needs to be done afterwards is to upload to (e.g.) Adobe Stock. Their platform automatically recognises the tags and the generated image.
In total, I was able to tag 127 images for about 75 cents. Now, for some people this might be worth it, while for others it might be out of scale. If you know Python, give my code a spin here. Please make sure you know what you are doing, and don’t run it on large folders! You might run into unexpected costs for which I am not responsible.
Check out the code here. If you’re interested in my actual photography work, check out larsgebraad.com.