Auto Tagging Questions

[Wow]

I am reading in the help system about the auto-tagging feature which looks pretty incredible. Questions:

1. I am surprised that privacy is not explained or even mentioned, as I'd think this would be the 1st thought on anyone's mind that has never done this. I don't expect Help to explain the privacy policies of each vendor, but I'd at least like to have some idea of how this typically works? All all my personal photos floating around on a Google cloud server forever after to help their AI improve?

2. The help says "IMatch sends small renditions of the images to a service provider." Is this somehow different than a "small photo" :-)? I'm not trying to be a smartass, it's a genuine question.

3. Once I use a service to autotag all my images, is there any way to differentiate between keywords that were added automatically, vs keywords I added?

Thank You

[Mario]

Please start by reading the AutoTagger help, which explicitly addresses the privacy issues in the topic labeled Privacy

I also recommend reading the Supported Services section, which lists all supported services and links to their web sites. I'm sure each service web site covers their privacy policy in great detail.
I'm also sure you understand that I neither can or am allowed to copy/repeat the privacy statements of each of these services in the Auto Tagger app.

Before you can use any of these services you have to create an account with that service.
Which also involves reading and understanding and agreeing to their terms of service, their privacy policy etc.
And this means if you have questions about the privacy, GDPR compliance etc. of a service, you should send these questions directly to the service provider.
IMatch only gives you access to the service you have agreed to use and configured.

In general, please contact the service and their legal departments if you have any questions.
I went the extra 10 dozen miles to offer you 4 services to choose from. I've implemented four differnt API connections to not force you to use a specific service.
All else is up to you. You don't find a service you like? Don't use Auto Tagger. Simple.

Auto Tagger explicitly prompts you to read the help when you start it for the first time. Not sure how you could miss that:




2. Thumbnails. Size depends on the service.

3. No.

[Wow]

Mario,

I'm not sure why you reply with such a tone to a user who's complimenting your product and excited to be using it. Very strange. I explicitly stated that I did not expect help to detail the privacy policies of the vendors. However I was hoping for feedback from users who have used the service and have some general idea of how they work or if they recommend one over others for privacy etc. Assuming it's possible to edit posts here, I will edit my post to remove my comment that I am surprised that privacy was not mentioned which I did not word well and obviously irritated you.

In the meantime search I'll Google with the hope of getting input from other photographers. Reading through 10 pages of legalese from these companies one often leaves unclear on how their services actually work privacy wise.

Thanks,

David

[Wow]

I'm not sure why you reply with such a tone to a user who's complimenting your product and excited to be using it.

Cancel that comment. I just reread the response and have nothing to complain about. Bottom line - I chose the forum name "Wow" because it expresses my reaction to using IMatch.

I wish I'd found it a long time ago. I've tried a lot of them over the years. Picasa was nice but would never consistently scan folders. I tried ACDPro multiple times and no matter what computer I ran it on it never did anything but crash. And of course there is the "industry standard" lightroom which I won't even comment on.

[Carlo Didier]

... And of course there is the "industry standard" lightroom which I won't even comment on.

Reminds me of Lightroom 1.x which consitently crashed when I tried to catalog more than ~1000 files at once ... never went back to Lightroom 
Took Adobe several major versions to get it working.

[Wow]

In a fantasy world where you could easily move between providers for everything without having to redo everything - email, photo management etc., companies like Adobe would never be able to maintain their dominance when better products like IMatch came along. Or they'd be forced to up their game. Unfortunately once you achieve sufficient size or dominance in a market, you can just keep producing an inferior product yet still continue to dominate the market.

Adobe Acrobat DC is a great example. It's literally a giant joke compared to a product like Bluebeam, yet still dominates the market.

[Mario]

If a company reaches a certain size and revenue region, many things just fall into place - because big money for marketing is available.

Adobe spends about 150 - 200 million US dollars per year on marketing and endorsements.

Since they introduced their subscription-only model for most of their products, their annual revenues  tripled.
For fairness: Photoshop + Lr for 17€ per month is good value.

They have a very large marketing and content department which churns out an endless stream of marketing material, web site content, tutorials, YouTube videos, social media posts etc.
This again is what Google is looking for to improve your page rank - frequently changing content on your web site and your social media representation. A better page rank makes your product appear at the top of the search results. Combine this with the ad money Adobe spends, their very dedicated SEO team etc.

Adobe also has a bazillion of users, many of which are artists which need to market themselves, and make money, by writing blog articles (featuring Adobe products), creating YouTube videos covering Adobe products, write book about Photoshop and Lightroom etc. Which again produces a lot of engagement, which again improves search engine ranking... Adobe gets that for free on top.

As an minimal level for Google ads, Google recommends a daily budget between 10 and 50 US$ - 300 to 1,500 US$ per month!.
But that does not get you far when companies like Adobe, Canto, ACDSee, Widen and many other big players bid for the same keywords (anything related to DAM).
If you are a startup with lots of investor money to burn for marketing, things are easier.
But if you are small company (or a one-person shop like photools.com) you will never outbid them for an ad placement. I don't have the money for marketing specialists.

I can only rely on word of mouth and the occasional magazine article to make IMatch known. Which is very hard to do.
When I write a FAQ article about IMatch, I cannot do support or development.
When I make a new tutorial video, I cannot do support or development.
...

The search engine / social media complex works in favor of big companies - to make them even bigger.

I have to keep updating my web site and the Help System to whatever Google now demands or prefers.
It's very easy to be removed from the index or get a bad ranking if something on your web site is not liked by the Google bots. Or if you don't have all the bells and whistles and metadata just right.

For example, this community has a far less than optimal ranking because the font is too small to read (on mobile phones).
At some point in time I will have to switch from SMF forum software to another community product which has a dedicated mobile mode - because Google now always favors mobile-first pages.
Companies like Adobe have entire departments for web site management and SEO. They structure everything to make it right for Google, to get better placements.
I don't.