How I Keyword Images? By a Cutcaster Contributor

As you know we have been going over some of your files and helping people with their keywording. We still need everyone to go back in and do this themselves. However when I was going through one contributors work, I was pleasantly surprised to see how well he keyworded his images. He was great at adding in singular words and compound phrases that really describe both the image and to a smaller degree concepts surrounding the image. I emailed him to ask about his keywording workflow and this is what he said. It's simple and I hope it helps.

"As is well known, keywording is just as important as having a good image and without effective keywords an image will never be found and thus will never be sold. I keep a searchable database with all of the keyword combinations that I use. When I shoot a new image I first go to the database to find keywords that are good matches. I always ask myself the same questions about every image; who, what, when, where and why. I try to think of the best keywords that answer those questions and then search the Internet for things relating to those keywords. I carefully filter out anything that I don't think is relative to the image and the good results go straight to the IPTC of the image and in to my database. It used to take me a considerable amount of time to use this method but after using it for several years, it now takes me less than 5 minutes to effectively create keywords for an image. Practice makes perfect."

Everyone has their own workflow and process for adding keywords. We would like to hear yours. Add it to the comments below.

Keywording is going to be so important going forward so I need everyones help in dealing with this issue.