No matter how talented you are, your masterpieces won't get sold if designers can't find them. To date, keywords are still the only reliable method that are used to locate photographs.

As much as we like computers to help us out here, unfortunately they are not of much use here. Computers can't really look at a picture (example http://www.123rf.com/photo_10376439.html) and say, “The photo shows a group of happy young children lying on the ground and smiling under the summer park” and subsequently automatically attach meaningful relevant keywords such as, “children, young, summer, park, happy, colorful, smiling, female, male, pink, yellow, green, blue” to your pictures. We wish they could though, really!!!

Now that we know computers can't help us, we have to help ourselves. Now, you've shot your masterpiece, what next? You need the help of a keywording program that will help you edit the IPTC data for the image

Before we go into the applications part, let's understand a bit about IPTC. What is IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council)? The IPTC system can be thought of as a cataloging standard that helps us to organize image content as it stores all sorts of information such as the photographer's name, copyright, licensing information and keywords. IPTC embeds itself directly into the image and allows programs that support IPTC to easily search and organize photographs based on its IPTC information.

You may use programs that support editing of the IPTC tags to help you keyword your images before submission to 123RF.com. Here are some applications that supports IPTC editing (in no order of preference)

• Extensis Portfolio (http://www.extensis.com)
• Microsoft Photo Info Tool
  (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b038d4b5-1d88-437c-9f54-1fb0d210b5ef&DisplayLang=enFamilyID=b038d4b5-1d88-437c-9f54-1fb0d210b5ef&DisplayLang=en)
• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe LightRoom

The part that you should pay particular attention to is the IPTC keywords component for your photographs. We recommend that you use any of the tools above to help you keyword your images before you upload them to 123RF. This is because 123RF's engine supports IPTC data and will detect and extract the keywords of a photograph for you. However, if you do not have any applications that can edit IPTC data, you may opt to upload your photographs to 123RF and then keyword it using 123RF's easy to use web interface.

For your convenience, if you have uploaded your images to 123RF, here's how you can keyword them quickly and painlessly.

1. Log in to 123RF.
2. Scroll down, and look at the section For Photographer
3. Click on the link Sell Images
   
   
   
   
4. Click on the History tab. You will be able to see your submitted image summary reports on the next page.
   
   
   
   
5. Look towards the right bottom of the screen, you'll find a summary statistic that shows:
   The number of Uploaded images
   The number of Accepted images
   The number of Pending images
   The number of Rejected images
   
   
   
   
6. 123RF's review policy dictates that if an image is NOT keyworded or described adequately and accurately, our reviewers will not review them.
   
   
7. If you have pending images, do click on the Pending images number in the summary to view all your pending images.
   NOTE: Do you see that we have our LATEST addition?
   This section is for editorial worthy images that you have uploaded for the month. Please refer to the images under Uploading Editorial Content.
   
   
8. You should see your pending images like this.
   If your images have not been keyworded or described, you will see red text above the relevant text fields instructing you on what you should do. Just follow the numbered steps on the image.
   
   
   
   
9. This is what it would look like AFTER:
   
   
   
   STEP 3 : When you're done, click on the Save button.
   Remember that when you keyword you should only include words that accurately and obviously describe what you see in the image.
   
   Uploading Royalty-Free Content in your own language!
10. Now you can do that just by following all the steps above with just ONE additional step before you click that “Save” button. Repeat STEP 1 and 2 first. Refer to the image below.
    
    
    
    STEP 3 : You just have to click on “Translate to English” button.
    Then proceed to STEP 4 : Save. That's all it takes. Your images will be in queue for reviewing.
    
    
11. Uploading Editorial Content
    That is our latest addition on 123RF! To upload your images that you think is Editorial worthy, you just have to follow these simple steps. Refer to the image below.
    
    
    
    STEP 1 : Fill in the description of the image
    STEP 2 : Fill in the keywords for the image
    STEP 3 : Check the Consider for inclusion to 123RF Editorial if rejected if you want your images to be considered as Editorial, if you think it is Editorial Worthy. When you're done, click on the Save button.
    
    
    
    Here are a few guidelines that you should follow when you keyword:
    

1. Also try to put yourself into a client's shoe. Ask yourself these questions:
   If I wanted to find this image, what keywords would I put into the search box? The obvious should hit you, most would probably use:
   
   business, man, agony, asian
   
   
2. Of course, this gets trickier when you get tempted to keyword concepts into the image. It often does not help to insert keywords that convey concepts such as:
   
   torture, annoyance, madness, craze, exaggeration
   
   It's not difficult to see where this is going and where we'll end up.What would happen is that this image would clutter up the search results performed by other customers and adds to the frustration level.
   
   So our advice to you is simple:
   Don't Do It! Do us all a favor and stick to the obvious.
   
   
3. For images that are supposed to convey some sort of concept, it would be prudent to keyword the obvious concepts only. We know it's hard to resist spamming every single thing that comes into your mind as it will muddle up the search results for our customers. Keep things nice and simple.

  Happy Keywording!