wow, David... this is terrific. Lots of info I never had before.
Thank you!!
RDB
Richard Del Belso
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2014 22:18:10 +1100
From: shadow....@gmail.com
Subject: [MOPO] A Few Words About Your Poster Images On Our Internet
To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
Hi All
In keeping with the teach
a man to fish saying here’s another article I thought I would
put together for
those of you who have an online movie poster store, might be a
good idea to grab a
coffee and a notepad, there will be a test later…
Movie posters are a
visual thing, it's probably the one thing that sets them apart
from most other products
you can buy online – you don’t have to try them on, you don’t
have believe they
will peel the potatoes better or faster, and you generally don’t
find they
enlarge anything -so it probably makes sense that how you
visually deliver them
to the internet is just as important as what you price them at,
right?
Damn Right!
I would like to offer a
few tips on Types, Size and SEO when it comes to images
--------------------------
Types
There are three main
'types' of images used on the internet. jpg (or jpeg), gif and
png.
JPEG - This is the most
common used and probably the best to use for most colour and/or
detail images. The
main reason is you don’t lose much detail and quality when you
reduce the size.
GIF – These are good to
use for icons and single colour images but not so for colour
ones, this is
mainly because reducing the size (kb) and maintaining quality is
nigh on
impossible.
PNG - A good option - there
are two version png-8 and png-24, the latter is great for logos
and images the
former is lighter (kb). But, they tend to be heavier (kb)
Personally, unless you
have the program (like Photoshop) and you know what you are
doing, stick with
jpegs.
--------------------------
Image Size
So, how big should your
image be when clicked on (to be enlarged) on your website?
This is a personal
preference - but you have to bear in mind screen size, with the
exception of a
few dealers (who do it for quality of their sales) Supersize is
probably not
necessary.
First up - I recommend
uniformity - it simply good design on a website and secondly the
first image
seen should be a thumbnail.
A thumbnail is actually a
reduced version of the bigger image – it is a SEPARATE image to
the big one –
too many people simply make the big one small in size but it’s
actually still a
full size image and weighs a lot (takes a long time to
load).e.g. (and we all
have seen it) an image takes forever to load on a website yet
it’s quite small
in size – why it that? Simply: you've not change the weight of
your image, you
just told your web page that when it shows this picture here it
should be ‘pretend
to be smaller’ size. In other words you’ve made the surfer look
at your elephant
through the wrong end of the binoculars but it’s still a full
size elephant!
Now, as to ideal size of
your larger image, well that’s up to you but I recommend around
800-1000px
(long side) x whatever the ratio is on the short side.
Unfortunately, that’s
just half of it - making your image smaller isn't always making
it lighter
(less kb), you also NEED to optimise your images too - if you
have Photoshop
(or similar) then you probably already know what to do.
If not…
Just as the size of your
image is important (width x height) equally so is the 'weight'
of your image
(kb); in an ideal world for our hobby you should have an image
that is (say)
800px X 530 px and is less than 100kb.
With mobile phone surfing
prevalent these days it's more and more important to optimise
your images as a
courtesy to your client.
So,
optimise your images - either invest in a program or there are
free ones out
there (search:
https://www.google.com/webhp?tab=ww&ei=KBQNU4SbH5DqrQf8lICICA&ved=0CBEQ1S4#q=image+optimizer)
Here's some free online
ones you can try that I have already tested for you (I liked the
first one)
http://jpeg-optimizer.com/
http://www.imageoptimizer.net/
http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/imageoptimizer/
Of course the next step
is to make your poster image into a thumbnail…and that depends
on the type of
web site you have and can be discussed another day.
Note #1: If you are
simply displaying your pictures in a gallery (like Photobucket)
then it will
auto resize and optimize your images for you, you can even set
the size
parameters in the settings – but I digress, this discussion is
about those who have
their own poster website (selling etc).
Note #2: How long it
takes your images to load is directly proportional to how long
you will keep a
surfer on your website. Longer to load less time and money
spent.
CHECK your load time –
there is a number of websites who will tell you how fast/slow
your website
takes to load, trust me, looking at your website from your own
computer is no
test: http://tools.pingdom.com/ http://www.webpagetest.org/
SEO – Image Search Engine Optimisation
Almost every single image
on the internet is spidered (looked at) by search engines, but
the search
engine doesn’t actually know what it is a picture of, so simply
posting a
picture of the poster you are selling won’t help your website,
you have to give
it some ALT tags.
An ALT tag is a
description of the image which is ‘hidden’ in the code of the
website but is
there for search engines to find them, eg when someone searches
for “Mr Music
Daybill Movie Poster” (without the quotes) in say Google, guess
who’s top of
the list? Go on try it, I’ll wait. Click the first result and
let me know…it
won’t be a multi choice question. In other words – be relevant
in your ALT
tags. But please don’t think you can populate the ALT tag with
lots of keywords
– won’t work, search engines will ignore it. Remember, you
aren’t that smart –
Mr Google is.
Examples…here’s some ALT
tag examples I have extracted against one image on some major
player’s websites
EMP - alt="6d001
DELIVERANCE New Zealand daybill '72 Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds,
Ned Beatty,
Boorman classic!"
This is actually pretty
good. In reality the only tags that matter are ‘DELIVERANCE New
Zealand daybill’
the use of the actor’s names and “Boorman classic!” won’t
improve the result
any better than the
aforementioned
words/phrase, nor does the product code doesn’t help either,
probably and
overuse of relevant words but still: Very Good.
--------------------------
HA: alt=”Movie
Posters:Horror, 13 Ghosts (Columbia, 1960). One Sheet
(27" X
41") Ghost ViewerStyle. Horror.. ... Image #1"
Not good at all. Think
like a real world internet user, at best the consumer is going
to search for “13
Ghosts movie poster” – all the rest of the information ensures
any chance this
site and this poster is found is next to none. Poor.
--------------------------
MPB – I am aware this
site is new and still being tweaked so I won’t be too hard,
much…No Alt tags on
any image and all images are titled by the item number and not
the poster title
and type. Very hard to know it will generate a search engine
result for the
poster title “The Big Heat” when iot is called “sale_293a_031” –
I understand the
reasons why but: RFI – Room For Improvement.
--------------------------
Now for those of you who
have hundreds, or even thousands of posters that you are
suddenly thinking “oops,
better rename them” there is a number of good bulk rename
programs out there –
I have used “Bulk Rename Utility” for years but it is a step
learning curve so
unless you are confident find something else!
As I have said before,
and told many clients and anyone else who will listen (carpark
attendant, coffee
barista, mystery lady who leaves us a packet of Tim Tams every
week) – having a
website is easy, making it work for you is a lot of hard work –
do the basic
early and it gets easier and the results do get better,
exponentially.
This has really just
scratched the surface but I hope it has helped someone.
Any questions, just ask
David Rew
Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com
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