David Once again your posts are of great value to many. I am sure some already know what you are saying but I think many others will take away many of these valuable tips.
On another topic……..I went to see Bruce Springsteen last night. He sang his old songs, new songs (which were great), he sang songs from AC/DC with the lead singer from Pearl Jam, 'Just like Fire Wood' from 'The Saints' and more. So much that he was on stage for nearly 4 hrs!!! Not bad for a bloke that is in his 60's. He crowd surfed, climbed thru the crowd and sat amongst them. One Girl even slipped a mobile phone into his pocket which he only discovered when he got back on the stage which he said “now that’s a first”. He had up to 10 people on stage from the audience dancing with himself and the muso's at the same time. Audience connection was amazing!! Ages were from Teens to Retirees, a real tribute. He said he at the end of the night "Australia, I'll be back with the E-Street Band" so will I when he comes. Clearly I like his music. Have a good weekend to you all… Regards Ben All About Movies Pty Ltd Movie Memorabilia - Original Vintage Movie Posters and Lobby Cards Website: www.allaboutmovies.com.au Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/AllAboutMoviesAu Follow us on Twitter: <http://www.twitter.com/AllAboutMovies1> www.twitter.com/AllAboutMovies1 Contact Details Ph: 07 / 3379 8566 From: MoPo List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of David Sent: Wednesday, 26 February 2014 9:18 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [MOPO] A Few Words About Your Poster Images On Our Internet 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 <https://www.google.com/webhp?tab=ww&ei=KBQNU4SbH5DqrQf8lICICA&ved=0CBEQ1S4#q=image+optimizer> &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 ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: [email protected] In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content. Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: [email protected] In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
