Photography
How do I make sure we are picking the best sample to send for photography?
First check that the label or packaging is not off-centre or applied crookedly to the product. Look at several samples (even from different batches) to get the best possible sample. Secondly, we need the products to arrive in perfect condition. The best way to do this is to place the products in a box or container and surround them with bubble wrap or paper to avoid them becoming crushed in transit. Plastic courier bags should only be used for hard products that can’t be dented.
What information should I send with the products?
We need to know the following:
Who the contact person is and what company you are from. Most of the time we can work this out from the product, but we can't read your mind.
Do you want 2D photos, 3D or a group shot?
Do you want copies of the high res images sent to you?
Is there a release date for the product?
Do you want the products back? Normally we will send them back to you so let us know if you do not want to receive them back.
Use our Order Form to speed up the process.
How long will it take to photograph my products?
Obviously this will depend on how many products you have sent us, and what else we have in the studio at the time, but normally we can have jobs completed within a couple of days. If you need it sooner than that just give us a call and we should be able to help you.
Can you do group shots or stylised photographs?
Yes we can. We can group several products together and take a single photograph of the group if this is what you want. We can also take stylised images that depict the product's use, with props such as garnishing and utensils etc. Obviously these photos take longer to create and require some form of art direction from you so that we end up with the type of shot you are looking for.
What do you mean by “high resolution”?
The term “high resolution” refers to how many pixels of image data occupy any given area of the image. For commercial printing the recognised standard resolution is 300dpi or 300 pixels/inch (118.11 pixels/cm is the metric equivalent, but “dpi” is the common use). This means for every lineal inch, either vertically or horizontally, there are 300 pixels (square blocks of colour) of data in the image. Note: An image can be high resolution but still be very small e.g. 10mm x 10mm @ 300dpi.
Once the resolution is set to 300dpi you then need to look at the dimensions of the image, or how much physical space it will occupy on the page. In order for us to provide images that are big enough to use in a variety of printed matter or other uses, the product displayed in the image will need to occupy about 200mm of the image. This dimension is fairly arbitrary, as we can never anticipate exactly how big the designer wants each product to be on their pages, so it is better to have an image that is too big rather than too small. An image can easily be made smaller to any size required without affecting the quality, but making it larger soon degrades the image as the size increases to a point where the pixels become visible in the printed image.
We are currently photographing our images at 250-300mm which allows them to be used at A4 size or slightly bigger if necessary. An image that is smaller than 1200 pixels (101.6mm @ 300dpi) will be treated as low resolution when it is loaded onto our web site.
As a final comment, beware of judging the size of an image (physical dimension) by the size of the file (Mb). Different file formats produce wildly different file sizes and JPEG files, although one of the smallest, can vary in their file size depending on the amount of compression used and even the content of the image.
In summary any images supplied to us need to be:
300dpi
200mm or bigger (2362 pixels or more)
If in doubt, give us a call.
Existing Images
Can I send you the images I already have of my products?
Absolutely, but they need to be good quality, and big enough. Read the section above about high resolution images or send us a sample image if you are unsure and we will let you know if it is suitable.
What information do you need if I am sending you images instead of actual products?
We need the images named with the GTIN, and a list of all the products that the images relate to. Include the GTIN, description and dimensions. We also need to know if there is a release date for the images to go live, and whether the product is to be listed as Available Now or Request status. Use our Order Form to speed up the process.
Digital Asset Management
What kind of files can you manage for me?
Any file that needs to stored and accessed by one or more people. Collectively these files are often referred to as Digital Assets or Digital Media. Typically we store product images, group shots and serving suggestion images, product, brand or company logos, television commercial video files and more. So if you have a need to make a Digital Asset available to one or more people more than once, then our system is suitable for the task.
How do I know which product images or files you already hold?
Just log in to our web site and have a look. If you are the supplier of the products and you don’t already have a login, just click on the register link for a new account. You will also be able to see recent requests other users have made for your images, past invoices and any requests you have made for images.
How do I control who has access to my files?
Files in our system can be marked in a number different ways that control who can see and download them. They can be set to Private so only users from your company who have access to your private files can see them. They can be marked with a release date so they are hidden from general view until the release date. They can also be set to Request status so that once they go live, you must authorise each use before the file is available to download by the user who requested it.
How do I get started?
Set up a user account by clicking on the Register link in the menu above, then send us the products you need photographing or files you already have that you want loaded. You can use our Order Form to speed up the process. We will set you up with an account and send you a confirmation when your products have been loaded.
Catalogue Pages
What are Catalogue Pages?
These are pages that typically display a number of products along with the product image, description and a scannable barcode and any other data about each product you might want to include. You can customise the design to have as many products on the page as you like, as well as what ever data you want. You supply the data in a spreadsheet and work with our designer to customise the look of the pages then we put it all together and send it to you as a PDF file.
General
What do these terms mean?
GTIN - Global Trade Item Number. This is the barcode number.
Barcode - The graphic printed on the product. This is a machine readable symbol that is used by barcode scanners. It normally only contains a number (the GTIN) but more sophisticated symbols can contain other information.
CMYK and RGB - These are different colour spaces used to represent the colour spectrum in images and other graphics. CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black, the four colours used in the commercial printing process. RGB stands for Red, Green, Blue which are the colours that are captured by digital cameras. Images can be saved in a number of different colour spaces including these two. The most common colour space for web based graphics and images is RGB.
We can accept images saved in any colour space, but be aware that some are designed to enable the reduction of an images file size and consequently are not suitable for inclusion in our library. If you need further clarification please give us a call.
TIFF and JPEG - These are just two of the many file formats an image file can be saved in. JPEG is the most common file format as it has the ability to reduce the file size by compressing the image and discarding parts of the image that we can barely detect. We can accept any file format, but be careful with JPEG files that have been severely compressed. There is a point where the quality is severely compromised. Again, call us if you have any questions.
QPN - A proprietary image number that is not used by Images in Space. As per international standards, our system uses the GTIN to identify each unique product since this is what the GTIN was designed to do. Any image associated with each product is named with the GTIN as part of it's file name - simple!. If you are asked to provide a QPN number just laugh and quote the GTIN.