Images In Space Ltd provides photography and file management services to hundreds of suppliers of FMCG products. Typically these suppliers have multiple products that are available through one or more retail channels, and a myriad of material associated with their products, leading to the need for a service provider to efficiently manage the storage and distribution of those digital assets, with access privileges and release dates for sensitive products or files. As a supplier you will get consistent, high quality photography of your products and the peace of mind knowing that the files stored on our web site are available to the people who need them. Private material can be managed alongside public files ensuring all your digital assets are kept safely in one place.
Register before you do anything
Before you send us anything it is a good idea to register on our web site for an account. This will give us the details about you and your company we need to load the product images and other files in the correct way, and allow you to view the files once we have loaded them. Our on-line system allows us to enter job details about the products or files you supply, how they are to be loaded and who can see them. We also generate an invoice via the web site when it is all done and need to send this to the correct person. Register here for free.
Adding new products to the site.
There are two ways of adding new products to our web site:
- By sending us a product. Send us a good sample of the product.(see FAQ for details on sample selection and the information we require)
- By sending your existing files and the relative information. You can send us any existing files you have, providing they are suitable.(see FAQ for details on image resolution and the data we require if you are sending us existing files)
Fill out our Order Form to make sure we get all the information we need to load the products correctly. This form contains all the common questions we ask you prior to photography or loading of your files.
Images in Space Ltd provides a single location for thousands of product images, logos, artwork files, movies and other material that is required to help you communicate with the consumer through a variety of media. All our files are guaranteed to be of high quality and suitable for use in print, space management planograms, mobile phones or on-line stores. Retailers get free access to high resolution images.
Register for a login
Start by registering for a login here, or click on the Register link on the main menu. Once your login has been approved we will send you a password and you can get started.
Available Now vs Request
Products in the library have a status of either Available Now or Request. Available Now files can be downloaded directly from the site to your computer without any delay. Request files must be approved first by the product owner. This allows the owners of the files to keep control over the process, or to ensure that the correct files are being used in certain situations.
Normally a requested file is available for download within 24 hours.
Place Order and receive confirmation
To request images or files with a Request status, simply add them to your basket and check out as normal. You will receive confirmation of your request via email and the file owners will be notified of your request.
Download the files
When the request is approved you will be notified that the files are ready for downloading. By logging back in to the site you can view all your past orders and download the images at your leisure.
The search box
Type in part of the Description, GTIN or Manufacturer name for a quick search.
Detailed search page
For a more detailed or specific search you can go to the Detailed Search Page to make a more refined search if the Search Box search returns too many results.
Browse Category list
This allows you to find all the products listed under a particular Category or Subcategory. Useful if you are building a planogram of a single category.
Search using a shopping list
A quick way of finding the products you need is to use a “Shopping List? A Shopping List is a file that contains a list of products you are searching for. The file must contain the GTIN at the beginning of each line, followed by the Description and Manufacturer Name. The easiest way to create a Shopping List is by using a spreadsheet application and saving the file either as a TAB separated TXT file or a CSV file. If you use either Apollo or Spaceman you can generate a Shopping List from your planogram by using our ImageList Creator software.
Add items to the Basket
Once you have found what you are looking for, add the products to the Basket. This can be done from the Product Detail Page, the Search Result List or Gallery, or the Bookmark Page by clicking on the Basket Icon on each of these pages.
Enter publication details
Enter the publication details in the field so that the product owner knows where the files are being used, and so you will have details about this order if you look it up in your Order History.
Downloading the files
Available Now products can be downloaded immediately from the Order Details page. Any items which are Request status and have been approved can also be downloaded.
On the My Account page you will find the following items available:
Change your Profile
Here you can change details about yourself or your company. Note that the company details cannot be changed directly by you as this may affect other users in our system that are linked to the same company. Please send us a request to change the details and we will do this for you.
You can change your password, select how may items will be displayed in search results, either in list view or gallery view, and choose whether to be kept up to date with any news or updates we may have from time to time.
My Basket
This lists any items you have added to your basket. You can see how many items are in your basket in the top menu bar and access your basket by clicking on this link too.
Bookmarks
Bookmarking allows you to temporarily store a selection of products for later use. As you search for products you may not want to add them to the basket immediately, but keep them together to review or sort through at a later time. You can select the items you have bookmarked that you want to add to the basket and add them all in one go.
Order History
Once you have placed an order it will appear in the Order History page and can contain both Request and Available Now products. You can visit the Order History page to see the status of your orders and open them to download the files associated with each order.
Requests (Pending)
This link is only available to product owners (Suppliers). It displays the requests that other users have made that are awaiting approval. Open a request and select Approve or Deny next to each item. If you wish to deny any item in the request you must provide a reason in the box below. This allows us to process your instructions correctly and to give feedback to the requestor if they have made an error or an alternative product is to be used.
Requests (Completed)
Again, just for product owners. This shows all the completed requests that have either been approved or denied.
Product Reports
In this section product owners can view how many times each product has been downloaded by users. This information is useful when deciding which status to set for each product, as it is cheaper to set a product to Available Now if it is going to be used many times throughout the year.
Jobs
The Jobs page shows a summary of any jobs we have in the studio for your company. It allows you to keep track of the progress of the job and see when it has been completed. Once a job is completed it will be turned into an invoice that is also available to view on-line. If you need a copy of an invoice for a photography job, you can download it from here.
Invoices
If you need a copy of any of your invoices, this is where you can come to get it.
File formats
Although most space management applications can handle several different file formats, we have chosen JPEG to use to save files in. This is because JPEG has the best compression/quality ratio, giving the smallest files while maintaining excellent quality in the image colour and clarity.
Naming conventions
Space management applications display images by locating the appropriate image files in a known folder. The image files must be named correctly in order for the application to display them correctly. The images must be named with the product’s GTIN (barcode number) with a file extension that determines which orientation the file represents (front, side, top etc).
Apollo vs Spaceman
Each of these software packages use a different naming convention so we have built this into our web site to allow you to choose the most appropriate naming convention. The difference is in the file extensions with Apollo using _1.jpg, _2.jpg, _3.jpg and Spaceman using .1, .2, .3 etc.
Check digit inclusion
The check digit is the last character of a 13 digit GTIN and is used to check that the barcode scanner has captured all of the numbers contained in the barcode correctly. Using a mathematical calculation, the check digit is determined by all the preceding numbers. If the check digit matches what the scanner reads then there is a very high probability that the scanner has scanned the barcode correctly. Some space management applications can display images that do not have a check digit included in their name. We recommend leaving the check digit intact, but have given you the choice.
Suffix
This is an initiative provided by the Apollo application. It allows a planogram to be viewed with either individual items or cases. In order for the software to know which images to display (case or retail item) an additional suffix can be added to the images to distinguish between the image of the case and the image of the retail item. The suffix is a capital letter and is determined by the naming convention chosen by the planogram’s creator. This is an optional extra and is only needed for these special occasions.
Dimensions file format and contents
The file you download containing the product dimensions is a TAB separated TXT file. It contains the GTIN, Product Description, Height, Width, Depth, Manufacture Name and Category. The file can be imported directly into your space management application and used to populate the above fields of each product record.
ImageList Creator
ImageList Creator is an application that is used in conjunction with Apollo to create a Shopping List from your planogram. Registered users who have space management access to the web site can download the ImageList Creator software and use in on their computer. We also have an equivalent for Spaceman users, the Image Report.
ImageList Creator was developed to extract data from the selected items in a planogram and save them to a file. The file is then used to search for products on our web site and download the required images.
The benefit to the user is that it dramatically speeds up the process of finding and then downloading images of the products you have in your plan, giving you more time to spend on the things that matter.
Download ImageList Creator 2.1
Installation:
Download the zip file above and extract the contents to a folder (e.g. C:/Program Files/Images In Space/).
Add a new item to your Apollo Custom Menu called ImageList Creator 2.1 and point it to the ImageList Creator 2.1.exe file you saved above.
Open a plan in Apollo, select the products you need images for, then choose ImageList Creator 2.1 from the Custom menu.
Click on Create List and save the list to your hard drive.
Log into www.imagesinspace.co.nz and upload your file.
You’re done!
ImageCleaner
ImageCleaner is a house keeping application for space management users or those who download and store a lot of images from our site. It will check with the web site, then remove discontinued product images from the selected folders on your computer. By comparing the file names with the list of deleted items on our web site, you can free up disk space and clean up any unwanted files.
ImageCleaner 3.1 is a utility that removes obsolete and outdated images from your Space Management images folder.
By using ImageCleaner 3.1 to download a list of deleted products from the Images in Space web site, you can quickly clean your images folder of obsolete image files. You may not be aware when a product is deleted or discontinued, and to locate the relevant images on your computer each time a product is deleted is a waste of time.
Let ImageCleaner 3.1 do this for you.
Download ImageCleaner 3.1
Installation:
Download the zip file above and extract the contents to a folder (e.g. C:/Program Files/Images In Space/).
Open the stand-alone ImageCleaner 3.1 application and follow the on-screen instructions to update the latest deletions list from our web site and choose a folder to clean.
If you store your images in multiple folders just repeat the last step for each folder.
ImageCleaner 3.1 will recognise images saved in different naming conventions including Apollo Traditional, Apollo Long and Spaceman .1 format.
We recommend you perform this task at least once a year or more frequently if you deal with a lot of images.
Browser Version
For best results when viewing this site Images in Space recommends these browser versions. If you are using Internet Explorer 6 it is recommended that you upgrade to at least version 7 or preferably version 8.
Internet Explorer 8
Firefox 3.6
Safari 4
Opening Zip Files
If you are using a PC you can use the built in Unzipper ("Compressed (zipped) Folder") in Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 or any third party extractor application. On Mac you may need to associate Stuffit Expander with all Zip files. To do this select the Zip file, select Command-I (Get Info) and choose Stuffit Expander as the Open With application. Click on Change All button to make it apply to all Zip files.