Instant On Demand Dynamic Imaging

Written by Seth Helgeson Sunday, 01 May 2011 09:56

Nobody knows how difficult it can be to keep track of digital assets, such as product images and spec documents, more than online store owners. Depending on the number of products that you sell, and how you sell them, you can end up with a huge amount of files very quickly. Think of the following.

Nobody knows how difficult it can be to keep track of digital assets, such as product images and spec documents, more than online store owners. Depending on the number of products that you sell, and how you sell them, you can end up with a huge amount of files very quickly. Think of the following.

You are a clothing retailer that sells upwards of 1000 products, each of which is available in 5 different colors. In order to compile your printed catalog, you are already looking at keeping track of 5000 high-resolution product photos. Someone is responsible for making sure that the designers working on the printed catalog have access to these images, and that they are updated to reflect the most recent product line that you are promoting.

Now, lets say you also have a website. To show your 1000 products, you need lower resolution versions of each and every single product, which means another 1000 images added to the mix. The same person that has to be sure that the print designers have the right assets now has to keep tabs on another 1000 images.

But wait, it gets even better. The web department has decided to implement a pan & zoom feature on the website, which means that a higher resolution image will be required for each product on the website. Enter another 1000 images that are higher resolution than the original web images but don't need to be the full resolution needed for print, as that would slow download times and jeopardize the online user experience. Oh yeah, and did we mention that each product needs to have a thumbnail image on the website so that visitors can see a small image of the products on the list pages. Boom, another 1000 images to deal with.

So now we are up to a minimum of 8000 image files of 1000 products (remember there are 5 colors of each product) that will need to be updated in the Spring when your products take on a new color scheme. Hopefully at this point, it is becoming painfully obvious what a daunting task it can be to manage digital assets.

Introducing Dynamic Imaging with Maxoom. In a nutshell, dynamic imaging gives you multiple rich media options for your products. For example, with texture swapping you can upload a high-resolution image of your product, and some color swatches that the product is available in. Maxoom takes care of the interface that lets your visitors click a color to see the image of your product in the color that they want. Sprinkle in other features like pan & zoom, dynamic sizing and 360 degree spin and you have some pretty serious options for displaying your products online or in print.

Talk about saving time and money. Dynamic imaging allows you to automatically generate unlimited size variations, formats and quality - using one high resolution Digital Master image as the source. Cut time and cost to manually create static images in multiple sizes or versions, while there is no need to create and store duplicate images.