Marathon Press | Norfolk, NE

On-line viewing

Published April 13th, 2010 by Websites and Services Support

Upload a session for on-line viewing

Upload a photo session with optional high res images. The high res images allow you to use the zoom tool. This is especially nice when viewing a larger group such as a generations photo or sports group photo.

TIP: Test every session before you tell customers how to check them online to eliminate additional phone calls. Allows you time to upload that session and test before giving a date they will be posted and session ID in case regular activities prevent you from getting a session uploaded. Life happens.

Overview

These instructions assume that you have a folder containing the original images and that you can locate and access this folder from the computer you are sitting at.

Your photos must already be in the correct orientation (upright) before beginning the processes below. Use only alphanumeric characters (a-z and 0-9). Do not use spaces, symbols, or any other special characters if you are renaming your images. Leaving images with their raw image file name with underscores is acceptable just make sure that images DO NOT start with a dash or underscore.

If you have Adobe Photoshop CS4 or CS5 and you have not yet installed the Web Photo Gallery plugin, please visit this page first.

Uploading Proofs - The process will include doing the following:

1. Process your original images using the Web Photo gallery feature of Photoshop.

2. Optional to include high resolution images to enable the zoom feature in the Marketing Control Site panel. The zoom feature may not be available for some systems so please contact Marathon if you are interest in upgrading. (see a demo of the new session sytem)

3. Upload the images created by the Web Photo Gallery into the proofs folder of your FTP site.

4. Test the session to make sure that it is working properly.

Requirements

Adobe Photoshop version 5.5 or above.
FTP program

A 30-day trial version of CuteFTP is available for download from cuteftp.com. Other image manipulation and FTP software may be used, however the instructions were prepared with this program in mind. For other suggested programs to use when resizing your images, please click here.

STEP 1 - Process the Images

1.1 Create a new folder (i.e. on your Desktop or in your My Documents folder).

Use only alphanumeric characters (a-z and 0-9)
Do not use spaces, underscores, dashes or any other special characters when naming your session folder.
We recommend that you use only lowercase letters.
The name of this folder is the Session ID or password you will be giving to your client.
The Session ID is case-sensitive.

1.2 Open Adobe Photoshop.

1.3 In Photoshop, click the File > Automate > Web Photo Gallery menu item.

The Web Photo Gallery window should be displayed. The very top of this window has a "Styles" drop-down menu. By default is it set to Centered Frame 1 - Basic. Since you will be resizing images taller than 450px, you will want to change this to Simple.

1.4 In the Web Photo Gallery window click the Browse button (Windows) or the Choose button (Mac).

1.5 Locate and select the folder containing the original images, then click the OK button (Windows) or the Choose button (Mac).

1.6 Click the Destination button.

1.7 Locate and select the folder created in Step 1.1, then click the OK button (Windows) or the Choose button (Mac).

1.8 Click the Options drop-down menu and select the Large Images option.

1.9 Set the size for the large images in pixels.
We recommend Large Images be sized to 525px high or 800px wide (no wider that 925px with other software editing programs).

1.10 Click the Options drop-down menu again and select the Thumbnails option.

1.11 Set the size for the thumbnails in pixels.
We recommend Thumbnails sized to 110 pixels.

1.12 If you want to embed a watermark in your images before posting them to the public, click the Options drop-down menu and select the Security option. Now you can select Custom Text setting or any of the other options. Then you can position the watermark and even change the font color and it's opacity. Highly recommended if you want to protect your images by placing your own watermark than using the session default.

1.13 Click the OK button to begin processing the images.
A web browser window will open to display a preview of the gallery once Photoshop has finished processing your images. You can close this window.

STEP 2 - Create High Res Images

This option is not available for all session proofing systems. If your session login page asks for the email address AND the session ID then you can proceed with sizing high res images. If not, please skip to step 3 or ask about upgrading your system. If you are not sure if your system has this option available, please contact an internet service representative at 800-228-0629.

If you want to use the zoom feature when viewing session images click here to follow instructions on how to create high res images. If not, you can skip to STEP 3.

STEP 3 - Upload the Images

3.1 Open CuteFTP.

3.2 Connect to your FTP site.

The following information is needed to connect to your FTP site:

Host name, also referred to as host address
User name
Password

Please contact Marathon Internet Services Customer Support at 800-228-0629 to obtain this information if you do not already have it.

3.3 Once connected, locate and open the proofs folder by double-clicking on the folder icon labeled proofs.

3.4 Upload the folder created in Step 1.1 into the Proofs folder.

Select the folder to upload on the left and then click the Upload button at the top of the window. You MUST be withing the PROOFS folder before you click the upload button. Otherwise the folder with fall outside the folder and the session ID will not work. Very important to test every session before giving out the session ID/password to your customers.

STEP 4 - Test the Session

If your login screen simply asks for the Session ID then just key in the new session name and make sure you can view thumbnails and large images. You are done!

If your login screen asks for email address AND Session ID continue with the steps below to refresh the newly uploaded images.

4.1 Login to your MCS site at https://mcs.marathonpress.com .
Once logged in click on Web button in the upper right. Then click on the Session Proofing text link and then click Sessions.

4.2 Find the new folder you just created and click the word 'refresh' to now populate the number of images you just uploaded via FTP.

4.3 Now you can open your web browser (i.e. Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc..) and go to the Session Proofing login page on your website.

4.4 Type in your email address and the name of the folder created in Step 1.1 into the Session ID field.

4.5 Click the Submit button.

4.6 You should now be viewing the proofs.

If for some reason you do not see your images, please contact Marathon Internet Services Customer Support at 800-228-0629 for assistance.

Marathon also offers a Shopping Cart feature with your session viewing. Please ask about adding this feature to your online session viewing area. Allows for your clients to view images and order them online. You will receive an email confirmation when orders have been placed.

Categorized In: high resolution images | resizing | session proofing | session uploading

Create High Res Images

Published April 12th, 2010 by Admin

Creating High Res Images for online session viewing

This feature is only available in our latest session proofing system using your Marketing Control Site AMDIN login.

Before you upload a new session - First, create a folder on your desktop and the name of that folder will be the client's password. If this is the first time uploading a session make sure to size your session images and thumbnails following the instructions here before creating your high resolution images.

Quick Links
If you are familiar with this process, we have created some quick links so you can easily access the instructions you need.
Download Photoshop Action Script for creating your hires folder.
Marketing Control Site
High Res Images

Using your Marketing Control Site

You will be required to create your personal settings and save the changes before you can proceed to refresh the recently uploaded sessions or enabling any features. NOTE: You only have to create your profile when you initially get started with your account setup and then you can always edit your settings.

Watch a video tutorial on how to create your settings.

Next click on the Sessions link and refresh all the folder names to activate new (and previous sessions) for online viewing. Very important to refresh your Session IDs if you have been hosting sessions and/or using our shopping cart with Marathon's previous online viewing program.

Creating High Res Images

These instructions assume that you have a folder containing the original images somewhere on your desktop or hard drive. Your photos must already be in the correct orientation (upright) before beginning the process of resizing images based on our tutorials.

If you would like to enable the zoom feature you must include a folder called 'hires' along with 'images' and 'thumbnails' folders created by your image resizing software such as photoshop. Place all three of these folders within a main folder (perferably on your desktop) before you upload it via FTP. This desktop folder name will be your client's password or session ID. Also enable the zoom feature option within your Marketing Control Site settings.

Download the action script we have created for you in order to create the hires folder (or you can create your own actions within photoshop).
Download Photoshop Action Script.

Requirements:

Adobe Photoshop version 5.5 or above and an FTP program. We recommend CuteFTP or FileZilla.
Use only alphanumeric characters (a-z and 0-9). DO NOT use spaces, underscores, dashes or any other special characters when naming your session folder. However, dashes and underscores are acceptable in the image file name just not for the session ID / password.
We recommend that you use only lowercase letters, but if you do use a combination of capital and lowercase letters you will need to relay that exact spelling to your clients. Session IDs are case sensitive.
We recommend large images to be sized down to 525px in height (800px width with Web Photo Gallery) Other programs that we don't support may allow you to size images even larger but can be no wider than 925px as a maximum.
We recommend thumbnails sized at 110px for height and width.
OPTIONAL: If you want to embed your own watermark in your images there is a setting in the Web Photo Gallery to select "Security" and allows you to change your preferences to use custom text, color of the text, and alignment.

Instructions

Install the Photoshop Actions.

For those unfamiliar with Photoshop actions, they’re simply pre-recorded tasks that you can save and reuse anytime. Photoshop actions commonly have an .atn file extension. Installing a Photoshop action for more recent versions of Photoshop is easy: simply drag the .atn file onto the Actions palette or place it directly inside your Program Files (Applications) / Adobe Photoshop / Presets / Photoshop Actions folder.

1) Create a folder on your desktop called 'hires' and also place a copy of the folder that contains your original images. (usually easier to locate on your desktop rather than browsing your hard drive folders). Make sure there are no spaces, commas, ampersand sign, or other special characters in the names of your original images. These high res image names MUST match the names of your thumbnails and large images.

2) Once you open photoshop, click File > Automate > Batch.

3) In the Batch dialog box > Play section, choose Resizing Images.atn from the Set drop-down menu and set the resolution for your images in the Action drop-down. (Only available when you create your action scripts or downloaded Marathon's)

Suggested Image Size:
800 px high – For close-up images (like seniors).
1000 px – 1200 – use your best judgment (try a few images before doing a batch job).
1400 px high – For large group pictures.

4) From the Source drop-down menu choose Folder and specify the location your original files are located by clicking the Choose button and navigating to that folder. We suggest placing a copy of the original image folder on your desktop for easier navigation.

5) From the Destination drop-down menu choose Folder and specify the destination folder for the new files by clicking Choose button and navigating to the new empty folder. (should name this empty destination folder “hires”) Doing this we will keep our original files untouched and we will create the new ones in the destination folder. Make sure there is a checkmark in the Override Action “Same As” Commands.

6) In the File Naming section be sure to change the first drop-down to “document name” and the next field to the right says “extension” in order to define a file name.

Click OK and the Batch automation action will do the whole job for you – creating a new copy of each file from the Source folder as well as resizing and renaming them.

Now you are ready to upload the high resolution images in with your existing sessions folder.

Your new session folder should be on your desktop and inside this folder you have two folders – images and thumbnails. Now you can drag your ‘hires’ folder you just created following the above instructins into that session folder on the desktop.

Last step is to connect to your FTP program and upload the new session ID folder into your proofs directory, which now includes images, thumbnails, and hires to allow your clients to zoom in on the images. If you have not created your thumbnails and large images folder, please size your session images following the instructions here.