Pictures are worth a thousand words, but also a thousand headaches. This is one of our most frequently asked questions. Why are my photos displaying funny? Hopefully, this article will help you out!
For product photos, category photos, and gallery photos IndieMade will automatically resize and crop your uploaded photos based on the settings you have control over.
What does photo resizing mean?
IndieMade will resize your uploaded photo to optimize and improve performance. We will take a high-resolution photo and make it a lower resolution that will not exceed the maximum view size for a monitor. (around 2000 pixels). It does not help to upload photos with larger resolution than this on IndieMade. We allow you to upload higher resolution but we do optimize them for the chosen display.
What is the aspect ratio and what does it have to do with cropping?
Aspect ratio is a geekword for size and shape. It is the proportion of the width and height. Since you can also choose the layout portrait or landscape. The width and height ratios below would be reversed height:width or width:height.
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3:4 (also known as "standard" or "fullscreen"): a common aspect ratio for older television sets and computer monitors.
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9:16 (also known as "widescreen" or "HDTV"): this is likely the aspect ratio of your phone camera.
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2:3 a common aspect ratio for widescreen movies, known for its panoramic, immersive effect.
This example shows an example of different aspect rations and layouts on IndieMade.
Choosing an aspect ratio will ensure that all of your photos line up and displayed consistently across the sites without worrying too much about cropping the photos yourself.
Do I need to automatically crop my photos?
No absolutely not. Our themes automatically apply cropping so things align beautifully on standard web display, like ducks in a row. However many customers have different orientations of photos depending on the product and in those cases you would not want to automatically crop your photos.
In these cases for best results you would use a display style that uses a 'masonry layout'. In a masonry layout, elements such as images or text blocks are arranged in a grid, but unlike a traditional grid layout, the elements are not aligned to fixed rows and columns. Instead, they are positioned in a way that maximizes the use of space, with each element fitting snugly against the adjacent ones.
Display style that utilizes a masonry layout: Glaze, Ochre, Sultan or Surreal.
Masonry examples:
https://glaze.indiemade.com/galleries/festivals-and-concerts
https://ochre.indiemade.com/galleries/handmade-jewelry-white-background
https://sultan.indiemade.com/galleries/my-gallery
Where are these crop settings on IndieMade?
For product and category photos: Located in Image Settings in the store design section. On the Dashboard go to Design > Store Design at the bottom of store design page. You can also change your view style on the store design page under 'Store View Style' and 'Category View Style' Just choose the name of the theme of the view you are looking for.
For gallery photos: Located in the Gallery Settings page. On the Dashboard go to Settings > Gallery.