Image Machine Questions and Tutorials

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Hi there, Everyone:

I (apparently) need to get up to speed on the image machine feature for my CSSUI and MMUI stores.

(In reality, I am not so interested in the image machine function, but I apparently need it in order to get magic zoom, which I really want, to work).

Where can I find any tutorials on this?

Also, I might not have swatches for all of the options. Is that OK if some attributes have swatches and some don't? Or is that going to look ugly?

What if some options might have more than one photo? For instance, I might have only one photo of a shirt in Red, but I might have two photos of the shirt in Green?

And has anybody integrated image machine with Magic Zoom? There are some instructions on the Magic Zoom site on how to do this, but since they don't seem to know a whole lot about Miva at Magic Zoom, I don't know whether they instructions they provide will actually work or not.

And finally, if you have integrated Magic Zoom with image machine, can it be done easily where the number of photos will vary from product to product? For instance, some products might have two photos, some products might have three photos, some might have four photos, some might have only one photo?

Thanks in advance.

[Brennan]

Re: Image Machine Questions and Tutorials

Hey Mark -

You don't need image machine in order to integrate a 3rd party script like magic zoom. It is actually much easier to implement it without using image machine and just use image naming conventions and javascript to pull in the images.

Here is a good thread which talks about the type of changes that need to be made to implement 3rd party scripts like magic zoom.

http://extranet.mivamerchant.com/for...other-Lightbox

Since image machine is all javascipt you need to tie into our built in hooks in order to use 3rd party scripts.

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Image Machine Questions and Tutorials

Thank You, Brennan;

It looks like in my particular instance, Magic thumb might be the best bet, without integrating it with image machine (I can work on that integration after the holidays).

Thanks again.

[Mark Hood]

Re: Image Machine Questions and Tutorials

Thank You, Brennan;

It looks like in my particular instance, Magic thumb might be the best bet, without integrating it with image machine (I can work on that integration after the holidays).

Thanks again.

I'm going to have to ask... Why is Magic Zoom so important? While I agree magic zoom is cool the image machine means no more re-sizing images.

The image/attribute machine saves us an enormous amount of time adding new products.
Here is your what if a product has more than one image for an attribute answer. You'll notice the gravity purple has two images.
http://www.vermontgear.com/AWSQ.html (using attributes)
and using just the image machine
http://www.vermontgear.com/27055.html

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Image Machine Questions and Tutorials

Hi there, Mark:

Thanks for your message and for your link to the samples.

You did the large size images with the Image Machine??? You aren't using a third party script???

I did not know that you could have large images with Image Machine. I will have to find some tutorials on how to do this.

Right now, I DON'T have any swatches for my alternate images. So I am using text links to change out the main photo. You can see an example here:

http://www.siamese-dream.com/slippers-cb-cowgirl.html

I thought that the ONLY way to get the large size images was with Magic Zoom.

So if you can confirm that you can do large size images with only the Image Machine, please let me know, as that will be a great time saver for me (although I will have to go and make up a bunch of swatches - and i don't think I will be able to use drop down select menus for the styles attributes in the add to basket form...)

[Mark Hood]

Re: Image Machine Questions and Tutorials

Correct all that has to be done is upload one large image and the image machine does the rest. It creates all of them with the exception of the 20px one showing above the drop down selection. When I say all of them I mean the images created for CTGY PROD SRCH.

The attribute images are uploaded to the inactive attribute variants created from using inventory at the attribute.

What you see in those pages is created with Miva Image machine and no third party software. You will want to make sure you use image types which create custom image fields. This allows you to upload the image location via flat file.

So to try and further explain.
http://www.vermontgear.com/802380.html
If you right click and save any of the images you will notice then end being xxx_xxx indicating the size. The image machine created those images keeping them inside the constraints I have set up.
Pam's book has this and I know rick has posted a few videos on it.

[Mark Hood]

Re: Image Machine Questions and Tutorials

So if you can confirm that you can do large size images with only the Image Machine, please let me know, as that will be a great time saver for me (although I will have to go and make up a bunch of swatches - and i don't think I will be able to use drop down select menus for the styles attributes in the add to basket form...)

You do not have to use the swatch drop down in order to get images to swap. I changed this temporarily http://www.vermontgear.com/808281.html Even without the swatch it will work with radio attributes or just the regular drop down as well.

http://vimeo.com/25724459

[Siamese-Dream.Com]

Re: Image Machine Questions and Tutorials

Thanks so much for the help, Mark. I owe you a beer.

The one thing that would make this KILLER is if there was a way to group the images together so that the pop up window / dive would have navigation previous and next arrows to step through the different images, since it is a little klunky to have to close the pop up just to click on the next image...

But it might be livable...

[emdub]

Re: Image Machine Questions and Tutorials

When linking to a product page (from a blog post or email newsletter, for example), is there a way to have Image Machine make a different image active other than the default first one?

To put it another way, I have 4 thumbnails for a certain product: front, left, right, back. I set the order in the "Additional Images" tab in Products. When navigating to the page normally, you would see the Front Image with 4 thumbs beneath it. In the blog, I want to link to that product, and have the Left Side Image active, but only when coming from that link.

Is that possible? Is there some kind of tag I can put in the link to tell Image Machine to make the second image active?

Any help would be appreciated.

[Keitho]

Re: Image Machine Questions and Tutorials

I have a related problem where my Facebook posts that include Miva product pages don't pull the legacy or primary image but usually the first related product or the Discover Card clip-art from my footer. There where some threads about it but I couldn't quite get my head around it. Here are some I was able to scrape up.

http://extranet.mivamerchant.com/for...facebook+image

http://extranet.mivamerchant.com/for...facebook+image

http://extranet.mivamerchant.com/for...facebook+image

Good hunting...