Need help with images

Hi -
I'm trying to upload two images of my shirts on the product page (the page that has the description, price, add to cart, etc.). I read "How do I add multiple images to a product." I added an image in Admin when I added the product called novelas-small.gif and that is fine - it's showing up on the home page where I want it. Then I went to the File Manager and in the same directory where I saw the above image, I uploaded a different image called novelas-small_fullview.jpg. However, the product page shows the same image I uploaded in Admin which I want there but it does not show the second one. I enabled 'Show Product Additional Images' and also went to Prod Info - Number of Additional Images per Row and put 2. Please, please help! thank you:dontgetit

Firstly, you are working with different image files.

Your initial image is a GIF and your additional image is a JPG. ZC cannot recognise additional images that are a different file format.

It is recommended that product images should all be jpegs (xxxxxx.jpg) as the JPG format gives a much better quality than a GIF, which is limited to 256 colours.

So, start by converting all your product images into jpg format.

So your MAIN IMAGE should be:-

novelas-small.jpg

Then, the ADDITIONAL IMAGE that you have named - novelas-small_fullview.jpg - should be named:-

novelas-small_01.jpg

If you had several additional images for this product, then the naming convention is:-

novelas-small.jpg - MAIN IMAGE
novelas-small_01.jpg - ADDITIONAL IMAGE 1
novelas-small_02.jpg - ADDITIONAL IMAGE 2
novelas-small_03.jpg - ADDITIONAL IMAGE 3
novelas-small_04.jpg - ADDITIONAL IMAGE 4
novelas-small_05.jpg - ADDITIONAL IMAGE 5

GIF or JPG ???

Above, I recommend product images being JPG - but if you CONVERT a GIF to JPG, you won't see much quality improvement - if any.

If you use a professional image editor (Adobe CS - Photoshop) then you can sometimes get a gif to look better as a jpg.

The point with images and additional images is to keep the file formats the same.

If you have GIF as the main image, then additional images must be gif as well.

And the numbering/naming convention I describe above is one of the better ones to use.

that worked! thanks. I did have to convert both to gif though because when I converted both to jpg, it did not work - got blanks.

The two images on the product page are the right images now but the placement and sizes are not. I want the image named novelas-small_01.gif to be the main image on the product page and the image named novelas-small.gif (which is also the image on the home page) to be smaller and below the other one. When I click on 'large image' below the novelas-small_01.gif I get a hugh image.

alma1:

that worked! thanks. I did have to convert both to gif though because when I converted both to jpg, it did not work - got blanks.

That's because the database reference for the image is still the gif file. When you ADD a product, you tell it what the image is called. In your case it was XXXXXX.gif . If you simply upload a jpg to the images folder called XXXXXX.jpg you still have to tell the database of the change.

alma1:

The two images on the product page are the right images now but the placement and sizes are not. I want the image named novelas-small_01.gif to be the main image on the product page and the image named novelas-small.gif (which is also the image on the home page) to be smaller and below the other one. When I click on 'large image' below the novelas-small_01.gif I get a hugh image.

To get the images to "reverse" their poisitions, simply "swop over" their filenames. You'll have to do this in different directories (or in several steps) as yiu can't have 2 files with the same name resident in a directory.

I suggest you have a complete review how you work with your images.

My advise is to work with JPG only, and to install Image Handler module IH2). This is a really helpful image management module - but it does not work with GIF. Read up about IH2, and you will see why it's so popular.

See it in action on one of my sites : https://www.edutrade.co.uk

Also, you should decide what images you are going to use as primary images, and what ones you will use as secondary images (additional images). This is not rocket science - just requires some logical planning.

your site is great - thanks for your help. I'll keep working at it and read up on IH2 as you suggested.