Image Machine - Transfering all my images ?

[musicforkids]

I have a Miva store front and all my images I have uploading manually per product. Is there a way to just transfer all those images to the IMAGE MACHINE feature (thumb and full) with out doing it for each individual product? The images are there....there must be a way just to move them to image machine in one fell swoop.

[markhomesurplus]

Re: Image Machine - Transfering all my images ?

I have a Miva store front and all my images I have uploading manually per product. Is there a way to just transfer all those images to the IMAGE MACHINE feature (thumb and full) with out doing it for each individual product? The images are there....there must be a way just to move them to image machine in one fell swoop.

I second the question.
I'm Not really understanding how the Main and Thumbnail images can be clearly identified individually per product in their "legacy" fields, and yet in order
to make use of Image Machine I'll have to slog through, find them again one by one and "tell" the software they exist.
I'm currently at the beginning of a list of more than 1,200 products to do this for. Has a reasonable work around been found for this?

[Mark Hood]

Re: Image Machine - Transfering all my images ?

I second the question.
I'm Not really understanding how the Main and Thumbnail images can be clearly identified individually per product in their "legacy" fields, and yet in order
to make use of Image Machine I'll have to slog through, find them again one by one and "tell" the software they exist.
I'm currently at the beginning of a list of more than 1,200 products to do this for. Has a reasonable work around been found for this?

I think you might be misunderstanding the image machine purpose and ability.
It does all the sizing for you depending on how you have it set up. So for instance we upload a 1200x1200 image and that's basically it we're done. The 1200x1200 becomes the zoom image and it will create the "full size" for use on the prod page and also automatically create the "thumbnail" for the ctgy/srch pages on it's own when someone visits those pages for the first time


Assuming you only have one image per product and it's path is in the full size image then the only thing you are going to do is export that path for full size image and then import the path into the custom product image field you created called main. After this is done you will no longer have any real reason to use the legacy images. You will not be doing anything with image paths for the legacy thumbnails.

So with that being said do you have more than one image per product? If so that's where the "doing them in order etc. comes from.

[Mark Hood]

Re: Image Machine - Transfering all my images ?

I'll add to this that you need to have the product image custom fields module installed and have made all the required template changes.

[markhomesurplus]

Re: Image Machine - Transfering all my images ?

Hi Mark! :)
I'm perfectly happy with the purpose and capabilities of Image Machine. In fact, I'm very glad to see a popular and
attractive "light box" display style and enlargement method built right into the M9 stoftware. :)

My difficulty is that our store was assembled slowly, over time and starting with the MMUI/MivaSQL Old interface that
MANDATED ludicrously small product image sizes. Even my "main" product images were kept optimized and small.( no larger
than 350px wide or they'd blow out the display width.

5 years ago uploading a product image 1200x1200 would have been
looked on as an extravagant waste of bandwidth. ( My personal preference Leans TOWARD the larger images believe me.)

To answer your first question, I have at LEAST a thumbnail and a main image for every product, just as Miva has been set up
to expect from me for every new item since . . . .the beginning I guess.

But now, I have a Dev store set up using a ReadyTheme/MySQL/CSSUI ( An overdue upgrade, I admit ) which will not generate category pages that display the thumbnail images files that are already in graphics/00000001. Instead, it defaults to a generic picture that says "No Image Available". How is this better?

What does this do for anyone upgrading to Miva 9 other than slow the transition to the new interface down to a dead, tedious crawl? I find it hard to believe our site is unique in this regard.

So the question remains, with the actual image files, both thumbnail and main ALREADY uniquely identified in the product's records . . . is there a way to Make "Image Machine" aware of them, default the "main" legacy image to the main "TYPE" <<== (this is NOT a big stretch as a default), and offer the display options it's capable of AFTER the Fact.

'Just seems to be slowing me down here. ( also, I don't have 1200 x 1200 images for all of our active products.)

Or . . . . am I being an idiot? Is there a way to switch Image machine OFF, so thumbnails will display on category pages
like they could before?

..thankies . . sorry for the rant...

[Mark Hood]

Re: Image Machine - Transfering all my images ?

Hi Mark! :)
I'm perfectly happy with the purpose and capabilities of Image Machine. In fact, I'm very glad to see a popular and
attractive "light box" display style and enlargement method built right into the M9 stoftware. :)

My difficulty is that our store was assembled slowly, over time and starting with the MMUI/MivaSQL Old interface that
MANDATED ludicrously small product image sizes. Even my "main" product images were kept optimized and small.( no larger
than 350px wide or they'd blow out the display width.

5 years ago uploading a product image 1200x1200 would have been
looked on as an extravagant waste of bandwidth. ( My personal preference Leans TOWARD the larger images believe me.)

To answer your first question, I have at LEAST a thumbnail and a main image for every product, just as Miva has been set up
to expect from me for every new item since . . . .the beginning I guess.

But now, I have a Dev store set up using a ReadyTheme/MySQL/CSSUI ( An overdue upgrade, I admit ) which will not generate category pages that display the thumbnail images files that are already in graphics/00000001. Instead, it defaults to a generic picture that says "No Image Available". How is this better?

What does this do for anyone upgrading to Miva 9 other than slow the transition to the new interface down to a dead, tedious crawl? I find it hard to believe our site is unique in this regard.

So the question remains, with the actual image files, both thumbnail and main ALREADY uniquely identified in the product's records . . . is there a way to Make "Image Machine" aware of them, default the "main" legacy image to the main "TYPE" <<== (this is NOT a big stretch as a default), and offer the display options it's capable of AFTER the Fact.

'Just seems to be slowing me down here. ( also, I don't have 1200 x 1200 images for all of our active products.)

Or . . . . am I being an idiot? Is there a way to switch Image machine OFF, so thumbnails will display on category pages
like they could before?

..thankies . . sorry for the rant...

"Or . . . . am I being an idiot? Is there a way to switch Image machine OFF, so thumbnails will display on category pages
like they could before?"

You can certainly change back to using legacy images simply by changing the template code. Why you would want to though eludes me and my 1200x1200 was a simple example so use whatever you want (back to how the image machine works) So in order to mimic what you have instead of upgrading your images simply replace the code displaying images on your pages with what you have out of 5.5 As far as I know nothing in 9 prevents this from working but with the ready theme you may need to adjust the css

"What does this do for anyone upgrading to Miva 9 other than slow the transition to the new interface down to a dead, tedious crawl? I find it hard to believe our site is unique in this regard." Huh?

With only 1200 products (thanks to variants I have 400,000) you should be able to export the large image location and reimport in under 10 minutes. Forget you even have anything in the thumbnail location it's no longer needed because the image machine will do it for you.

[markhomesurplus]

Re: Image Machine - Transfering all my images ?

...you should be able to export the large image location and reimport in under 10 minutes...

Excellent!!!!!
So there IS a way to make this work! :)

Thank You! :)

I'll get on the phone with tech support and find out how.

Thanks Much!
..

[Mark Hood]

Re: Image Machine - Transfering all my images ?

So there IS a way to make this work! :)
..

yeah, second paragraph of my first post is how to do it. export/import

[markhomesurplus]

Re: Image Machine - Transfering all my images ?

export/import . . . .?
I must be doing something wrong here then.
Maybe I'm being too archaic in my methods but bear with me and
tell me if I'm going about this in a really foolish way?
In order to get pictures of my products to be displayed on their
category pages, I have been doing the following:
..
1
I search for and find the product in the Catalog.

2
I open the product for editing and scroll to the bottom

3
I select and copy the "full-size" image path ( graphics/00000001/item_image_name.jpg )

4
I scroll back to the top and select the "images" TAB

5
I click the "add image(s)" button

6
I click the "Add" button and select "Add images already on Server by Path"

7
I paste in the copied Path and click "Add"

8
I use the drop-down arrow on the newly added image and set it to "Main"

9
I click the "select image(s)" button .. and Voila! This product will now have a
picture shown on its category page instead of "No Image Available".
..
Is there is some other way to do this?
..
A way that does NOT involve repeating all of the steps above,
one-at-a-time for EACH of the 1,224 products I have left?
..
I'm pretty sure that is the core question of this thread.
And it's what I meant by "slowed to a dead, tedious crawl" in the transition
from our old site to the next.
I MUST be doing this the wrong way, I don't know.
..

[Mark Hood]

Re: Image Machine - Transfering all my images ?

export/import . . . .?
I must be doing something wrong here then.
Maybe I'm being too archaic in my methods but bear with me and
tell me if I'm going about this in a really foolish way?
In order to get pictures of my products to be displayed on their
category pages, I have been doing the following:
..
1
I search for and find the product in the Catalog.

2
I open the product for editing and scroll to the bottom

3
I select and copy the "full-size" image path ( graphics/00000001/item_image_name.jpg )

4
I scroll back to the top and select the "images" TAB

5
I click the "add image(s)" button

6
I click the "Add" button and select "Add images already on Server by Path"

7
I paste in the copied Path and click "Add"

8
I use the drop-down arrow on the newly added image and set it to "Main"

9
I click the "select image(s)" button .. and Voila! This product will now have a
picture shown on its category page instead of "No Image Available".
..
Is there is some other way to do this?
..
A way that does NOT involve repeating all of the steps above,
one-at-a-time for EACH of the 1,224 products I have left?
..
I'm pretty sure that is the core question of this thread.
And it's what I meant by "slowed to a dead, tedious crawl" in the transition
from our old site to the next.
I MUST be doing this the wrong way, I don't know.
..

Let me try explaining this differently for you.

Step 1:
Export your products to a csv file making sure to include the path to the full size image.

Step 2
Create a new import from csv and map the full size image to the custom product image field main and then import it.

Voila you're done: gotcha in order to import to the image field main you will need to make sure the custom product image module is installed in the v9 store.

imagecustomfields.jpg


With any luck this video is exactly what you need.
https://vimeo.com/111607445