Gallery Designers/Builders/Submitters Here's a question for you...

[sweet7]

when designing a gallery and creating thumbs to be used on the thumb TGP/MGP's is it imperitive to incorporate the subject's face or is full body just as good.

Which one performs better?

Please assume that we are talking about non foot fetish, booty, or other type of niches where specific body parts are the main focus of the gallery and site being promoted.

Looking forward to some feedback here

[globofun]

I do not believe that the face must be on the thumb, but if she's a fresh face, I would definatly make sure the face is in full!

If she has a killer bod......go without the face!

[graphicsbytia]

wouldn't a surfer assume that the thumb is a smaller but entire sample of the larger picture?

[sweet7]

Originally posted by graphicsbytia
wouldn't a surfer assume that the thumb is a smaller but entire sample of the larger picture?

that's why I brought it up, I'm wondering if that is what it is perceived to be or if it is perceived to be a cropping of the thumb which in most cases is exactly the case.

[Don Soporno]

yes, surfers have seen enough of the cropped thumbs that they know the body shots usually lead to larger images that show more. I try and accent and focus on her best asset but also at the same time make sure to not just fill the gallery with ass shots...lol

[FeTiShLaDy]

i agree with Don!
you should focus on the best asset but make sure not just on one shot

[sweet7]

good info here guys MORE MORE MORE!!!

[Panky]

All of my galleries contain mixed thumbs. Some of them are cropped to specific body parts, an interesting aspect of the image, and others are just the smaller version of the full sized pic.

[sweet7]

Originally posted by Panky
All of my galleries contain mixed thumbs. Some of them are cropped to specific body parts, an interesting aspect of the image, and others are just the smaller version of the full sized pic.

another thing Don and I were discussing was alignment for portrait and landscape images. Do you think it is important for them to line up or is it more important for them to be in sequential order?

[graphicsbytia]

You know.. I've been thinking about this thread, interesting topic

One thing that might be a consideration, if the surfer realises that a thumb isn't the same as the big picture, it might make him look at more of them, which could be bad bandwidth wise. Myself, I like to use good size thumbs, at least 110 x 110 or more so the image can be seen well. This way, if there's a picture they don't want to see, they know that and won't click on the larger image. When you're talking about getting a lot of hits to a gallery, that bandwidth can really add up

[Panky]

Originally posted by sweet7
another thing Don and I were discussing was alignment for portrait and landscape images. Do you think it is important for them to line up or is it more important for them to be in sequential order?

A bit of both. You want your galleries to have a natural flow to them as if you are telling a story.

When you lay out your galleries, you don't want too much white space or have your thumbs just look like they were tossed onto the page and wherever they landed, that's where they stayed.

The quality of your content is most important. If you have crappy quality thumbs or screen caps, it's not going to make much difference how you present them to the surfer.

These are some sample galleries of mine. I use both landscape and portrait full sized images and then crop them to specific areas of the pic.

Sample 1

Sample 2

[sweet7]

Originally posted by Panky
A bit of both. You want your galleries to have a natural flow to them as if you are telling a story.

When you lay out your galleries, you don't want too much white space or have your thumbs just look like they were tossed onto the page and wherever they landed, that's where they stayed.

The quality of your content is most important. If you have crappy quality thumbs or screen caps, it's not going to make much difference how you present them to the surfer.

These are some sample galleries of mine. I use both landscape and portrait full sized images and then crop them to specific areas of the pic.

Sample 1

Sample 2

In your case Panky, even the landscape thumbs fit very well because they have interchangeable dimensions in relation to the portraint thumbs. That is, the height is the same only the width is different.

My case is a little different as the thumbs are built into the gallery as opposed to the gallery being built around the thumbs. (your way is probably better I'd say)

Here's an example of two of my galleries. Please keep in mind I usually only make MGP gals and TGP gals are very new to me. (just started this week)

Gallery 1 - This one is completely sequential (order of image is not comprimised)

Gallery 2 - This one is more symmetrical (images aligned with each other) and slightly less sequential.

Also, what do you use to size your thumbs? I like to automate my stuff but it's obviously not always the best way to go.

[Panky]

You can solve the problem by manually cropping your thumbs. My galleries use both landscape and portrait full size pics.

I lay out my template, then crop the thumbs to fit the template.

This is a basic Photoshop tutorial to show you how to crop images to whatever dimensions you choose.

Some of my galleries contain thumbs that are 120x160, 150x150, 135x135, and different sizes combined in one gallery depending on the layout.

You can get as creative as you want when you manually crop your thumbs.

[sweet7]

have you automated this process Panky?

I'm going to give it a go (automation wise) I know I can crop pics obviously but I'll see if I can do it in a universal manner for both the landscape and portrait dimensions.