Image Variants

[Former Member]

Is it possible to assign specific variants to a subset of image records?

I have a repository with various images that are used for different puposes (ie. product photo, line drawing, chart, etc), each image type gets it's own variant.

Based on the type of image I want to only generate certain variants. Yet, when I run 'Generate Variants' it generates all the variants for all the images. This seems unnecessary.

Any ideas?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Apart from the points mentioned above You can add a user-generated variant from an external image file as described below

Procedure

1. In the Record Detail tab, right-click on the image thumbnail and choose Set Variant from the context menu, and then choose the variant from the cascading menu of variant names.

MDM opens the Windows file Open dialog.

2.Navigate to the desired folder, select the image file you want to use for the user-generated variant, and click Open.

MDM imports the file as the selected variant for the current image record(s).

Reward points if helpful

Regards

Nisha

Edited by: Nisha Lalwani on Feb 7, 2008 6:48 AM

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Nisha & Tim.

I thought I could simply select records in image manager, either directly or via a data group and generate variants only for that selection. It doesn't seem to work, though. After I select my image records and choose 'generate variants', it runs for all records.

Setting the required variants in the console is something I didn't know how to do and it might come in handy. In this case though, my images are linked through attribute text. Can I define the required variants for these somewhere in data manager?

Either solution would be acceptable to me, if I could get one of them to work.

thanks again.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Tim,

You should be able to do it by selecting the Data Group in the Image Manager. It will not work by selecting/highlighting specific image records. Basically the variants will run on everything showing under the Records window pane. When you select a specific Data Group this should limit the results shown in the Records pane and only run the variants on those images. If this is not the case then there is either some kind of bug going on, or a change was made to the Image Manager that I'm not aware of.

Regards,

Tim

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Tim-

You are correct. Selecting a data group will limit the generation to that group.

thank you.

Tim

[Former Member]

Tim,

Couple options.

Depending on how you have your images grouped (Data Groups) you could select just the specific Data Groups that contain the images pertaining to a certain variant and just run it on those images.

You can also limit the variant creation by selecting certain file types in the Image Manager if that helps.

Probably the best option is to define what variants are needed for specific fields in the Console. When you create an image field in the Console you can set it to mark what variants are needed for an image. For example if you create a field for product photos in the Console you can set what variants are needed for that field. So when images are linked to the product photo field they will be marked with "Needed" variants depending on what is set in the Console. You can use this in the Image Manager and select the "Needed/Not Needed" field to determine what image a variant is applied to. The only downfall is that the variant creation has to be manually set off so when new images are linked you will have to go back to the Image Manager and make sure all the proper variants are created.

Hopefully I haven't been too confusing. Let me know if there's anything I can clarify further.

Regards,

Tim