Picture Placement 101

There are a number of options for displaying, sharing and seeing details of your images…

Adding graphics and pictures to your StrandVision Digital Signage is a breeze.

• First, log into your account.
• Add a page and select the "Photo and Images" page in the Modify Pages section of our account.
• Browse your computer to find the JPG image(s) that you want to add to your signage and select the individual photo(s).
• StrandVision will import the photo(s) and show thumbnails on the screen.
• You'll notice a dropdown box called "Clipping" below the image selection bars with three choices; "None - Fit Keep Aspect," "Stretch - Fill Screen" and Clip - Keep Aspect."
  
  The Clipping feature recognizes whether you're using a 4:3 (traditional TV) or 16:9 (HD TV) aspect ratio on your displays. Then it applies the following selectable rules:
  • None - Fit Keep Aspect: This option shrinks the image so it completely fits in the allotted space. So, if you have a portrait formatted picture of people in a HD TV display, they will be small, but the complete image will be there. It will have a white border to fill in the extra space.
  • Stretch - Fill Screen: This option ignores the aspect ratio of the photo and fills the available space. Using the above example, you'll have very fat people on your screen and no white space.
  • Clip - Keep Aspect: This option keeps the aspect ratio but fills the available space. So the narrowest (or shortest) side expands to fill the space. This could result in heads being cut off in our sample photo.
    If you have images that are shared with wide and normal aspect screens, it is best to use this mode. Design your images so that they are a resolution of 1366 x 1024 pixels and have the content (the part that conveys information) centered within a 1366 x 768 area. If your graphic program has guides, set up horizonal guides at about 140 and 884 pixels (the edge of the wide screen would be at exactly 128 and 896 pixels). That way the same image will look good for wide screen or normal screen.

One of these options will be right in any given situation, so you can experiment.

• After you've selected your clipping option, simply click Save and then preview or publish the page.

Other interesting photo features are readily available:

• Click on the photo thumbnail icon. That opens a new page with a wealth of information on the photo from the resolution, to the date and time that it was taken, and if originally available, the F-Stop, Lens Size, etc.
• This is also the page where you control if the photo will be available to the public (through StrandVision's Forum) or restricted to your account and others within your company (sub-accounts of the same StrandVision Digital Signage parent).
• It also gives you the option of copying the image so you can easily add it to your other StrandVision Digital Signage pages.

Take a minute to familiarize yourself with StrandVision's powerful and useful graphics capabilities.