HOW TO UPLOAD & EDIT IMAGES & VIDEOS
A significant area on SquirrelFish’s Digital Asset Management systems is the media storage and organisation area. This is where you can upload and organise all your images and videos and get them ready to share with your clients, partners, press and staff.
To get started with your media storage first log into SquirrelFish and then click directly on the UPLOAD MEDIA icon on your dashboard.
N.B If you are ever in another area of SF and want to upload an image or video you can also do so by:
– Clicking on the blue UPLOAD button on the top menu and then select UPLOAD MEDIA
– Clicking on the “Burger Menu” (3 horizontal lines) in the top right corner and selecting the UPLOAD MEDIA button
You are now in the area where you can store upload all your images and videos into your media storage.
To select images to upload there are two methods:
-Drag and drop images into the top area or
-Click the arrow and select the images you want to upload from your computer
You can upload as many images as you like in one go and then edit them in batches later for speed. We do however recommend not uploading too many images in one go – especially if the files are large and/or your internet connection is very fast.
N.B If you do find the uploading has stalled just click the “PENDING” icon (hourglass icon on top menu) in the top righthand corner to see which images actually completed uploading and restart the process.
As images load, you will see a progress bar for each image and the image will then appear in your “Pending” area (hourglass icon on top menu)
NB. Very large files like videos will take a long time to upload – depending on your internet speed. Try to upload large files one by one and when you have a fast internet connection.
Once you have uploaded a batch of images you then need to organise, edit and categorise them before publishing them to your gallery.
ORGANISE, CATEGORISE AND EDIT IMAGES
Organising, categorising and editing your images is very important. This is a really critical step to help make it easy for your clients and staff to easily find the images and videos they need quickly when using the word search functions.
You can edit images one at a time or select multiple images to edit at the same time. Multi-edit is really useful if want to give a number of images a very similar title or give them the same category.
-First SELECT the image(s) you want to edit by clicking on them – a white tick mark will appear over the image and it will be highlighted blue
-Then click the EDIT button. If you want to edit all the images in the pending area just click EDIT ALL
-If you want to you can add a REMINDER DATE in the top right corner. Set this date to a time when you want to be reminded to check the image. The system will send you a reminder message on that date.
-If you have a portfolio of hotels, destinations or suppliers you will also see a box for OWNER. Use the dropdown box to select which member you want to assign the image to – who the image belongs to.
-The COUNTRY box will default to the owner selected so just check that this is correct and if not, change using the dropdown box.
-Add a clear TITLE for the image(s) – the more detail you add here the easier it is for people to find and use the image. You can learn more about this in our “Tips for Titles” in our article on “How to Optimise Search for Images and Videos”
Choose relevant CATEGORIES for that image(s) – you can choose several categories for each image/video but we don’t recommend more than 20 in total for your account otherwise it is confusing for your clients. You can learn more about this in our “Tips for Categories” in our article on “How to Optimise Search for Images and Videos”
You can use categories that are already in the system by starting to type the word and see if it pops up. If it does just select it by clicking on it. Once you have selected it the category appears in BLUE. If the category you want does not yet exist in SquirrelFish just write it out and then click the ADD CATEGORY button. (Categories will always default to be in capital letters)
If you want to delete a selected CATEGORY you can un-select it by clicking on it and it will disappear.
ADD TAGS
We recommend also adding TAGS to your images to increase the probability of your images being found on word searches done by your clients, press and staff.
Choose relevant TAGS for that image in the same ways as categories. Again if you decide you don’t want a TAG that you added – just click it to un-select it. You can see our “Tips for Tags” in our article on “How to Optimise Search for Images and Videos”
ADD COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
It is vitally important that you add copyright information in this box so that your clients know who owns the image and can be sure that it is copyright free to use. Many travel companies will not use an image unless they are 100% sure they know that the image is copyright free and that they have permission to use it in their own marketing. The more information you can give about who took the image and the rules around its use the better.
If you need clients to follow specific copyright protocol or a photographer needs to be mentioned when clients use the image you need to make sure it is written in here. If a photographer requires credit for an image we also recommend adding something to the image/video title so that users can see this easily.
SAVE or PUBLISH YOUR IMAGES/VIDEOS
If you have everything completely finished you can click PUBLISH and the image(s)/video will leave the pending area and go into the gallery.
If you are editing multiple images and want to save this information and then go back in and change a few things on certain images click SAVE. The images will go back into the “Pending” area and you can select them one by one to do final last edits.
We recommend now looking at the next article in this series: Our article on “How to Optimise Search for Images and Videos”
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