Deciding on your picture mounts...

Hi all,

I'm soon going to be selling my work online, and it will be various sizes supplied with frame mounts. I had this wizard idea of letting people choose their picture, then whichever style of mount that they'd like, and that they could then match to their existing decor.

Shades of Beige/Magnolia/Buttermilk etc. adorn the walls of this country, so the example below is for that.. although I hope to have a script in place, so you can choose any colour you want as the background. I've bodged up four mounts, and four pictures just as examples.

It's obviously the early stages of a work in progress.. but hopefully you can get the general idea of what I'm trying to do. Just choose your picture, and drag it into the (as yet undefined, it'll actually be a dock eventually) plain area in the middle, then just drag the mounts onto the image until you find the one you like, and that suits the wallpaper/paint in the living room.

http://www.liamsworld.org.uk/mrdarcy/frameops.html

Just thought I'd mention it, seeing as I've spent the last 2 hours doing it..

You may also see that I've revealed my surname in the link.. not that I've ever kept it a secret.. just to add, I've never owned a piar of breeches in my life..

Cheers

Liam

Good work, I like it.
Did you write the script yourself or use an editor?

Hi Father,

no, I'm not that good, I wish I was..

I collaborated with a guy called Vic Philips, who wrote a script for me, for a children's learning game.. (like most of my stuff, just another work in progress..)

http://www.liamsworld.org.uk/alphagame.shtml

I've cobbled together some of it for this. As I said, there will be a little dock in the middle of the page to put the choices together in the future. This is two hours into it, so it may well change considerably, dependant on time and ideas. Except for a few standard sizes and colours, I'll be cutting the mounts to order anyway, so it can be pretty loose in regard to descriptions.

I just have to work out charges.. I'm not what you'd call a mercenary fellow, so that does seem to be the biggest bugbear at the moment. It's late now, so I'll post tomorrow what I think are fair prices, going on what I've seen for sale. I'd like some input from people, if I may on whether the charges are good, bad or indiffernt.

Bed calls....

Cheers

Liam

I would be tempted to mount on whatever compliments the image best, people who are looking for something to hang on a wall would IMHO also take the colours of the image into account as well (my wife does :roll

How many mount colours are you going to offer? The reason I ask is that the page has only got so much room for mounts to drag about, so you're going to be limited as to how many you can choose from at once. Also, how will you identify the different colours? So if a customer likes a pale green one for instance, you need some way of ensuring that they can inform you of the correct mount. (Hope that makes sense).

I wonder if a better way would be to have three layers in a fixed position, the bottom layer showing the frame (with perhaps choices of light wood, dark wood, black, silver and gold), the layer above that would be the mount (with as many different choices as you want), and then the picture goes on top of that. Bear with me, I will explain further...

I realise that you're not offering frames too, but the colour of the frame has a big bearing on how the mount/print combo looks.

You could then have drop down boxes for wall colour (forgot that above, but you get my drift), frame colour and mount colour (with the names of the mount colour, so people would know what they'd picked). The picture could be picked from a display of thumbnails perhaps.

It would still need javascript, but it's a simple script, and would use CSS and the visibility property. I used it here to control the content of the right hand box, as this is just one page, with the links on the left hand side just controlling visibility of the sections.

Actually, thinking about it, the drop down boxes could just change the 'background-color' property of the different sections. That would be easier still. Wouldn't look as flash as your version, but it might just be easier for the customer?

Hope that makes sense, if not, I may get the chance to do an example over the weekend.

Dan

Hi Liam,

I use a physical matte on all my framed picture sales. I get them from this company, this is their eBay listing which is how I first found them, but I deal direct now link they work out very cheap. The idea of a matte is to keep the picture away from the glass so it doesn't stick to it as well as framing the picture.

Sorry for the edits I was trying to get the link to work.

Chris

Darn it,, I thought I replied earlier..???????????

I can't remember everything I said, so basically thaks all..

Dan,

I've had a play, with your suggestions.. crap graphics, but it was the effect I was trying..

http://www.liamsworld.org.uk/cssgalleryframemounts/index.html

seems not to work in IE or Opera, but you'll get the idea in FF or safari.

Off for a beer now..

Oh, nice music Dan, I'll have to try and get to a gig sometime, and thanks for the link Chris. I wish I'd posted the reply from earlier.. far more comprehensive..

Cheers

Liam

Hi Dan,

I decided that for the moment, I would just offer three mount colours, and expand as needed. I've chosen Black, Ivory and White. They seem to be the most popular ones out there for sale.

I'm no decorator, so my choice of wall colours will have to be modified, along with a more realistic graphic for the frames, (hence not clearing up a couple of mistakes there) but the techy bits are mostly done now..

As far as making sure that they get what they order, I'll be using Paypal, and I can just have a different product ID for each mount choice/image combination. I'll put the shopping basket in an appropriately coloured div, so there should be no mistake.. probably..

http://www.liamsworld.org.uk/framemounts/index.html

I think it works fairly well. You'd click a link from the main image page for the image you want to check out here. I only have to change the source image and rename the page, for every image on the site, so easily repeatable and updateable. I'm going to have a play, and see if I can't just have the central container change colour now, leaving the outer sections of body in the main site colour.. whatever that ends up being. Once I've got it all built in pieces on the Liamsworld site, I can then bolt it together on the new site.. may as well save a months hosting..

Now to find a realistic gold and silver for the frames.. I'll add a white frame as well, so it should cover most eventualities.

Now.. where did I leave my GIMP.. ah ha... here boy..

Cheers

Liam

Hi Liam

If you go to the Colour Picker in PS and type in these values, they will give a good starting point, I use them all the time for text colours.

GOLD
Red 192
Green 168
Blue 104

DEEPER GOLD
Red 165
Green 138
Blue 82

SILVER
Red 151
Green 151
Blue 168

COPPER/BRONZE
Red 205
Green 115
Blue 0

Hope this helps.

Cheers Chris,

I've updated the frames from your values now.. much better..

Cheers

Liam

Hi Liam,

Must admit that whilst it's a good idea to give customers a choice personally I prefer to pick the mount which goes best with the shot, a lot of the time I've found this to be a neutral Ivory, strong mount colours can be really distracting from the main image
I like your idea but it may well get very complicated, good luck with everything !!

simon