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Embed code for every image
If you have read our last post about ‘image embedding’, you’ll be glad to know that it is now up on The Creative Finder.
This means that bloggers and websites can now embed images from your portfolio. It works similarly to Youtube’s video embed.
You can see the example by clicking on the ‘Embed’ button below the image.
Take a look at the following key points too to help you understand the feature better.
- You can enable/disable permissions for sharing images anytime.
- You can protect your images with watermarks, simply by clicking a checkbox via the member interface.
- Bloggers can set different sizes for embedding (though we limit it to 550px in width to prevent commercial use).
- Below every image, credits with your name will be added automatically.
- All images will be linked back to your portfolio.
- There’s also a one-click sharing option to Tumblr blogs.
How does this feature benefit you?
- Bloggers now have more creative content to feature on their blogs.
- While unauthorized sharing of images is growing rampant, this channel provides a professional channel for image-sharing ethically, and with necessary accreditation of the creator.
- You get a lot more referral traffic back to your portfolios, meaning more exposure and opportunities.
Try it today. And if you have any feedback, feel free to share it with us.
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Expand your reach significantly by making your images embeddable
With the use of the internet growing rapidly, this medium has undoubtedly become one of the main channels for creatives to gain exposure, and most of the time, with the help of blogs and social media.
As we work on new ways to help you expand your reach on the World Wide Web, we will like to introduce a new method for bloggers to promote your works properly and ethically.
The method is ‘image embedding’, a code generator that works similarly to Youtube’s embedding feature. When bloggers copy the code and display any of your images on their websites, your name will be added under the image automatically, and the image will be linked back to your portfolio on The Creative Finder.
With the rampant emergence of screen capture technologies and the easing of browser restrictions, it’s becoming easier to grab and use artists’ images off any website, regardless whether permissions were given.
Through this feature, we aim to reduce unauthorized usage of images online, by providing a professional image source that shows users how to embed images correctly with the necessary accreditation, and most importantly, your. As an artist, you can also choose to set watermarks to protect your images.
Even though we recommend this feature so you can enjoy the viral marketing reach of the internet, it is fully optional and you may opt out of it simply by going to ‘Manage my portfolio’, and then ‘Edit Artworks Info’ to set permissions for all the images.
More information about this embedding feature:
- This feature is optional. You can specify which images to allow/disallow embedding by other websites.
- The use of the embeddable images is restricted by size (max. width is 550px).
- If your name is too long, the ‘View Full Portfolio’ button will not show to make room for the name display.
- If enabled, watermarks will appear on embeddable images too.
- This feature will only commence from Apr 26, 2012. If you do not wish to enable it, please set your image permissions before then.
Feel free to email us anytime if you require any assistance.
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Protect your images with watermarks instantly
Watermarks have been commonly used by artists to protect their images from unauthorized use online.
Following the feedback from some of you, we’ve added this feature, allowing you to set watermarks for your images instantly, at the convenience of a checkbox.
All watermarks are generated and sized according to the unique dimensions of images.
To enable this feature, please follow these steps:
- Log in and click on ‘Manage My Portfolio’
- Choose a gallery and go to ‘Edit Artworks Info’
- Click on the slider to enable/disable watermark
More information about the watermarks:
- You can specify which images to apply the watermark
- The watermark application is optional and reversible, so you can ‘undo’ it anytime
- Watermarks do not appear on small thumbnails on our site
- When enabled, watermarks will appear on embeddable images too (read below)
If you are a creative professional and have not listed your profile on The Creative Finder yet, why not do it today?
And, if you have any feedback or suggestions on how to make The Creative Finder even better, please feel free to email us.
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To share or not to share
One way to increase your visibility online is to share your portfolio images on your social media. At the same time, we also encourage finders and your followers on The Creative Finder to share your portfolio images on their social networks too.
However, we understand that some of you do not want your images to be shared freely online. Therefore, we have added a new feature which now gives you a choice whether to allow social sharing of your portfolio images or not.
Simply log in to your account and go to ‘Quick Upload and Tag’. You will find the tickbox below every image you’ve uploaded. This box is ticked by default. So you’ll need to untick it if you want to disable social sharing.
If you have any feedback or suggestions on how to make The Creative Finder even better, feel free to get in touch with us.
For creative professionals who have not listed yourselves on our network yet, why not sign up today?
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Disabling email notifications
We have received feedback from some of you regarding the flooding of notifications in your email inbox. We understand how annoying that can be especially when you have finders liking your images or following you almost every hour.
So, if you do not wish to be notified via your email each time a finder likes your image or follows you, you will be glad to know that you can now disable your email notifications.
Simply go to your ‘Edit Account Settings’ page and scroll all the way down. You will find a section where you can choose to receive or stop receiving emails when a finder messages you, follows your and/or likes your image.
Disabling your email notifications does not mean that you’ll not be able to check on who has followed you or liked your images. You’ll still be able to see these notifications when you log in to your account and click on the ‘Notifications’ tab.
If you have not joined The Creative Finder, why not sign up today? Even if you are not a creative professional and enjoy the contents on The Creative Finder, you are free to join us as a ‘Finder’.
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Better user interface
Just two weeks ago, the new The Creative Finder was launched. But we’re not stopping there. In fact, The Creative Finder has been tweaked, yet again, to bring you an improved user interface.
Check out these new features on The Creative Finder:
Easily switch between image- or profile-influenced searches
When you perform a search on The Creative Finder, you have the option to switch between image- or profile-influenced behaviors, enabling more relevant results to show up. We’ve added the buttons for this choice next to the search bar.
‘Follow’ buttons are positioned more prominently
The ‘follow’ button has been shifted up to the top-right corner of the profile for easier following. It’s now more convenient to ‘heart’ creative works We’ve added the ‘heart’ button, which functions similarly to Facebook’s ‘like’ button, to the top right corner of every image. ‘Finders’ can use this button to bookmark and archive works they like for future reference.
Descriptions of all images and galleries are now displayed
The gallery description that’s added to the images and galleries is no longer used solely for search purposes. Instead, it’s now been made visible to everyone viewing the portfolio, adding more context to the images.
Efficient and ‘fade-in’ loading for portfolios
It’s common for portfolios to have hundreds of images and large file sizes. To help ‘finders’ navigate these portfolios smoothly, we have enabled a more efficient image loading system that loads images within their visible screen area with priority. Images beyond the visible screen area will continue to load with a ‘fade-in’ transition effect, giving portfolios a professional and elegant touch.
If you’re not yet a member of The Creative Finder, why not sign up today? If you have any feedbacks or suggestions to make The Creative Finder much better, feel free to share your views with us.
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The new ‘Show this gallery only’ button
We have added another useful feature to your portfolio page! If you check the top right side of every gallery on your portfolio page, you’ll notice this new button –SHOW THIS GALLERY ONLY. When clicked, you’ll be directed to a page showing images just from that specific gallery.
This means that each gallery now comes with its own URL. This is useful especially when you have many galleries on your portfolio page and want to show just that gallery to your clients or friends.
Feel free to email us if you’ve any feedback to share.
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Launch Of The ‘New’ Creative Finder
Finally, The ‘new’ Creative Finder is here! For this new site, old features have been improved while new features have been added.
Here are the key features.
Real-time user activity
The ‘new’ Creative Finder features live-updates on what’s going on, on the site, in real-time.
As the third part of influence is community, the real-time public feed offers transparency.
With the feed, you can post links for all to see—which others may join in and comment on—and notice when someone uploads or ‘likes’ your artwork, or ‘follows’ your profile.
Better search function
For more comprehensive results from different perspectives, users may toggle their search based on “images” or “profiles” preference. These two options offer different results.
The designed interface returns either image-influenced or profile-influenced search results. The accuracy of the results is based on the relevancy of your artworks eg.the tags on your images and your profiles.
From the results, users are also able to ‘like’ and ‘comment’ on your artworks, and ‘follow’ and ‘message’ you.
Free accounts for professionals
If you are a basic member on The Creative Finder, you’d be glad to know that we are giving you the opportunity to experience The Creative Finder by setting up a ‘mini’ portfolio.
Like the other account versions, you can ‘like’, ‘follow’, ‘comment’ and ‘message’ other members and artworks, and upload an unlimited number of artworks.
However, under this “Basic” account, you would be limited to only 10 ‘published’ images.
Free accounts for ‘Finders’: Businesses and non-creatives
With the new free ‘Finders’ account catered for businesses, collaborators and just anyone who is looking for some creative inspiration, we hope to get more non-creative users to use The Creative Finder.
Within this free account, finders may ‘like’, ‘follow’ and ‘comment’ on your artworks, and ‘message’ you without a need to upload any content.
No more lost emails from potential clients
We understand that emails sent to your email address via the ‘SEND EMAIL’ link on your portfolio, sometimes get lost in your spam folder or are totally blocked by your email servers.
To rectify this issue, we have introduced the ‘internal messaging’ system. This means that whatever message sent to you will definitely be shown in your inbox each time you log in to your account.
Feel free to email us if you would like to share your feedback on how to make The Creative Finder even better than it is now.
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Pinterest on The Creative Finder
With the increasing number of Pinterest users on The Creative Finder, we have included the Pinterest button on your portfolios and also on each portfolio image.
For those of you who have not jumped on this Pinterest bandwagon yet, here’s a little information about this latest craze. Basically, Pinterest is like a virtual pinboard which allows you to ‘pin’ interesting images, organize those images into collages, and then share the collages with other Pinterest users.
So if you like any of the portfolios or the images on The Creative Finder, why not pin them today?
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Improvements To The Mobile Version Of The Creative Finder
The Creative Finder has made some improvements to the interface design of its mobile search engine, as well as its members’ portfolios on the iPhone or iPad. The revamped mobile search now features a more organized layout with minimal clutter, allowing better focus on members’ works.
When mobile visitors users load the members’ portfolios, the service will detect the device and re-organize the web edition to fit the screen size automatically. Design updates to the mobile portfolio landing page include a stronger grid, larger font sizes, and improved styles for easy reading on small screens. The creative disciplines are displayed prominently under the member’s name in the header. Below the header is a collage – formed by thumbnails of all the works – displayed according to the chronological order of upload, with the most recent image shown first. Depending on the total number of uploaded works, the image thumbnail size within the collage will vary between 1, 2, 5 images per row.
For portfolios with large numbers of artworks, such as this with more than 500 artworks, the collage is especially handy as a ‘quick-access’ gallery that allows users to skip right to a specific artwork. Users who prefer to navigate projects via galleries can still do so by clicking on “Click to View the Mobile Portfolio” above the collage.
Within the individual portfolio image page, users are able to navigate to the following artwork by simply clicking on the current image. Sharing options to Tumblr, Sina Weibo, and Evernote are also included right below the artwork for wider sharing, along with the common options of Facebook and Twitter.
iPhone users are automatically be routed to the mobile version of The Creative Finder when they access the common web address http://www.thecreativefinder.com. Alternatively, the mobile edition can be accessed directly via http://mobile.thecreativefinder.com
Creatives interested to sign up can do so here.
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Improved: Navigation of portfolio works
We have improved the navigation across all members’ portfolio pages to help clients and visitors browse through the creative works easily.
The key changes are as follows:
For web portfolios:
- Left/Right arrows are added to go to the previous/next image.
- By clicking on the current image, users are able to go to the next image.
- Users can also use the left/right arrow on the keyboard to scroll through images.
For mobile portfolios:
- By clicking on the current image, visitors will be directed to the next image in sequence
Also, for more quicker page loading, while scrolling between images, only the image component is refreshed, without re-loading the other thumbnails and components. This serves up a smoother experience while browsing through the portfolios.
We hope you find these features useful in showcasing your works! If you’re not part of our professional community yet, you may sign up here!
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Set the display sequence of your creative disciplines in your portfolio
We are pleased to inform that we have fixed a bug that allows Supersize portfolio members to manually set the sequence of your creative disciplines within your portfolio and on your search profile.
Case Study
For instance, Ian is a multi-disciplined creative professional –– a photographer, multimedia artist, and digital retoucher. Previously, our system will collect this information and display the disciplines in an automated and random sequence, depending on the search keywords of the user.
With the new feature, multi-talented members like Ian are now able to determine the sequence of the creative disciplines according to personal preferences.
Shown/Preferred: Photographer, Multimedia Artist, Digital Retoucher
Instead of: Digital Retoucher, Multimedia Artist, PhotographerHope you find this feature useful in marketing your creative portfolio. If you have any ideas how else we can improve our technology to help you in the promotion of your works, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!
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New saving/sharing options to Evernote, Sina Weibo, and Tumblr!
For those who organize your memory religiously with Evernote, you will be pleased to see that we’ve started to offer saving options to your favorite app. (Spot the highlighted elephant logo on the left!)
Also, if you aren’t aware already, we have also enabled sharing capabilities to Weibo and Tumblr too! So start sharing these amazing works to your contacts!
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Creative Finds: It’s Winter!
