Adding Links To Photos In PS7

[ratintrap]

Does anyone know how to ad a link to photo in Photoshop 7? I need to make an ad in Photoshop for our newspaper website that will link to the advertiser's website. I left our PS7 user guide at home, Photoshop help has info about creating links for slices but I can't seem to figure it out. I am not familiar with slices since most of my experience is in print not web, so not being familiar with how to use slices may be what is tripping me up.

-Rat

[gnubler]

I wouldn't mess with slices or anything in PS, just use Save for Web to save your image to the appropriate size & dimensions.

What kind of website are you working with? Manually uploading and editing the html?

A basic image link will look like this:

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<a href="http://linkgoeshere.com"><img src="file path to your image on the server here" alt="brief description of image" /></a>

[Joe]

I don't think you add the link to an image. You put the image in the web page using this code in the html:

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<a href="https://www.b4print.com/forums"><img src="https://www.b4print.com/forums/Themes/default/images/b4p_header3.gif" alt="B4Print Forums"></a>

Then it comes out like this. Click the image and it takes you to the forum front page.

[ratintrap]

The company that used to do our website had it set up so a small version of the ad showed up on the right hand side of the site, a larger version came up when you clicked on the smaller one, above the larger version was a line of type that said "visit our website," you could click on that and go to the advertiser's site. With that company, we we just FTP'd them PDFs for both ad and the news content and they did all the work from there. That was easy for us but it ended up costing too much.

With the new company we use, we have to log into an admin panel and post the content ourselves using the tools the company provides. We don't do anything with HTML and don't have any experience with that type of thing.

I am trying to replicate the way the ads and linking were set up with the previous company. Just so you know, our web ads are just color versions of the ads that appear in the paper, so the small versions are often not readable unless you click on them to see the larger version. With the new company the only option available is to click on the small ad and go directly to the advertiser's website, this ends up bypassing the larger version of the ad which we would rather not do.

I asked if there was any way to have it set up like our old site was, the owner of the company said "isn't there a way that you could put a hot link in the ad using your image editing software?".

The ads we do with the new system have to be either JPEG or GIF, so we can't do anything with HTML or anything.

-Rat

[gnubler]

It's tricky to give you exact instructions without knowing the system you're using. So you login to an admin panel, and are you then able to edit/add/delete things to the website pages in a WYSIWYG or text editor interface, without touching the raw HTML?

Are you replacing an ad that's already on the site? Or adding a new one?

[Joe]

The company that used to do our website had it set up so a small version of the ad showed up on the right hand side of the site, a larger version came up when you clicked on the smaller one, above the larger version was a line of type that said "visit our website," you could click on that and go to the advertiser's site. With that company, we we just FTP'd them PDFs for both ad and the news content and they did all the work from there. That was easy for us but it ended up costing too much.

With the new company we use, we have to log into an admin panel and post the content ourselves using the tools the company provides. We don't do anything with HTML and don't have any experience with that type of thing.

I am trying to replicate the way the ads and linking were set up with the previous company. Just so you know, our web ads are just color versions of the ads that appear in the paper, so the small versions are often not readable unless you click on them to see the larger version. With the new company the only option available is to click on the small ad and go directly to the advertiser's website, this ends up bypassing the larger version of the ad which we would rather not do.

I asked if there was any way to have it set up like our old site was, the owner of the company said "isn't there a way that you could put a hot link in the ad using your image editing software?".

The ads we do with the new system have to be either JPEG or GIF, so we can't do anything with HTML or anything.

-Rat

Like this? (Click the small image)

If this works the way you want I see no other way than to use some html although you might look up image maps on google. I still think you have to do html for that too though. If you can get into the html here is the code I used.

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<a href="https://www.b4print.com/forums/Themes/default/images/b4p_header3.gif"><img src="https://www.b4print.com/forums/Themes/default/images/b4p_header3_sm.gif" alt="Small ad to big ad"></a>
Another problem you might run into is that a lot of sites now have html created on the fly by PHP or some other web development language so to change the html you would have to modify either the PHP code or the css code or whatever is being used.

[Joe]

Here is a link to a wiki page about image maps. As I suspected you still need to use html to get your desired results.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_map

[ratintrap]

Our new site uses PHP. With the first company we used you were sent to a web page that contained only the large ad when you clicked on the small version, it wasn't a pop up. We can enter the advertiser's web address in the admin panel but it bypasses the large version of the ad that way.

From what everyone has been saying, it sounds like adding a hot link to the image like the company owner suggested I do isn't possible.

I guess I will probably have to wait until the company decides to change their system, or we will have to change or web ad philosophy. I think the small ads that appear along the side of the site should have minimal information so they are readable and have those link to the advertiser's site.

I will check into the image map thing though.

-Rat

[ratintrap]

I think you'll be doing your advertisers a huge favor with the small ad linked to their website. They are more concerned with directing web traffic to themselves, remember that the ad has already run in the newspaper reaching that particular audience.

Are you saying that we should just link to the advertiser's website from the small version of the print ad? Some of them are shrunk so small that you can't even read what the name of the business is.

The idea of just running the ad that appeared in the paper was something the previous company came up with. They provide websites for newspapers without the papers having to put too much extra effort into them, so running the same ads fits in with that.

I really think we need to do small ads with limited content (so they are readible) that link to the advertiser's site. I don't want to get into that kind of change until we get some basic usability problems fixed though. The other problem with that is finding time to design the web only ads. I will also have to teach someone how to design an ad in Photoshop who has little to no experience with it, but that's O.K. I guess.

-Rat

 

[ratintrap]

If the server works the way the one I use works, you can do all of the above.
And yes, you have to redesign the ads for readability but not in PS. Just design according to the correct specs in DTP, pdf, then open in PS convert to 72dpi and save for web. Converting in Photoshop can be done with an action.
Also all of this should be generating revenue for the newspaper and depending on the size of the web ad and daily impressions, calculated into their contract. The more money they pay, the bigger the ad, the more impressions they get. If they don't want to pay then they advertise in the paper and that's it. Nothins free.

We do design our web ads in DTP, PDF and convert to 72 dpi with an action in Photoshop. I just thought that they might come out clearer if they were designed at the correct pixel dimensions in Photoshop so there is no loss of quality from the type being rasterized. The price they charge for web ads is ridiculously low, they do require that people who want to go on the web pay extra though. It is like pulling teeth to get anything changed arround here so changing our web ad philosophy and pricing structure may take quite a while.

-Rat

[gnubler]

I also convert our ads for web use and run a Photoshop batch on the whole folder. I have it set to open the PDFs at 100dpi, which increases their pixel dimension, then save out at 72dpi. You can open them at 300dpi, but you're going to end up with larger pixel dimensions and you may not need them that big. If you're just doing a few ads you can do it at a manual level and decide whether to save out at JPG or GIF, it can make a big difference depending on the amount of colors in the ad.

[ratintrap]

You should take that whole site in-house and start from scratch. Fire these "so-called" companies, they aren't doing you any favors.

That would involve hiring more staff to handle the added workload. One of the new hires would have to be a web designer or they would have to pay to get me trained for that type of thing. My boss has payed for professional training for me once over the many years I have worked here, even then it was only very basic cursory training, everything else I have had to learn on my own. I would love to get the training though.

My boss is not real big on hiring additional employees, so it probably won't happen.

-Rat

[DigitalCrapShoveler]

You should take that whole site in-house and start from scratch. Fire these "so-called" companies, they aren't doing you any favors.

That would involve hiring more staff to handle the added workload. One of the new hires would have to be a web designer or they would have to pay to get me trained for that type of thing. My boss has payed for professional training for me once over the many years I have worked here, even then it was only very basic cursory training, everything else I have had to learn on my own.

My boss is not real big on hiring additional employees though.

-Rat

Huh? You must work in printing.

[ratintrap]

Ahhh, yuppie I was thinking more about job security for you. I'll look at what you sent me and see if any of the gurus I know, know that particular server and what it's functionality is. Check your email sometime this weekend.

The ad upload tools are all part of the company's web publishing system, so I don't think there is much flexibility beyond asking them to ad new features when they do their next system upgrade.

-Rat

[ratintrap]

The powers that be at the paper treat our website as kind of an afterthought, which I think is a huge mistake.

-Rat