Snooth is a repository for a lot of information. Since we launched the Snooth Analytics last month I’ve been pleased to see that over 10% of US Wineries have signed up and are using the analytics that we offer. Several times that many wineries (around 30% of US Wineries, plus many non-US wineries) have been adding content to their pages by uploading bottle images, other photos as well as winemakers notes and other content. We’re well on our way to becoming the “go to” resource for anyone looking to learn about a specific wine, anywhere in the world.
All this is free to wineries, and not just that, but we bring the largest audience of any interactive site in the wine industry, and allow the wineries to connect with our users directly. If you work for a winery and you haven’t “claimed” your content on Snooth, its easy, and you can do it here.
The benefits don’t stop there, as Snooth powers many other sites via our series of data feeds and APIs. The point is, if you take the time to add content to Snooth, you can enjoy the benefit of having is syndicated to the tens of partner sites that we power.
One question we get a lot is how should the bottle shots look. At a basic level you want people to be able to recognize the wine from the image, and ideally you want it of sufficiently high resolution to allow users to read the text (some examples to follow):
Now, that’s the basics. For wineries who are paying professional photographers the standards are even higher. Ever since I blogged about the issue of a lack of standardization of images, back in May of this year, we’ve been working with Artisan Media to define what constitutes the perfect bottle shot, and its our hope that when a winery arranges to have their bottles photographed that, in addition to any images they may need for their own materials, they will have a standard shot taken. This “web standard” can then be used for any and all websites, retailers, social networking sites etc.
The perfect bottle shot for the web is a high resolution image taken against a white background. Ideally of the label, but many sites will allow you to upload a label and a bottle image. Having this standard shot taken, and having as many wineries as possible use a similar standard, will allow the wineries much more control over how their assets are portrayed across the web. The specifications are below, and thank you to the team at Artisan for working on this with us:
Final Image Specs:
1 jpg or tiff file at least 11 x 5.4 inches @ 300 dpi, 8 bit color depth (3300 pixels x 1620 pixels @ 72 dpi)
Image should be cropped to make the label as large as possible
Workflow Checklist
1. Adjust white balance to eliminate color casts
2. Make sure all letters are visible on the label
3. Remove any distracting dust, blemishes, or reflections if present
4. Apply sharpening to image (In Photoshop use Unsharp Mask: Amount 80%, Radius: 1.5, Threshold: 3)
5. Make sure image is 8-bit color depth
6. Make sure image is cropped to final specs, keeping the bottle/label as large as possible without cropping into the label
