First TGP - Opinions?
 

So after building and submitting galleries for a while, I decided to try running my own TGP. It's targeted to a punk/goth/alternative niche. The basic layout is online at http://sassyskirts.net and I'm slowly filling it with galleries. Any opinions on the layout or style? Thanks!

looks nice to me, did you do all those thumbs yourself, or did they come like that?

looks cool

Thanks! I cropped them myself--still fiddling around with Photoshop settings to prevent the colors from washing out completely on brighter images, but the results seem to beat anything Comus' auto or turbo thumber can do.

Looks quite good - i'd move away from DreamHost as soon as you can/have the money though; the images load quite slowly.

Actually you can get that same effect with the right imagick filter setting in Comus, then use the turbo cropper and crop 600 galleries in a couple hours, like I did yesterday

Do you have some examples of the finished thumbs? I used ImageMagick when I was building older galleries quite a bit and had some success, but never found a way to match Photoshop's filters.

Yeah, I don't intend to be there long term if their current network problems persist, but for getting started, $7/month is hard to beat...

Feel free to hit me up later - i'm thinking of giving small hosting deals out on a private VPS.

I may do that, depending on how things work out. Thanks for the offer!

lookin good, click my sig below if you need a great sponsor program with tons of FHG

one of the sites I work on is at http://ithumbs.com

your tgp looks fine !

good luck :thumbsup

Why not go with Camz Hosting, its free as long as you place their camz link on your site, and you still get paid for camz signups!.

I preffer a bright and sharpen thumb.
I know a guy who crop awesome thumbs

send a mail to Porko from wannawank.con . He has a girl who works really good with amazing touches the thumbs. Trust me, the thumbs are the key to get clicks.

my two cents


xawil

i think the thumbs are a little "over done"....
2c

There is not much - in this context - Photoshop can do which ImageMagick cannot (and that is what drives the thumb preparation for scripts like Comus). The difference is that if you are willing to put in the extra time, with Photoshop you can modify each image individually.

As you must already have learned, there is no way that a single setting will produce consistent results across, say, 500 pics from different sources. That's the compromise you are stuck with if you opt for batch processing by a script (or by Photoshop itself for that matter).

I think you have gone too far with the soft focus effect. It's not relevant to the type of site you are promoting and you run the risk that people who like your thumbs will not like the very different galleries and sites to which they lead. And vice versa: the real audience for your sponsors could be turned off by the overly romantic effect used in the thumbs.

Cool, thanks for the tips. I've been re-adjusting my filter settings to tone the softening down a bit, we'll see how the newer thumbs do.

looks nice :thumbsup

its nice...thumbs up!

loads kindof slowly

Hah, my host began doing an emergency upgrade of their network about 12 hours after the site went live. Things seem to be back to normal now, though.

nice and kewl...

except the header