CoastalVtours PHOTO MANAGEMENT

BACKGROUND

As Agents work more and more with photos, they quickly realize that high resolution photos, used typically for print purposes, are not suitable for email due to their large size.  Some agents, unfortunately, clog up email systems by sending them anyway, others address this problem by burning the images onto a CD and mailing … neither approach is a real solution.

CoastalVtours supports a formal Photo Management process to address the management of Web Resolution and High Resolution photos. Following are the basic concepts of this very efficient process:

CoastalVtours PHOTO MANAGEMENT BASICS

1.  If requested CoastalVtours will email Web Resolution photos to RMLS for posting. These will always post the next business day.

2.  CoastalVtours will email Web Resolution photos directly to agents.  Agents should be careful not to delete the photos from their email or should store the photos on their hard drive in a safe place.

3.  CoastalVtours has started to store photos in both web and high resolution print formats on our FTP server at ftp://coastalvtours.com.

4.  All high resolution photos are stored in password protected personalized FTP accounts for each agent we work with.

5.  IMPORTANT: coastalvtours assumes that most agents will need direct access to print quality photos themselves, but provides a simple means for agents to direct those who need access to the photos to get them.  If someone needs a print photo from you, you should do the following:

DIRECTING OTHERS TO ACCESS YOUR HIGH RESOLUTION PHOTOS

If a magazine or print publication needs high resolution photos from you, do the following:

1. Open your Virtual Tour Notification Mail (“Your Virtual Tour for ML #XXX is Ready)

2. Forward it to the appropriate party along with a short message stating that they can get the photos via the FTP information included in the mail.  (IMPORTANT: Be sure that you are forwarding the email with the correct ML number to the party.  Do not forward a notification mail with a temporary ML number assigned.)

3. The notification mail will provide the appropriate information, including the  FTP Host Name, FTP User Name, and FTP Password along with instructions for FTP access.

INSTRUCTIONS ON ACCESSING PHOTOS VIA FTP

Instructions for accessing photos via ftp are provided in the link Getting Your Photos in the Notification mail, or by clicking Getting Your Photos.

Please do not contact coastalvtours for either training in FTP access or to ask us to send out photos to others, as this is not supported.