[intro] When you have completed this Guide, you'll know how to upload images in bulk to your EKM online shop using the File Manager. This is ideal if you are planning to populate your shop with products on a spreadsheet from a supplier, or you have produced your own Design Images and want to upload them all at once.[/intro]

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If you are simply uploading Design Images onto your EKM online shop to assign to different elements, then skip to the steps required to bulk upload. If you have received a .zip file or similar Product Images from your Supplier or drop shipping website, it’s essential that you have a look at the type and the quality of the images before you upload them to your EKM online shop. Essentially, what you are aiming for is a collection of Product Images that are uniform in terms of shape, size and background content to use in your EKM online shop. This ensures that regardless of what Theme you apply, your Product Images will always look fantastic.

Products Images in different shapes or with different backgrounds

However, if your images are different shapes, such as rectangular (vertical or horizontal) they may need some further editing according to the content of the image. Or if some of the Product Images have a background yet some of the others don’t, you would need to remove the background and place the product itself on a new, square canvas.

Before you begin, we recommend ensuring that the images are in the right shape and size for the best possible results on the EKM platform in terms of aesthetic and user experience. We recommend that all Product and Category Images are square; they can be as small as 500 x 500 pixels and as large as 2000 x 2000 pixels, however, 1024 x 1024 is the optimal size for both on your new EKM online shop.

It’s also worth mentioning that we recommend these images be a .png file type as opposed to a .jpeg. This is because .png images retain their resolution whether magnified or shrunk down, whereas .jpeg file types can lose some of their quality. Remember too that when editing images, never increase the size of a .jpeg image file as this can ruin the quality of the image, making it appear pixelated, blurred, and sometimes both.

To crop your images to the right size or change their file type, we recommend the free website Canva.com (ideal if you’re a complete novice to image editing) or Pixlr.com (another free online platform not unlike Photoshop).

Bulk Resizing Images

If you’re lucky and the Product Images you’ve received from your supplier are all square-shaped with identical backgrounds already, all you need to do is resize them. There are lots of free websites online that can help you resize your images in bulk, such as Bulk Resize Photos. If your images are .jpeg files and are not as big as 1024 x 1024 square, do not resize them to be bigger than what they are or this will negatively affect the image quality. Instead, set the images to be the size of the smallest image - if there is one- providing that image is at least 500 x 500 pixels square. Simply upload all of your Product Images, enter the size you would like them to be and download the edited versions.

Bulk uploading Images to your EKM online shop

1. Log into your EKM online shop as normal and then click Design on the left-hand menu:

2. Click File Manager:

3. File Manager will always open by default on the Product & Category Images tab - bear this in mind as if you want to upload Design Images, you will need to click the Design Images tab before you begin. Skip this step if you are bulk-uploading Product or Category Images:

4. Open the Folder on your computer containing the images you’d like to upload onto your EKM online shop. This is called File Explorer. When you have opened the folder, you should be able to resize it so you can see both your File Manager and your folder at the same time, by dragging the edges of the File Explorer window:

5. You then need to highlight all of the images in your folder and drag them into the Drag & Drop box in the File Manager:

Bear in mind too that if you have a lot of images in your File Explorer that you want to upload you can click the View tab to change how they are displayed to allow you to select and upload more of them at once:

Discovering the address of your Image

If you are hyperlinking a PDF file to some text on your EKM online shop or you are adding lots of new Products via a spreadsheet and the Import/Export System, you’ll need to know the address of your files. To find the file address, simply hover over the file to see it revealed. You can then right-click the file to copy the address, which then can be hyperlinked to some text or pasted into the relevant part of your spreadsheet:

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[contact] If you need our help with your EKM online shop, contact your Ecommerce Expert or the Customer Support Team, who will be able to point you in the right direction. We're open from 8am-6pm weekdays and 9am-5.30pm weekends. If you'd like to suggest a feature or an upgrade on any of the EKM platforms, please let us know on the EKM Suggestions Board. If you have a non-account-specific question to ask the EKM Team, join us in the EKM Community. [/contact]