Our Retro-View reels have images that are a very square-ish rectangle in landscape orientation. This can’t be varied, it is part and parcel of the venerable View-Master system.
Therefore, care should be taken when choosing your images. While it is possible to use other shaped images without cropping, they don’t look great as they don’t make best use of the very small image space.
If you can find your way around Photoshop then you are welcome to pre-prepare your own images (details on FAQs). Otherwise, we will, by default intelligently crop your images to fit the Retro-View format. You might find this template handy for image preparation: Retro-View template
Here below are some examples of what sort of images work and don’t work.
A nice photo but the wrong shape and orientation
Without modification, this is how the image would appear in the viewer
With our intelligent cropping the image fills the view and still makes a great image
Great photo but this shape is going to present problems
Without modification, this is how the image would appear in the viewer
Even with careful cropping this image has lost meaning and is therefore best avoided
This photo looks promising but the important central figures fill a wide space
Uh-oh, this doesn’t work well, important detail is lost when cropping, making this image unsuitable
This looks promising – it is a wide picture but the important content is central
With our intelligent cropping this makes a great photo for a reel
This square image looks like it will work well
Yes, it crops very well and makes a great reel image – bold, colourful and important detail away from the edges