While the top 4 images and first Paragraph in the blog entry may lure visitors to your blog, the new Panorama feature certainly keeps their attention! When used well, it sets a great mood to a blog that loads before your eyes. It makes the blog go POP!
For Example, we have all seen blogs on Tongariro NP in New Zealand. Using the Panorama feature on scenery like this turns a normal blog with good pictures into a "Wow! Looks at That!" feel:
Day 227 - so exactly how long do you reckon it’ll be before someone mentions The Lord of the Rings?
A well placed panorama makes you feel like you are there, much like excellent writing does:
Into the holy land.
It gives you a sense of a place, the roar of the falls, the lush green of the forest, the Tropical heat:
Visiting the neighbours
The Panorama lets us see small things, it's the only way on travelblog to present a high resolution shot to your readers that can show the intimate details of what is was like tens of meters under the ocean staring and tiny creatures living in harmony:
Diving Sulawesi - Bunaken
The Panorama feature needs an image at least 1600 pixels wide by 400 pixels high. Clearer Panoramas can be made using higher resolutions, but the dimensions should always be 4:1 ratio.
Ex--> If you choose a picture 2000 pixels wide, divide by 4 you get 500 pixels high.
If these dimensions require excessive cropping of an image, you can always start with the correct dimensions and rescale the image to fit the height and leave the edges blank, like here:
Squidfish and Scuba Diving, Thailand SCUBA
Ive made an image template you can open in Photoshop(or any imaging program) to simplify things. With the template you can use any image as a panorama image- the dimensions are optimized for a 'Panorama' per the travelblog guidelines. The background is set as the same dark blue background travelblog uses to look seamless when a 'non-panorama' image is used. See:
Squidfish and Scuba Diving, Thailand SCUBA
Instructions are embedded in the image:
TEMPLATE IMAGE
Hope this helps, its a great new feature for travelblogs!
Does anyone have ideas on maximizing Panorama's or have links of good Panorama's they want to share?
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