Cruise builds each email around your own pictures: your product photos, and the photographs in Media that you've switched on for Cruise. The more good photographs it has to choose from, the more varied its emails can be.
Switch photographs on
- In the sidebar, click Designs and choose Media.
- Click a photograph. Its details open on the right.
- Under Cruise, click the switch so it reads On.
- Photographs you upload start switched off for Cruise. To have new uploads switched on from the start, click New uploads · Off for Cruise at the top of Media and choose On for Cruise.
To do several at once, click the list button at the top of Media to show your photographs as a list. Tick the ones you want, then click the Cruise switch in the bar at the bottom of the screen. Switching a photograph off for Cruise doesn't delete it or take it out of your designs.
Keep seasonal photographs to their season
Click Set window, then choose the first and last day on the calendar that opens, and click Done. Cruise only uses the photograph between those dates. Before the window starts the panel says Scheduled, and after it ends Expired. Forever removes the end date. Clear, which appears once a window has a start and an end date, removes the window.
With several photographs selected, Window in the bottom bar gives them all a window that starts today and ends in 30, 60 or 90 days or on 31 December. Forever removes their windows.
Add tags
Under Tags, click + Add tag and type a word or two about what the photograph shows, such as “blue glaze” or “studio”. Cruise uses tags to place each photograph beside the words it belongs with, and to tell which photographs go together. A numbered list is only made from photographs that share tags, so untagged photographs never appear in one. Grids start from photographs that share tags too, so tags help Cruise keep a grid to one kind of thing.
While Cruise is on, the Cruise page reminds you if three or more of your switched-on photographs have no tags. In the bottom bar, Tag adds the same tag to every selected photograph.
Link a photograph to a product
Under Links to, pick the product the photograph shows, or type a web address. Picking a product tells Cruise what's in the photograph, so it can use it in emails about that product. When someone clicks the photograph in an email, it opens the web address if you typed one. If you didn't, it opens the product's page when the email is about that product.
Linking matters most for emails about a single product. Those show the product's own picture and photographs linked to it. Other photographs appear only if they're tagged as your work, such as your studio or your tools, or if you've switched on stock imagery.
Stock photographs
Cruise doesn't use stock photographs unless you switch on Use stock imagery, under A bit of polish in Fine tuning on the Cruise page. With it off, Cruise uses only your photographs and products, and leaves out any picture space it can't fill. With it on, it can fill that space with a stock photograph.
Photographs you added to Media from the stock photo search count as stock, so Cruise only uses them while Use stock imagery is on. The Images to use step says how many of yours that leaves out.
Tips
- The Images to use step on the Cruise page counts your switched-on photographs by shape, and two or more of each shape gives Cruise more to choose from. A photograph only counts while it's inside its window, so if the count looks low, check the dates.
- Cruise crops each photograph to fit its space and keeps the middle, so photographs with the subject near the centre work best.