🖼️ Say which variants each product picture belongs to
Every picture on a product can now be marked as belonging to particular variants - the red one's photo to the red ones - without uploading the same file twice.
A product with variants has one gallery. Until now that was the whole story: every picture belonged to the product, and there was no way to say that the third photo is the red one and the fourth is the blue one.
Now there is.
Where it is
Open a product that has variants and go to the Media tab. Under each picture's alt text there is a line reading Shown for every variant. Click it and the whole variant list opens, one checkbox each, with the variant's options and its SKU side by side.
Tick the variants that picture belongs to and press Update, the same button that saves the rest of the product. There is no separate save.
What the ticks mean
- A picture with nothing ticked is shown for the whole product. That is the normal case and it is not an omission - most photos are of the product, not of one colour of it. The line says "Shown for every variant" precisely so that an untouched gallery reads correctly.
- One picture can belong to as many variants as you like. A photo showing the red shirt from the front is the right picture for red in every size, so tick all of them.
- One variant can carry as many pictures as you like. Red / L can have the front shot, the back shot and the detail shot.
- Nothing is copied. A picture assigned to twelve variants is still one upload and one file. You are labelling the photo you already have, not making twelve of them.
Deleting is safe in both directions
Deleting a variant - or regenerating your variants after changing an option - never deletes a picture. The photo belongs to the product; only the note saying "this one is red's" goes with the variant.
And deleting a picture does not touch your variants.
Worth knowing
Nothing in Erpilo displays a variant-specific picture yet. This is where the information is recorded, so that when the shop connections arrive the right photo goes to the right variant instead of every variant getting the same one. If you are keeping a catalogue tidy ahead of that, it is worth filling in now; if you are not, nothing changes for you today.
Every variant is listed, including inactive ones. An inactive variant is marked as such rather than hidden, so switching one off never quietly loses the pictures you assigned to it.
Order follows the gallery. When a variant carries several pictures, the first one is whichever comes first in the gallery itself - so reordering pictures with the arrows or by dragging reorders them for every variant at once. There is no separate per-variant order to maintain.
Not in the CSV yet. The product CSV does not carry these assignments; they are set on the Media tab only.