Wide World of Women

For those of you who have an interest in catalog models, you may have visited the merchant’s website only to be disappointed in the small size of the images. Being a programmer, I was able to figure out a way to extract full-size images from some major online catalogs Now when I say full-size, I am talking 2000x3000 images in excess of 1MB. This is not a bunch of links. This is a technical article descibing how to accomplish the same results on your own.

I have had success with the following online catalogs:

Ann Taylor
Macys
Redcats (includes: Chadwicks, Lerner, La Redoute, Jessica London, Lane Bryant, Roamans, and Intimate Promise)
Lands End
Venus Swimwear
BareNecessities.com

All of these websites use a special dedicated image server, which stores full-size images, but serves up thumbnails and medium size images based on parameters sent to it. We are going to request images directly from the server and pass in parameters to return the biggest image possible.

A quick primer for those non-technical. An internet address is technically called a URL. An exmaple URL would be http://www.yahoo.com. A URL can contain parameters such as parameter1. You would assign a value to parameter1 like: parameter1=10. So a full URL with a parameter would be http://www.yahoo.com?parameter=10. The separator between the web site page and the parameters is the question mark. The separator between parameters is an ampersand. So a URL with two parameters would be http://www.yahoo.com?parameter1=10&parameter2=20. That should be enough to understand how to perform the steps below.

The image servers that the online catalogs use take a few different parameters. The more important are:

wid= - This is the width of the image to render
fmt= - This is the format of the image (JPEG, TIFF, PNG, etc)
qlt= - This is the quality of the image
size= - This is the width and height of the image (this is mutually exclusive to wid=. Sites use one or the other)
cvt= - This one I found was needed for BareNecessities.com. It is the same as fmt= and means Convert.

So now for example, Ann Taylor’s image server URL is:

http://s7ondemand1.scene7.com/is/image/anntaylor/130038_7876?size=3000,2000

The bold part is the SKU of the product and is what you will edit when you want a different picture. I will tell you how to get the product SKUs for each site later. Notice the size is specifed to be 3000x2000 maximum. If you wanted for some unknown reason to have the quality at 50%, you could do:

http://s7ondemand1.scene7.com/is/image/ ... 000&qlt=50

Try it at 10% or 5% and see how the server works.

So once you get the image, it’s a simple as right-clicking and Save Image As. You will usually need to add the .jpg extension on to the end of the filename.

Let’s talk servers:

Ann Taylor http://www.anntaylor.com:
To get a sku, browse to a department and while in thumbnail view, right click an image to get the properties. For example:

http://fp.anntaylor.com/@v=0148@/Images ... uctImages/127992_7876m.jpg

The bold part is the SKU. Don’t be fooled by the “m”. That just means “medium” Copy the SKU and replace the bolded part in the URL:

http://s7ondemand1.scene7.com/is/image/anntaylor/130038_7876?size=3000,2000

Macy’s http://www1.macys.com

Browse to a dept and get image properties of a thumbnail. It will look like:

http://slimages.macys.com/is/image/MCY/ ... 5,255&wid=134&qlt=90,0&layer=comp&op_sharpen=0&resMode=bilin&op_usm=0.7,1.0,0.5,0&fmt=jpeg

This is a pretty easy one to do. Just copy the whole URL and edit the wid parameter, bolded in the example. You can change the quality above 90 if you want.

Redcats: http://www.brylane.com

This has a lot of catalogs under it. An amazing amount. Go to a catalog, doesn’t matter who, I’ll do Lerner, because I think one of their models is hot. Get image properties of a thumbnail and copy the SKU (in bold below).

http://imedia.brylane.com/images/lerner/th/0803_58566_th.jpg

Replace the bolded part of this URL with the copied SKU:

http://media.brylane.com:60/is/image/0811_23727_hr.fpx?size=4000,2000&qlt=100

Lands End: http://www.landsend.com

Browse to a dept and get image properties of a thumbnail:

http://aka.landsend.com/is/image/LandsEnd/00623_A805_M1_CPN_T.jpg

Copy the bolded SKU part out (the _T means thumbnail) and replace the bold part in this URL:

http://s7.landsend.com/is/image/LandsEnd/36026_A505_M1_CPN?wid=1000

Venus Swimwear http://www.venusswimwear.com

Get properties of a thumbnail image:

http://image.venusswimwear.com/is/image/Venus/Z5633.3?$thumbnail2.144x202$

Copy the bolded SKU and replace the bolded SKU in:

http://image.venusswimwear.com/is/image/Venus/DZZ109201F?wid=2000

(Not all images have a full size version.)

Bare Necessities.com http://www.barenecessities.com

Get the properties of a product thumbnail:

http://truebaren.speedera.net/products/901902BLaP.fpx?rar=.85&cell=136,160&afn=1,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,1&cvt=jpeg

and replace bolded SKU with bolded sku in:

http://truebaren.speedera.net/products/901902BLaP.fpx?wid=700&cvt=JPEG

(Note this site actually has a limit on the size returned. You can’t go bigger than 700 wide.)

Well, that’s enough info to keep you busy for some time. I’m still searching for more image servers, so if I find any, I’ll let you all know.

Already found another:

http://www.sears.ca

Thumbnail image:

http://image.sears.ca/icat/68/35/182068356.fpx?cell=108&cvt=jpeg

Full size image:

http://image.sears.ca/icat/68/35/182068356.fpx?wid=1000&cvt=jpeg

SKU is bolded. Quality is not so good.

I moved your post to the tech forum since it seems more appropriate there.

THANK YOU! This is a fantastic post and totally demos what I've been trying to figure out on my own (but not being a prrogrammer...)

Can't say thanks enough for this!!!!

Hey, someone revived the post!

As long as it's back in circulation, here's my latest innovation for this technique.

For the following sites:
www.roamans.com
www.metrostyle.com
www.chadwicks.com
www.lanebryantcatalog.com
www.AnnTaylor.com
www.AnnTaylorLoft.com
www.bloomingdales.com
www.dillards.com
www.jcpenney.com
www.macys.com
www.bareneccessities.com
www.sears.ca
www.venus.com
www.jjill.com
www.saksfifthavenue.com
www.kohls.com
www.harrods.com
www.nordstrom.com (must view product details and zoom product image first)

You can use a bookmarklet to generate the URL. Copy the thumbnail image url (a context menu shortcut in better browsers) and paste it into the bookmarklet. The bookmarklet code is:



Note this is for a 2000px image, which may exceed some servers' allowed size.

For the ultimate in convenience, use Opera. I created modified context menus for images so all you have to do is right click an image, choose "View with Image Server" and choose your resolution. Create a new text file named "Image Server Menu.INI" in the folder: %userprofile%\Application Data\Opera\Opera\profile\menu. Paste the contents into the INI file and save:



Close and reopen Opera. Opera kicks so much a$$.

Given the recent catalog model posts by wha, I think there might be interest in this.

This is some cool stuff Mystichon!

I'm almost afraid of asking but...

can this same sort of thing work on thumbnails or on sites with sized pictures? Just for example, can you do this with say the http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/ or something?

It's doubtful. This technique is dependant on the site using a dedicated server for images. The great majority of web sites would not find it cost effective to implement a server like that. Shopping sites, however would benefit from it since they only need one image and the other sizes can be generated. If I was going to program another shopping cart site, I'd go this route.

You can get a good idea of whether the image is generated by looking at the image URL. If it has parameters in the URL, it's a good chance those parameters can be modified to make the image larger.

I looked at the website you mentioned. The images are not dynamic on that site.

Gotcha. Thanks.

Thank you for the info.

The photos in the Bra Smyth catalog are pretty good, I feel.