The c2w Blog

Recently I was watching ‘Sholay’ on a dvd at home. I’m hoping that I don’t have to say much about ‘Sholay’, it’s the biggest, greatest and grandest Hindi movie of all times. Despite having the home theater system, something was bothering me and I couldn’t figure out the problem till the movie was over. The movie did not have the same effect on me this time around.

Then I saw “Jodhaa Akbar” in a movie theater last week and I was zapped by the grand scale and the rich beauty of the movie. I was dazzled by the grandeur of it and was totally awestruck. Even after coming out of the movie hall, it took me a while to recover!

And that is when I realized what was the thing bothering me while watching ‘Sholay’.
It was the SIZE.
The large screen made ‘Jodha Akbar’ look so real and amazing while ‘Sholay’ being an equally grand film, lacked the impact on the small screen.

And exactly for the same reason, some of the beautiful contests on c2w.com are not getting its due. Check out Couple No. 1 for that or the latest Katrina Kaif vs Deepika Padukone contest. You will understand what I am mean when I say bigger images have a big impact.

Bada Hai Toh Behtar Hai. A rich and large image is one of the prime elements of a successful contest. On a page with a lot of content, it’s the image which is going to stand out. No user wants to see a dull contest. A nice big image screams for attention and ensure that the user plays and completes your contest.

Here are 7 Tips on making a Better Contest with respect to images:

1. Be passionate about the stuff you upload on the site. It will automatically solve your problem. No, I am not saying that people do not create stuff with enough passion, but it is true that, some section of the users find images part boring and feel that it is not required. Totally wrong! Do you know that at times images are the major hooks which retain uses and engages them to complete playing!?
2. Use the given space! I do not expect everybody to understand the pixels and stuff but what one can easily do is upload a big image, may be like a wallpaper. You always have a zoom tool which gives you the full juice of the image when enlarged. Try and always upload images of 640×480 pixels or higher resolutions. Do not upload images the size of thumbnails.
3. The canvas size for image display is 240×180 pixels. That does not mean that you should upload images of this dimension. This is the thumbnail size. Also keep in mind that images which have their Width:Height ratio as 4:3 will always look better.
4. Crop your images. Even basic image editors like MS Paint allow you to cut and crop images. Cropping means selecting only the main elements of the image.
   Example given below:
   
5. Use a clear and sharp image. Blurry and unfocused images give the whole contest a dull and sad appearance.
   
   
6. JPG, PNG and GIF are the formats allowed at C2W.com. You also have to limit your image to 600 KB. Try re-sizing the image if it is exceeding the size limit. Use JPGs for photographs and GIFs for logo’s. Do not upload BMP or TIFF formats.
7. Use high contrast images. Such images appeal to the end user and are also more attractive. Rich colours are always advisable.