By Jim Herries and Tamara Yoder, ArcGIS Content Team
Every item in ArcGIS Online has a thumbnail image to give a visual cue as to what the item is or contains. Have you noticed that items in the Living Atlas, StoryMaps website, and the Esri Marketplace have large thumbnails?
With the latest update to the Living Atlas Contributor App, you can now upload both a small and large thumbnail for each item you wish to nominate. Every item in ArcGIS Online can have a small thumbnail that is 200 x 133 pixels in size, and a large thumbnail that is 286 x 190 pixels in size.
These thumbnails help people remember your layer, web map, scene, map package, story map, so it’s important that they look good, and that they communicate what the item is or contains.
So what makes a good thumbnail? Well, it depends on the type of item you want to share. A thumbnail for a web map will most likely differ from that of a web scene, because you want the web scene’s thumbnail to communicate that this item contains a 3D scene of the subject. Let’s start with the most common item type: layers and web maps.
Many layer items and web map items in ArcGIS Online have a thumbnail that emphasizes the extent of the data rather than what that data looks like at a useful scale. If your layer contains locations of code violations around the city, make a thumbnail that shows that at the neighborhood scale. The layer title might be “Peoria Code Violations” – let the title communicate that the layer’s extent includes all of Peoria, and let the thumbnail show what the data looks like at its best scale.
Of course, there are good reasons to show the whole geographic context in the thumbnail. Do what works best for your audience.
A web map has many layers, so its thumbnail might include an area that shows those layers working together to deliver the desired information, whereas the thumbnail for a single layer might emphasize what that layer looks like at its best scale.
Applications benefit from thumbnails that depict what the application looks like (in miniature form of course), or depict a particular piece of information the app is good at delivering (e.g. a dashboard element, a chart, a graph, a popup, etc.).
Story maps are often given thumbnails that look like the first page of the story map.
Many people incorporate corporate logos and icons into the thumbnails. Why is that? Once you start creating items, eventually you realize that what you have is a family of related layers, maps, scenes, apps, story maps, etc. You may want to include a little indicator on each thumbnail so that it’s obvious who stands behind it, or how it can be used.
If you’ve never created your own thumbnail, you’ll find the instructions below useful. It’s easy to create thumbnails. Step 1: Get something onscreen that looks the way you want it to look. Step 2: Take a screenshot. Step 3: Crop, or resize, to fit the desired large or small size. Step 4: Upload your custom thumbnail and press Save.
Please find below basic steps for capturing thumbnails on either a PC or a Mac.
PC
Mac
For inspiration on what makes for a good thumbnail, just look around the thousands of items in the Living Atlas, StoryMaps website, and the Esri Marketplace.
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