I need to use the same image url for multiple products! HELP!

Technical Q&A
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1

Hello, good evening. I have a problem with uploading my products. My set up is made like this, I have 13 different product sets using 1140 images total. And I have more than 300 of these sets with different product names and descriptions for a total of 40,000+ products. But in fact, there are only 13 unique products in terms of picture variety. Meaning that are only 1140 unique pictures total.

What I was doing on my old website before I switched to Shopify, I was first upload these 1140 images and then I would extract their links and then I would reuse the same links for all the other products. But in Shopify, I have been trying for more than a week now and I have not been successful to use a link of an image that is already uploaded to my shop. I providing the shopify CDN link from my files, both tried with and without the variant ?=variant tag to no avail. I tried everything. I dont want to upload 4 million images for 40000 products, that will kill my website.

Whenever I try to use the same link again when I’m using a CSV upload the Shopify system just generates a new image and makes a copy paste. By this method, I will have more than 4 million images inside your server and it will take me two months to upload all my inventory. I need help.

2

Interesting, are you saying that it will create a new URL for the product when you provide an existing URL. even in the same shopify admin?

3

Yes but not for the product, for the image. It is not using the internal link I provide(a Shopify image url from my files), it is treating it as a new image.

4

I kind of have the same requirement. I’m also facing another issue is that, I upload the images, take the link, upload the products with link - NOW SHOPIFY IS COMPRESSING AND UPLOADING THOSE IMAGES AGAIN, twice.

Did you get any solution to that?

To my above issue, - I’m thinking of creating a trial store, Upload images there, take the link.
upload with csv on my current store. so at least images won’t be doubled.

but there’s another problem to it that the images are compressed when uploading with link in csv
If you have any solution, do let me know thanks.