Configurable Swatches in magento 1.9

Question

I came across the concept of configurable product, created attribute color and added red,blue,green labels to it.

MY PROBLEM:

Configurable Product 1 will have associated

   Associated Product 1(Simple)
   Associated Product 2(Simple)

Similarly,

Configurable Product 2 will have associated

   Associated Product 3(Simple)
   Associated Product 4(Simple)

Referring to the above, Associated Product 1 and Associated Product 3 will have the color blue but these both have different images. According to the swatch concept it takes the first image uploaded,not the respective image.

Here, I cannot create blue1,blue2,blue3..etc as attribute labels since I have 1000 products and each one have a color blue. Is there any other alternative for this? But the client needs swatches. TIA.

Thanks

Answer 1

The image associated with the attribute option (i.e. image for "blue" option of the attribute color) will be used for selection on the configurable product page.

Once you have selected a color, the image that will be displayed is from the associated simple product.

Answer 2

Expanding on what Tim said - you can set custom images as swatches per product by uploading them to the product and "naming" them the same way that exact attribute is named. This will override the swatch image that is pre-generated or currently shown in the /swatches folder.

This does not however override the size or dimensions you have set in your configuration. So plan accordingly when creating images as swatches.

Here's a visual example - ignore the image selection chosen here, when you use an image as a swatch override, it will not show in your media gallery.