| Your web site is your business brochure to the world. Maintaining it properly is a part of the keys to your success. The proper preparation of your web site's images and graphics not only affects the way your site looks, it also affects the way it performs. Web site graphics, including images and photographs must be properly prepared so that your site loads fast, looks good, and doesn't max out your hosting account's allotted storage space. Three basic rules: 1. Follow your site's graphics standards Your site designer created your user interface and navigation design with certain specifications in mind, from style and sizes of your type faces, to color schemes, to the layout of the pages and, yes, to the sizing of photographs. If you manage your own site content, you'll want to be aware of your site's design specifications. 2. Keep dimensional sizes of pPhotographic images consistent Maintaining consistency in the sizing of your photos is important so that you don't "break" the layout of pages. As a general rule, keeping thumbnail sizes the same, and full image sizes the same helps you site to look orderly and well designed. You can usually determine the size of the image by pressing the Control button on your keyboard while clicking on the image. Choose View Image and it will open in a new browser window. In the browser title bar you'll see the image filename and it's dimensions in pixels per inch. Jot them down so you can refer to them when creating new images. Changing the dimensional size of an image (width x height) is usually done in a graphics application, such as Photoshop. If you don't own Photoshop or have access to it, you can download a free application called GIMP. (See below for instructions on using GIMP.) 3. Optimize your photos properly Optimizing refers to reducing the file size of your images to the smallest size in KB (kilobytes) possible with acceptable image quality. The smaller the file size, the quicker it will load in the visitor's web browser, and the less space it will take up on your web hosting server. Acceptable file sizes for web site use should be below 64 KB, maximum. The smaller the better. An 80% or less quality setting is usually acceptable when optimizing images. ABOUT DIGITAL CAMERAS AND NATIVE JPEG FORMAT When you take a photo in a digital camera or smart phone, the image it records is saved in JPEG format with the file extension name ".JPG" — pronounced as "J-Peg". While it can be displayed in web sites, these Jpeg images are usually much larger in file size than appropriate for the web. We recommend that you process them further (optimize them) for the reasons mentioned above. While original images taken with a digital cameras could be in the 1 - 3 MB (megabytes) or more file size, typical web .JPG images are under 30 KB. 1,000 KB = 1 MB. Most professional graphics software applications can be used to size and optimize images for web site use. Some of the most popular for web graphics are Photoshop and Fireworks. You can also download the free and highly regarded GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) from Gimp.org. |
Quick Navigation
Search
