A Bad Picture Is Worse Than A Thousand Words!
| Category: Banner Advertising | Date: 2002-06-27 |
Be very careful about the images you choose to include on your site. A high quality image can enhance your page, while a low quality one can lower visitors overall perception of the quality of your site.
Images, especially large ones, cause pages to download slowly. While its important that you use an image of good quality, you dont want to use one that will cause your page to have a download time that can be measured with a calendar. What can be done to reach a compromise between download time and aesthetics?
Let me start out by saying that I am by no means an expert in this area, but I can give you a few of the tips Ive learned and used along the way when designing my sites. That being said, there are a couple of factors that come into play when preparing images for the Web; all considering that you have a good photo to begin with.
If you dont scan your own photos, you might want to skip this section. If you do scan your own photos, your first consideration should be what resolution youll scan at. Im going use scanning a 3"x5" photo on my scanner as an example:
For the same photo, this is the storage space required at the following resolutions:
100 dpi 672.26 KB
300 dpi 6050.34 KB
600 dpi 24201.38 KB
As you can see, there is a significant difference.
You might then say, "Why dont you just scan everything at 100 dpi"? Well, the simple answer is this: most images would look like you-know-what if you did that. I usually scan my photos at 300 dpi.
After youve scanned your images, youll need to "tweak" them in order to reduce the file size. There are a variety of ways you can do this. You can reduce the actual image dimensions (HEIGHT & WIDTH), you can reduce the color depth, etc. What you definitely want to do without exception, though, is to use a program that will optimize the images. You can access this type of service free of charge online at NetMechanics site using GifBot. Its very simple to use and basically all you have to do is select from the images you are given based on which gives you the best quality at the least "weight".
One of the little tricks Ive learned based on my own experience is that some photos look just fine saved as GIF images as opposed to JPEG images, which is basically the format of choice for photos. If your image has large areas of basically one color, Ive found that saving in JPEG can create some very ugly areas on the image due to compression. Sometimes, though, saving in GIF may result in a larger file size, so youll have to make a call there.
About the Author
Jennifer owns jBanner.com. She specializes in providing high-quality banner design at a price small and home-based business owners can afford.
jennifer@jbanner.com
http://www.jbanner.com
Images, especially large ones, cause pages to download slowly. While its important that you use an image of good quality, you dont want to use one that will cause your page to have a download time that can be measured with a calendar. What can be done to reach a compromise between download time and aesthetics?
Let me start out by saying that I am by no means an expert in this area, but I can give you a few of the tips Ive learned and used along the way when designing my sites. That being said, there are a couple of factors that come into play when preparing images for the Web; all considering that you have a good photo to begin with.
If you dont scan your own photos, you might want to skip this section. If you do scan your own photos, your first consideration should be what resolution youll scan at. Im going use scanning a 3"x5" photo on my scanner as an example:
For the same photo, this is the storage space required at the following resolutions:
100 dpi 672.26 KB
300 dpi 6050.34 KB
600 dpi 24201.38 KB
As you can see, there is a significant difference.
You might then say, "Why dont you just scan everything at 100 dpi"? Well, the simple answer is this: most images would look like you-know-what if you did that. I usually scan my photos at 300 dpi.
After youve scanned your images, youll need to "tweak" them in order to reduce the file size. There are a variety of ways you can do this. You can reduce the actual image dimensions (HEIGHT & WIDTH), you can reduce the color depth, etc. What you definitely want to do without exception, though, is to use a program that will optimize the images. You can access this type of service free of charge online at NetMechanics site using GifBot. Its very simple to use and basically all you have to do is select from the images you are given based on which gives you the best quality at the least "weight".
One of the little tricks Ive learned based on my own experience is that some photos look just fine saved as GIF images as opposed to JPEG images, which is basically the format of choice for photos. If your image has large areas of basically one color, Ive found that saving in JPEG can create some very ugly areas on the image due to compression. Sometimes, though, saving in GIF may result in a larger file size, so youll have to make a call there.
About the Author
Jennifer owns jBanner.com. She specializes in providing high-quality banner design at a price small and home-based business owners can afford.
jennifer@jbanner.com
http://www.jbanner.com
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