Using Images on a Website

Whilst our web platform has a number of excellent cloud hosted image editing tools, which enable you to resize and crop images etc, do remember that you’ll have to upload the large image you want to work from first.

There is no point in uploading a huge [and by that we mean something in excess of 3mb] image to a website, because no one is ever going to look at it at that size on a web page. It takes longer for you to upload and then edit it, and it would take longer to “open” on your website. The only exception to this rule is if you want people to download the image for their own purposes at this size – like they would do a PDF.

If you are going to be editing images regularly, we recommend using some locally hosted software [ie an image editing software that you run on your computer rather than in a web browser]. That way, you can resize images to a suitable size [we can’t ever see a reason for an image to be larger than 1,200 pixels wide], upload it quickly, and then further resize it to site amongst text if required. Paint Shop Pro is a good one.

There is a useful FREE online tool called www.fotosizer.com. It’s basic, but easy to install and you just drag and drop images onto a screen and it resizes them. It might do everything you need it to do, especially since you can use the options in the web platform to further fine tune, resize, crop and generally edit a huge image once you have reduced it to a manageable size. As a guide, anything up to 250kb is “OK” for an individual image, even though the system allows for up to 8mb each, but most would probably end up being anything from 20 – 50kb when used in situ.

Sending images by email
Nowadays, the trend is to store your images in the cloud and then share them via email. Whilst we still believe it is easier to send a few smaller [ie up to 3mb images] by email, we believe cloud hosted sharing is the way forward with larger files, or lots of files. The recipient then accesses the folder you have shared and downloads them as zipped files. It is much less hassle, and you can always add, or remove images from the folder.

Sending Images by email from a camera.
Whilst we believe you should always save a copy of your images at their largest, highest resolution size so you always have a copy, when it comes to sending images by email, or uploading them to your website, most cameras have large, medium or small sized options for this. Normally the medium sized option will be fine and you can further resize/crop them online.

Email Signatures
If you use an image – either a logo or a scan or your signature – in your email signature, you significantly increase the chances of your email going into the recipient’s spam folder. Our advice is stick to words!

 

July 23, 2013 12:00 am

Comments are closed here.