Image Creating Tips

Loading: The Faster the Better

If your home page does not load quickly, your prospects will lose patience and click onto something else. Web users are extremely impatient - if they can't begin reading the information on your web site in 10 seconds or less, they will simply move on. Keep in mind that not everyone is using a 56.6K modem, cable, DSL or some other higher speed connection. The fact of the matter is, there are still a lot of people out there using 28.8K and 33.6K modems.... so it is important that you don't overload your web site with large graphics. You don't want to lose sales just because your web site took what seemed like an eternity to load.

It is a perfectly legitimate need to use large images on your site in order to display your products and have them accessible from the home page. The proper method in accomplishing this would be to provide a smaller image that can load quickly that links to the larger image. If the larger image takes more than 10 seconds to load, warn users that there may be a wait as the image loads.

Here are some tips you can use to speed up the transfer of your web pages:

Reduce File Size Of Images

Unless you are selling photographs, your customers don't need to see the images of your products in exquisite detail. Digitized photographs can contain a density of anywhere from 1200 (dots per inch) dpi to 3000 dpi. The higher the density and size that an image contains, the larger the image file will be and the longer it will take to load it by the browser. The fact of the matter is that many users don't have the equipment to be able to view high quality images. 

You only need 72 dpi for screen resolution, and images only need to be based on 256 colors (or less). Great images can be displayed using the common screen display density of 300 dpi and with a height and width of 250 pixels. If you can, keep the overall file size of your small images to 20K and the large images to 50K.

These days very inexpensive scanners can be purchased that will digitize your photographs and come with pretty robust software that can be used to set the pixel density and reduce the size of 
the image while the photograph is being scanned.

Although the purchase of digital cameras may include software with similar features, I would not recommend them in creating images for your web site unless you purchase at least a 3 mega-pixel camera. These days, that is pretty much commonplace. In order to reduce the 
size of an image and have it still retain pretty good quality, you need to start with a good quality image. In my opinion, the digital cameras with less than 3 mega-pixels don't provide this kind of quality. 

Reduce Number Of "Beautification" Images

There is nothing wrong with using images to enhance your web site's appeal. However, try to keep the number to a minimum since too many of them may make your web pages take too long to load. Besides, it is easy to get carried away with the number of images to the point of 
making your site look unprofessional and over-bearing.

Using Colored Text

Use colored text instead of an image file whenever possible.  In other words, instead of using an image file to draw your customer's attention, use large, bold, colored text (i.e. red, blue, etc.).  This technique can add beauty and professionalism without costing you speed degradation.

Royalty Free Images

Another place to find images for your site is to go to the internet. However, unlike web content, you can't rephrase an image using your own words. If you figure that one out, please let me know. Therefore, it becomes more important that you are not tempted to download images from 
the internet and violate copyright infringement laws.

You can go to your favorite search engine (i.e. google, yahoo) and type in "royalty free images" as keywords and you will get a lot of links to go through.

Basically, just like content, you can pay for royalty free images (those that you can use as much as you like - copyright free) or find places that let you download them for free.


A couple of places to purchase royalty free images are:

http://www.gettyimages.com 

http://comstock.com 

A couple of places to download royalty free images at no charge:

http://www.bigfoto.com 

http://www.freephotosbank.com 

If you use an image from a site that doesn't charge you, normally the site requires you to include a link to the web site and/or photographer crediting their work. Usually, you are free to do whatever you want with these photos except redistribute them. You always want to learn more by checking out the site's terms and conditions.