Kev Richardson's BizToolz Blog

Using images (photographs, drawings, etc.) can add real interest to a site. However it is not essential and many good-looking sites do not use images like this. Any images used should be appropriate to the content of the page.

If images are used on a site they should serve a purpose - either purely functional (for example, a picture of the organisation's building) or contributing more subtly to the page's meaning (for example, a stock photograph of two people talking, to indicate that a company is friendly and communicative).

Generally this means that images have to be specially created for a site (e.g. a photo taken of yourself using a digital camera), or else carefully chosen from quality image libraries.

Images should also fit in with the site's colour scheme and general graphical style. For example, if a site has a hard-edged, ultramodern look, then friendly pencil-sketched cartoons are likely not to fit in well.

It can be easy to see the Internet as a free-for-all, but images belong to the people who created them. Staying legal means you’ll have to either create your own images or buy them from stock sites. Fortunately, there are a number of sources for free images. So below are some sources where you can find stock images, many are free and don’t worry — they’re all legal.

Try to always keep the images/pictures/graphics file size small. This is because these files are generally large by nature and therefore can slow down significantly the time it takes for a webpage to load into your browser. Even broadband users can experience problems.

You can see what the size of a file is by opening up MS explore then looking at the size column for the file. It is impossible to come up with a magic number that constitutes a ‘small’ sized file but as a general rule try to reduce the size of the file to as small as possible without distorting it to a level you are not happy to use.

You can change the size or resolution of a digital picture by changing:

· The number of pixels. A pixel is the smallest part/dot of a digital image/picture and the
resolution, or sharpness, of a picture is determined by the number of pixels it has. Conversely
the more pixels a picture has, the larger its file size will be.

· The file size. The amount of space a picture takes up on your computer is determined by the
picture's file size. Though more pixels often means a larger file size, the picture's file type
(JPEG or TIFF, for example) usually has more to do with file size. A picture saved using TIFF
will be much larger than the same picture saved using JPEG. This is because JPEG pictures
can be compressed, which makes the file smaller at the cost of slightly lower visual quality. If
the picture is not already a JPEG, you can usually save a significant amount of space by saving
the file as a JPEG, and then deleting the original TIFF version from your computer.

These type of changes can be made using imaging/photo editing software packages. Here are a couple for you to look at:-

· A good (but quite expensive) package is Adobe Photoshop
(http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family/); but a free one that will do most of
what you want is

· Irfanview - http://www.irfanview.com/

I also suggest that unless there is a very good reason, you avoid those fancy ‘Flash Intro’s’ to websites altogether. They are expensive to develop, add little value from a sales perspective and often cause irritating delays for your users due to amount of time they take to load into a browser (Flash files, traditionally called "Flash movies" are commonly used to create animation on a website – an example of one of the better ones I have seen is http://www.calypsobay.com.au/yourbackyard.asp ).

Resources to assist selecting photos

· A good one to start with is Istockphoto - http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php
· Some subscription sites are:-
· Clipart - http://www.clipart.com/en/index
· PhotoObjects - http://www.photoobjects.net/en/index
· Photos - http://www.photos.com/en/index
· Ablestock - http://www.ablestock.com/en/index

· There are also many most popular free stock image sites on the Web and with good reason. If you’re looking for some mainstream images, these are the first place to try. Here are a couple you could start with:-

. FreeFoto: FreeFoto.com claims to be “the largest collection of free photographs on the
Internet.” They’re available for offline projects as well, as long as you’re not using them to
make a profit.
. KAVEWALL: Images and textures in unique categories like tattoo, smoke, and food.
. Digital Dreamer: Free, royalty-free stock images are here.
. Free Photos Bank: This features a handful of the newest photos in their directory, so check
back often.
. Free Digital Photos: Find gorgeous, easy-to-download photographs in categories like animals,
celebrations, home & garden, etc.
. Visipix: Search over a million photographs and fine art pieces.

Hope this is a geat resource for you to use on your website.

As always, wishing you every success for your business.

Kev Richardson
http://www.biztoolz.com.au/

Labels: marketing on internet

# posted by Kev @ 11:13 AM