Optimize Your Photos for the Web

January 29, 2008 | By Doug In Digital Cameras |

It doesn’t matter if your emailing photos of your grandson or putting images of your latest product on your online store. Too many people don’t consider optimizing their photos for the web. We’ve all been on too many web pages where it seemed that the photos would never load, and sometimes they didn’t. So here are some steps to make sure that your photos show up on your site.

1. Always have a back up original format copy of your image. Never alter the original. Believe me you will regret it.

2. Crop to size. Make sure that you crop out any extra information that isn’t needed. Remember the larger the photo the longer it takes to load or send.

3. Resize to reduce pixels. There should be an option to resize according to pixels. You’re going to want the largest size to be no more than 250 pixels or you can reduce the dpi to no more than 96.

4.Reduce the color palette. Many images have millions of colors so the first thing that you need to do is reduce the colors to 256. You will lose some depth with this.

5. Save the file in a standard format. JPEG is the most common for photos and you can compress the image with a JPEG for further reduction in file size. It’s not unusual to see GIF or PNG as well.

Remember that with a 56k connection a 150k file will take 20 seconds to load. If you’re creating a web page every photo that you add will add to the time it takes to download all of the images. If you keep the images small in size the smaller resolution will not be as obvious.

About The Author

Kelly Paal is a Freelance Nature and Landscape Photographer, exhibiting nationally and internationally. Recently she started her own business Kelly Paal Photography (www.kellypaalphotography.com). She has an educational background in photography, business, and commercial art. She enjoys applying graphic design and photography principles to her web design.

The Cyber-shot N2 - offering 10.1 effective Megapixels with high sensitivity for reduced blur, a large 3.0 inch Clear Photo LCD Plus screen with touch-screen operation, and a ZEISS 3x Optical Zoom.
Used Price: ?225.00
Customer Review: From an amatuer point of view
I bought this camera around 8 months a go from Amazon and I have to say that initially I absolutely loved the device. You certainly can tell the difference in the quality of the images compared to my previous five cameras (which were all Casio or Canon) and the touch screen display is very easy to use and handy! The one thing that let the camera down for me was the unreliability of the device. Several of my friends and family have the same model and on occassions the retractable lence would jam, the camera would not switch on (despite charged) or failure messages would come on screen. I must add this was an occassional problem for us all but was a little frustrating if you want to get a quick snap. I am a novice with cameras and just like a model that looks good, produces good quality photographs and is simple to use. This camera does all those things and should satisfy the needs of most. However, don’t buy just because its a Sony as I feel that you could meet the same criteria with another big branded name for less.
Customer Review: The only compact digital you’ll ever need.
An outstanding unit, beautifully crafted and easy to use. It’s tough, lightweight, good looking, with a fairly common sense set-up for a camera with such a massive range of functions. To answer the reviewer below who says that the picture quality isn’t that much better than her old 6mp camera. Well, it is, it just probably isn’t that easy to see until you start blowing pictures up to A4 and above. The human eye isn’t going to be able to distinguish between 6mp and 10mp on a computer screen! Then again, define quality? If you’re a recreational photographer who only prints 6×4s or views pictures on computer, then a 5 / 6 / 7.2 MP camera will do you fine…… Someone else said that pictures look grainy at ISO1600. I should hope they are! (For those amateur photographers, ISO is the sensitivity setting of the sensor - the higher the ISO, the more sensitive the sensor; hence a lower level of light is needed for the exposure. This is useful at twilight or indoor photos where you don’t have the luxury of a tripod. The downside is that you get increased levels of `noise’ - like static `snow’ on a poorly tuned TV set.) Every camera will suffer from this at high ISOs and for a compact like this to offer such a setting is a bonus in itself. Besides, any decent photo-editing software can help you remove noise with minimal effort. Indeed, in low light conditions, the Sony deals with exposure much better than my big Nikon DSLR. It’s just perfect for pictures inside churches, on caf? terraces at night etc At the end of the day, a high ISO sounds good, but you’ll rarely, if ever, use it. If you’re a strictly holiday photographer, you’ll find this camera utterly perfect, even on fully automatic. I’m not a great believer in massive amounts of creative options on a compact digital, because if you’re a semi-serious photographer who’ll use them, you’ll probably have a DSLR anyway. However, the Sony boasts a comprehensive range of features (program modes, fully manual settings) for every conceivable situation. It is a bit of a faff setting those parameters though, but don’t worry, you’ll rarely need them - automatic is great on this unit. “Camera must be steady for shots with no flash?” Well, yeah, in low light conditions, that’s a given. Show me one that doesn’t need to be steady with no flash!! In fact, show me one that doesn’t need to be steady full stop! In daylight, there’s no problem with the Sony - colours are superbly rendered and images are pin-sharp. I take the point that Sony products do tend to have enhanced colour saturation (my TV and laptops both do), but the Zeiss lens here is technically brilliant I love this little camera - for recreational photography, I tend to leave the SLR at home and slip this Sony into my pocket and snap away. (Even if I do have the SLR, I slip this into my pocket anyway, as it’s a great backup, and it’s far easier for other people to use when you ask them to snap you!) If you take it out for a day on holiday, though, I’d recommend you invest in a spare battery - the Sony’s is good for about two hours on and off shooting - charging time from empty to full is about 3 hours. Large memory cards will slow the operation down little, but that’s life. Personally, I keep a 2GB card in all the time - that’ll hold about 500 pictures at high resolution, which is more than enough for anyone at any one time (unless you shoot lots of video). In short, this ground breaking 10.1MP from Sony is coming down in price - it’s already about 50GBP cheaper than when I bought mine nine months ago. Don’t be tempted with the massive MP sensors now - unless you’re going to print posters, you’ll never see the difference between that and a 10.1MP camera. Having said that, for most people a 6 - 7.2MP would be fine, but the sheer quality, ease of use and range of options on the N2 make it a winner every time. Can’t fault it.
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