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PICTURE
PERFECT
The fastest way
to boost the image of your site is with photographs. Specifically,
your own photographs.
There are a lot
of images out there available with a quick right-click Save As...
but if you head down that road you're likely to run into copyright
violations faster than you can say "download dancing GIF."
Unless you're lucky
enough to own a digital camera you'll have to scan your own images
in order to get photos onto your site.
Most likely the
scanner's default is set for color photographs but double check
to be sure. Always in color unless the image is black and white
and don't choose an option like "line art" or "halftone".
The trickiest scanning
decision is choosing your resolution. In almost every case you'll
want your web-based images to be the same size or smaller than
their real life photo counterparts so in almost every case you
can feel comfortable setting your input resolution to 100% or
72 dpi. However, if you plan to alter the image in a graphics
program by all means try out the higher settings.
Keep in mind that
bigger isn't always necessarily better: since you'll be saving
these images in compressed formats you won't want to start with
megapixel levels of precision or the image might show signs of
degradation down at web-friendly size.
Once you've transformed
your Kodak moments into timeless binary format sit back and take
a closer look at them. What messages do they convey? Should you
crop out needless background details to focus the viewer's attention
on the salient details? Are they too bright or too murky?
A lot of mediocre
images can be instantly improved just by adjusting the brightness
or contrast with tools bundled into every modern graphics package.
Take some time
to explore your software options and see what effects you can
generate. I am particularly fond of colorizing photos so
that they look like old-fashioned sepia toned pictures. This can
actually serve as a neat trick for adding color images to a site
without bulking up on large kilobyte full-color
files.
If you want to
play around with more exotic tools like implosion or crazy swirls
and you don't have access to an expensive program like Adobe Photoshop
you can always try out an online webware product like GIF
Lube which not only allows you to transform your images like
the pros but can compress the final products into more efficient
smaller packages.
Compressing images,
in case you're wondering, is not some complicated extra step you
need to take nor does it make the actual image smaller. A digital
image is made up of different colored pixels neatly arranged row
after endless row.
Instead of accounting
for each and every pixel individually, image file formats employ
ingenious schemes to track large groups of colors at once reducing
the amount of coded information that needs to be saved while preserving
all the detail of the original image. All you need to do is choose
a format from a drop-down file menu when saving your pictures.
 The
two most popular image formats are JPEG ("jay-peg") and GIF ("GIF"
with a hard "g" as in "good"). 99% of the time you'll want to
save your photographs as JPEGs which are designed to cope with
complex color patterns that blend and fade.
Because GIF is
better handling images with large areas of identical colors that
format is ideal for text images and logos or maps with simple
lines. So unless your photograph is a picture of beach ball
throw up against a clear blue sky save your images as JPEGs.
About the Author:
Heidi Pollock is a writer who has yet to shed her
computer consulting past. She can also be found sharing technology
secrets on Web
Monkey.
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