Saving images for email & the web
Before adding new images to your web page or emailing them it’s a good idea to do some basic image optimising to speed up the upload process and to better manage the images.
Image Sizes
If your images are too large it will be difficult to upload them to your web server. Depending on your settings digital camera images can be several megabytes – too big to upload across your Internet connection efficiently! Use these rough guidelines…
Dimensions: although they might not look it, many images have large physical dimensions which is why their file size is so large. For images for use on the web resize to make dimensions no more than 800 pixels wide and then re save as .jpg.
File sizes: try and keep the file size of your images to no more than 120kb.
Large images can be resized and optimised using Photoshop, iPhoto or other graphics software. PIXresizer is a handy free program that will let you resize a whole folder of images at once – download it here: http://bluefive.pair.com/pixresizer.htm
Image Names
It will also make it easier to work with your images in your gallery if you give them meaningful names before you upload them. In six months when you’re looking through a list of 200 images it will be much easier to fine the one you want if it’s called bluevase.jpg rather than P1004528.jpg. The same goes for the folder names on your hard drive. Make it easy for yourself and name them when you save them!!
Installing & Using PIXresizer
- Download and install PIXresizer.
- Navigate to the folder where your full size photos are stored.
- IMPORTANT – Create a new folder inside for the resized photo, and call it “web”
- Now open PIXresizer and choose the second tab – “Work with multiple files”
- Click the Source button to locate the folder of full size photos
- Click the Destination button to locate the new folder previously created for the resized photos
- Now drag the slider at point 2 to display 600 – see the screenshot.
- Click the Save Pictures button to resize the photos from the original folder and put them in the new resize photos folder. You can now select all of the newly resized photos and add them to a zip file to upload using the gallery software
