Editing Images
If you are uploading your own images to your website, whether for products in an online shop or possibly inclusion in a news/events article, then it is likely that they will require some editing. The key areas to focus on will be:
- Crop an image – allows you to quickly remove part of your photo and focus on the relevant area. In the process, called ‘cropping’ you will reduce the size of the image.
- Resize an image – the typical photo size for a web gallery picture is around 800 pixels – this is large enough on most screens but not too large for the lower quality screens.
- Reduce the file size (image quality) – you don’t need the highest quality images for a website and the size of the file will also be too big. The larger the file size, the slower your website page will load which might be an irritation to your users. Try and keep images less than 200k.
If you don’t have software available on your PC that you can use, you may want to try Freesizer below.
There are also a couple of online resources – Pixelr and Tiny png
FreeSizer
This program is probably the easiest to use and most basic. It is FREE to download at www.freesizer.com
It provides another easy way to resize your images ready for the web.
- In the profile tab, drag and drop the files you want to resize from directory on your computer.
- Click the Custom item under title ‘Select resizing profile’
- Under settings tab, choose a directory where you want the new smaller files to go
- Under custom profile settings put the MAX width and MAX height you want the photos to be. I recommend 800 width and 600 height as a good size for any image going in a gallery.
- Now return to the Profile tab and click Start Resizing. Your resized images will be in the folder you selected above.
Apple Devices / iOS
There is a free app for Apple devices called ‘Image Size‘
This provides a way of resizing an image on your Apple device e.g. mobile or iPad to an exact dimension. This allows you to get an exact size in px before uploading to the website.
It also has a range of other photo editing tools to perfect your photos too.
