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Optimize Your Image One of the main reasons some web sites are slow is their images are large or not fully optimized, according to Harper. A web site that is slow to load is a killed because as we stated before, we are in a world of fast food, fast service. And that translates into, “If I can’t have it now, I will move on to one that gives me what I want when I want it,” just ask my three children. So how does a Web Master or anyone optimize their images? There are three simple ways. Reduce the size of the image is the first way one should consider. Make sure your image is as small as possible, but don’t make it so small the user needs a magnifying glass to view it. Do like a good layout and design specialist, crop the photo. Most people are not professional photographers and do not crop the scene in the viewfinder. So when you get the negatives back and they have been scanned, crop out any white space or dead space. If it doesn’t add to the image it distracts from the image. Next reduce the number of colors, but beware that you don’t reduce too much, otherwise it will have the opposite effect. Remember there is a difference between a photo and graphic. A graphical interchange format or Gif can have fewer colors or shades of gray, where as a photo or joint photographic experts group or JPEG needs more color. Reducing the number of colors makes it harder to save as a small file. And finally reduce image quality and in the JPEG format the loss for the image will reduce the image size in a program like PhotoShop. Remember images can be a great selling point on a web site. But an image needs to be unique and download quickly as we stated before, so try to avoid borrowing, stealing, cloning and coping someone else’s graphics. Have a vision quest and determine what graphics scream your name or product. If the only place you are pulling your graphics from is a share ware or free ware, how many other Web Masters are doing the same thing? Plenty. Chaplin advises new, fresh and original artwork for ones web site. But if you can’t afford to purchase software designed for this purpose he recommends http://www.zyris.com. The graphics are of professional quality; there are a wide variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and text to choose from.
QUESTION: How do you optimize your image?
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