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Pictures you take with a digital camera, scan, or perhaps even get from the internet, may well be too big or too dark. There will be too much background and not enough subject. You must CROP, RESIZE (use 'resample' if you have a choice), and LIGHTEN, in order to make them web-sized and clear. Avoid FOCUS if you can, or just do it once. This makes pictures grainy on monitors set at low res. Irfanviewer will do all of these things, as will a good image editing progam. Use 'undo' if you don't like the result; start again. Your aim is a picture not bigger than 600 pixels as a total of length + width (eg: 300 x 300, or 400 x 200, or 250 x 350) ... that has a 'memory size' of not more than about 30K. Have a look at these two pictures:
The 'Before' picture is 640x480 pixels ...WAYYYY too big for a web page. You can't tell that, because the IMG tag on this page made it look smaller. But because its actual size was not reduced using an image editing program, it downloads VERY slowly. It is a whopping 197K in memory size .... a long download. Visitors will leave your page rather than wait for it. It's also much too dark. The 'After' picture is 250x211 pixels ... small and perfect! It's only 13.6K in memory size, and will download in less than a second. Cropping and lightening made the picture less distinct, but I resisted the urge to use 'Focus' and increase the 'Contrast' more than a little bit. This makes the colours a little washed out, but avoids blurring it more. You sacrifice large dimensions, some sharpness, and colours, for small file size and minimal blur. This is the proper way to do pictures on a webpage. If you want a high quality large image, make a small image as an icon, on your page, and put a link around it to another page where the big image can be displayed. That way, only people who WANT to see the big one will go there, and won't mind waiting too long. |
