Using photographs on your site

IF you are updating your own website just as a record of your work or as a way to pass comment on your field of interest, using images and photographs can make a real difference.

But instead of just banging up a pic or two a little forward planning will ensure your site looks smart and professional, without causing any problems for readers.

The widespread adoption of broadband means it is easier to view larger images, but if you can ensure photos load quickly without losing any quality your site visitors will find it easier to enjoy your work.

Your photographs need to be produced in a common format, usually .jpg, with a resolution of 72dpi, which is suitable for displaying on computer screens.

Also when using portrait style photographs aim to use them at around 200pixels wide by 300pixels deep with landscape photos at 350pixels by 250pixels.

The best dimension will very much depend upon the width of the main content panel on your site, on Freelance Writing Tips few portrait style images will be wider than 200pixels.

Also take advantage of providing a thumbnail with a pop up image if your blog or HTML design software allows it, although I wouldn't use this option if nothing is going to be gained from publishing a larger image.

I am also a fan of adding a thin black keyline around an image, not the most essential feature I agree, but some photo editing tools have this feature or your publishing service may allow you to set it as a default.

And if you are using three or four pictures on one page, image sizes should be reduced to around 150pixels, it is better to have a few smaller pictures than one larger one where you are trying to cram in as much as you can.

Finally, make sure you check the file size of the image because it is possible to have a small photo yet it can come in at 80kb, when really you don't want anything above 30kb being displayed on the page.

As an example, the photograph accompanying this article is originally 602pixels square but within TypePad you can create a thumbnail measuring 200pixels, with a pop up that shows the full size image. [Craig]

Comments

[Linda]

Hi Craig - can I also please mention copyright?

There I've mentioned it.

I think it's also useful to get to grips with this important area - personally I tend to stick to pics I have comissioned, pics I have taken or my family or friends or contacts have taken and given me permission, publicity shots from press offices ot copyright free images.

As writers we'd be pretty pissed off if we saw "our" words used elsewhere without permission so it's not right to do that with images, is it?

[Craig]

As you say Linda you would hope that someone looking to work as a freelancer would respect the efforts of others. Noticed this piece on Press Gazette that may prove useful to some:

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=37863&c=1

[Sally]

Hi Craig

I agree copyright is a big issue.

I have regularly found my articles on various web sites where people have ripped off the copyright owner (usually a magazine that's commissioned me).

Now I have a blog it's interesting to see how often the images (which, incidentally, we paid a library for the use of) get copied and posted on various blogs all over the web.

About 20% of our daily traffic is now people stealing images - not sure if there's anything we can do to stop it though. I'm tempted to go through our archive and remove images when they're no longer on the front page - but is there a better way?

[Craig]

Hi Sally, protecting images is a real tough one.

I recently read a piece by a photographer who said the only way to protect your photos was not to put them online at all.

If you think your pics are being linked to directly, basically using your servers to display the image on someone else's site, then you could take the image down or add a copyright line or website address to the pic.