Resizing Images for the Web

 

One of the most tedious parts of managing reduce image size your site is editing and uploading images of your artwork. First you need to learn to take good photos in the right lighting. After all that is said and done you need to upload and edit them using a photo editing software like Photoshop. This can be a daunting task for a lot of artists. I remember almost bursting out in tears I got so frustrated trying to learn Photoshop! You really need to spend a good junk of time figuring out how to use it. In addition to that, it's an expensive program.

 

Complete version

Many artists don't even know you don't have to have the complete version of Photoshop to edit images. Photoshop Elements is an excellent alternative and isn't as expensive. If you don't want to use that then the following resources are free and really easy to use. No crying involved! You can resize, watermark, and rename your images using Thumba.net, IrFanview.com or Pixlr.com. I personally love using IrFanview because it gets the job done quickly and is extremely user friendly. It's suggested you keep your image size between 450-750 pixels maximum in length or width. Always use 72 dpi as your resolution setting. This will keep the images loading fast and sharp. Lastly, always rename your jpeg's with your name and the name of the artwork. For example: "yourname_painting-name.jpg" You don't want search engines indexing your image as "img_4098.jpg" for goodness sake! Once you get the hang of resizing your images it will become routine.

Each time you produce a new work you will photograph it, upload it to your computer using one of the suggested programs or better yet the full version of Photoshop and then save it with the appropriate name. It's a good idea to also save it resize images as the original, large high resolution image it was as a "Tiff" (360 PPI is usually sufficient for high resolution and good print quality). A "Tiff" image is the format used that doesn't lose any of its data after opening numerous times. You can edit it as many times as you want and it maintains its high quality. After you've gotten the image to where you are happy with the way it appears in terms of color and with the correct contrast etc.