Logo hyperlink to blog home page

Monday, August 27, 2007

Photograph Optimization Tutorial

Small business website designs that depend on uploading photographs for online stores or sites like real estate will be more effective with photograph optimization. Too often site owners upload original digital photos taken at high resolution, and then the load time is intolerable for visitors on dialup because of the file size. They won't stick around waiting for pix to load.

Fact: More than 50% of USA internet users are on dialup. This number dwindles as high speed options become more affordable. Why disappoint half your visitors with slow loading photographs and increase the chance of losing a potential sale?

For this tutorial you may want to read the IrfanView photo edit freeware review previously posted on this blog. The owner of the recently launched e-commerce website for Mainstream Memorabilia downloaded IrfanView and learned this lesson in about 15 minutes total, and was very pleased with the ease of use. The online store is easier to manage, and IrfanView will be used on the Mainstream Memorabilia advice blog, also.

You should consider downloading the free software for this photograph optimization tutorial from IrfanView if you don't already own it.

Once installed, go to any large photo in My Documents and right click on the file name and select "Open with..." and then select "IrfanView" from the menu list. Here's a sample photo and screenshot of the open window.

irfanview photo edit software screenshot

In the main window menu (see top arrow) select "Image" and then "Resize/Resample" or use the shortcut keys by holding the CTRL button and pressing the letter R. The next window as shown below summarizes the file information, shows the current photo width in pixels, and the resolution in dots per inch, or dpi. Enter the desired width to match what you want on your site, and then select "OK".

irfanview photo resize options graphic

When you select "File" and then "Save as" a new window appears as shown below. The sliding bar controls the quality of the final photo, and may be adjusted from lowest to best with 100 being the highest quality. Experiment with the bar in this last step until you have the smallest file size which still displays well on your screen and use that on your website.

irfanview photo resolution options graphic

To summarize, the steps are as easy as 1-2-3 within IrfanView. Select image-resize/resample, enter the width before doing save-as jpg, and then experiment with the slide bar until the file size is reasonable. Anything less than 50Kb file size will display well on your small business website, so taking your 1 meg photos and reducing them may keep visitors on your site longer and help make more sales.

handwritten signature of Jim Degerstrom

TAGS:

Labels: , , , , ,