In this chapter we’d like to explain a bit about the right choice of photos/images, what size they should be and give you some general insight into how images work on websites.
Image size
Most people would use their mobile phone to take photos. Modern mobile phones are capable of producing high quality photos, but the drawback of this is that these are often not suitable for website display. Photos easily can get up to 3-5Mb in size and that is way too big for a website.
We want the Love Loop Head website and your member page to load fast so we’ll have to reduce the file size of photos. The file size of a photo is determined by these factors
- The dimensions, width x height, measured in pixels
- The file type; jpg images are generally smaller in size than .png or .gif or .raw format.
- The resolution measured in dots (pixels) per inch. The resolution determines how far you can zoom in on a photo without it losing quality.
What is the right file size to use on the website?
For your member page we recommend the following guideline to prepare your photos before you upload them to your page.
- Use landscape instead of portrait size. This goes for all photos on a website, because a website is generally in a landscape size (except for mobile phones)
- Only use photos that are saved as a .jpg file. Jpg gives the best compression and has the smallest file size.
- If possible reduce the resolution to 72 dpi (dots per inch)
- Resize or crop your photo to a maximum width of 800 pixels. For the Image Gallery on your member page you can use a maximum width of 1024 pixels if you wish.
If you adhere to these guidelines you should be able to reduce your photos’ file size. Try to aim for files that are less than 100Kb in size.
Which software to use?
Photos are not resized on the website. You’ll need to prepare your photos in a photo editing software before you upload them to the website.
It would go too far to go into details here but we’d like to point you to a few options. Some of you might already have some sort of photo editing app on your phone or pc, but for those who have never edited a photo here is a small list of software you can use for free:
- Those of you who have a Windows 10 computer can use the Photos App that comes installed as standard in Windows 10. It is very simple to use.
- PicResize is an online app that you can use in your web browser. It is easy to use and also lets you resize more than one photo at a time.