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Using Photos And Images Of the coolest things you can do to break up the monotony of a website is to add graphics. It is also one of the misunderstood. While pictures, graphics, cool backgrounds and animated images can bring a website to life, large image files can slow down the time it takes your web page to load, and your visitors may leave your site before your website fully loads. Large image files will also use up more bandwidth, and free websites usually offer a limited amount of bandwidth. If you need free image hosting to save bandwidth: CLICK HERE. Resizing The first thing you should do is
use a photo editing program to resize your photos. A good rule of
thumb is to keep your photos 400 pixels wide or smaller. (If you have
a newer digital camera, your photos may be 3 or 4 times that big right out
of the camera.) This makes for a huge file size and a file size that
big is only valuable if you are printing posters. Large files also
are a problem to send in email. Do not just
click on the image after it is on your website and "drag" it
smaller. This does NOT reduce the file size and may distort
the image. If you are putting more than 3 photos on a webpage you
may even want to go smaller. Using IrfanView To Resize Photos After you have downloaded and installed IrfanView, open the program and click on "File" at the top left and choose "Open". You can then browse your computer for your photos. Click on your desired photo and click "Open". Now click on "Image" at the top and choose "Resize/Resample". The window will tell you current size of the image, and you can type in your desired width in the "Width" box. The height box will automatically change to retain your photo's "constraints", this is ok. (You can unclick "Preserve aspect ratio" to enter both dimensions.) After entering your new dimensions, click "OK". Your image will now appear in a new window for further modification. When you are done, click "File" and choose "Save As" so you do not overwrite your original photo. Create a new folder, rename your newly resized image and click "Save". Compressing Photos Now that you have resized your photos, you have reduced the file size, but there is one more step you need to do to make your photos web-friendly. You can "compress" your photos and reduce the file size sometimes in half. This is a hard to find free program called "Ken Ward's Makeup". It is only 675kb and contains no spyware. To download it free, CLICK HERE. Using Ken Ward's Makeup To Compress Photos After
downloading and installing, here is how to compress your photos with Ken
Ward's Makeup to compress your photos. Click on "File"
then "Open". You can then browse your computer,
click on the desired photo and click "Open".
Click the "Save" Compressing Gif And Animated Images Some images have a .gif file extension are commonly called GIF's. These are mostly the cool small animated images everybody likes, but they cannot be compressed with a regular photo editor like the ones above. The only free place I have found to reduce the file size of these images is a cool website called GifWorks.Com. Click on "File" and "File Open". You can now "Fetch" and image from the internet by entering the address of the image, or "Browse" your computer and "Upload" an image from your hard drive. (Remember you can only use GIF images) To reduce the file size of a GIF, you really cannot "compress" the image, but you can remove unneeded colors by clicking the "Optimize" button, then "Reduce Colors". You will then see a selection of images along with the % of file size reduction and the new file size. You can "Click to reduce further" or right click on the one you like and click "Save Picture As" so you do not overwrite your original image. Create a new folder, rename your new image and click "Save". Resizing Animated Images You can also reduce the physical size of GIF images at GifWorks.Com. Click on "File" and "File Open". You can now "Fetch" and image from the internet by entering the address of the image, or "Browse" your computer and "Upload" an image from your hard drive. (Remember you can only use GIF images). Click on "Edit, and at "Resize/Crop", choose "Resize". In the new window type in your desired dimensions and click "OK". You will now see the new image. (I have had better luck using my back button instead of undo here.) When you are done, right click on the image and click "Save Picture As" so you do not overwrite your original image. Create a new folder, rename your new image and click "Save". |
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at the top. In the new window under the right image you will see a slide
button you can drag to compress your photo. Move the slide to the
left to about "50" and "JPEG Compression Quality"
will turn red. To see what your image will look like that at
compression rate click the "button with 3 dots" 
.
If the picture does not look too bad, you could slide to the left and
compress a little more, or if it looks bad, you could slide to the right
and compress a little less. Click the 3 dot button to see what
your new compression rate looks like. When you are done,
click "Save As" so you do not overwrite your
original photo. Create a new folder, rename your newly compressed
image and click "Save".