Website Images

[peter e]

I'm building a new website which will contain lots of images of old prints. I've scanned quite a few of them at 720 dpi (jpeg format) and they were between 17 and 25 Mb each. I've reduced the size in Irfanview (good free prog) and they are now between 500 Kb and 1 Mb. They look quite clear when looked at in a viewer. I shall have thumbnails on the site that visitors can click on for a larger view.

Before I go any further, has anyone any advice about how I should proceed with regard to the images. I don't want them to be too slow to load especially on a dial-up. I've got dial-up and the images on art sites that I visit load quite quickly (how do they do that when images on other sites load very slooooowly?).

Thanks. ;)

Pete

Oh. I'm not using Frontpage/Dreamweaver or anything flash like that.

[mark2]

Peter, if you r/click - view source for the link to the image file does it give any properties for the image ?

[Tony]

Hi

I always try to keep images less than 80kb, 500 is way to much for the net.

I am not sure how much compression you get with irfen view as i only use it as a viewer, but i will have a go and let you know.

Tony

[Tony]

Ok just had ago with irfanview, and could not get on with it at all, the pic i tried got bigger.

But i normally use paint shop pro 7, and it is a snip to do with that.

Just as an EXAMPLE have a look at this pic, i have left it full size 1024x768 and it is only 89kb (ignor the content of the pic, it was after a cricket match we had in Strassbourg)

You say that you have dial up, forget the d/l speed it would take you a month of Sundays to upload the pics if they are all 500kb to 1mb each.

Paint Shop Pro 5 was given away on a cover disk a couple of months ago, i think PC Answers. you should get the same sort of compression with psp5 as with psp7

if you have it give it a try.

Tony

[peter e]

Err, I haven't got as far as putting any images on the site yet, Mark. I'm working on the home page at present. I'll do a test with a link tomorrow.

Tony, you say about 80Kb for an image. I'll reduce one or two to that size and see what they're like. I was worried that if they were too small in size that they wouldn't look clear.

I know; I'll do a proper test and upload images to the site. You can both then have a look and let me know what you think. ;)

Regards

Pete

(Oh. Forgot. I'm working late tomorrow and Wednesday, but I'll get it done as soon as I can).

[Guest Nellie2]

I know very little about putting images on web sites......... haven't done anything with mine for ages... been trying to sort out this o/s prob that I have..... But, I do know that different file formats can make all the difference.

Tony's picture for instance is saved as a jpeg... a perfectly good quality for posting on a site.... how did I know that? I right clicked on the pic and went down to properties.

[Agent Smith]

Hello peter, as already stated it will take you an awful long time to upload the images at the size you are talking about. However, I can appreciate that you want the images to look as good as possible.

A couple of ideas for you, 1st a friend of mine made a website for an artist last year, after much discussion with the artist, what he did was to upload 2 versions of each image. One was in a good high quality format with a large image size, and the other was in a lower quality resolution but a much smaller image size. He then gave the site viewer a choice of which image to select, so those on broadband could have the larger file and those on dialup could select the smaller file for speed.

2nd, you may be better off rescanning the images using a lower scanning resolution and image size. I would suggest playing around with your scanner to see what sort of results you get.

Good luck. Regards, Mr. Mouse.

[Tony]

Also

Correct me if i am wrong, but when it comes to scanning in pic's to be viwed from the web, there is not much point scanning at a res over 72 dpi, as that is all a monitor can show.

On my scanner if i use the wizard and say that it is going on the net it automattically gives me a res of 72dpi.

But you will need a higher res if you intend people to download the pics for printing, on the other hand if you do not want people to print them a 72 dpi image wont print that good.

Why are you scanning at 720 dpi? for the full blown colour print outs i do of photos i use 300dpi, which i think is too much ;)

If you need any more help give me a shout as this is some i had to learn in the last year. (but i am no expert though) :)

[peter e]

Strange! I did a reply five minutes ago, posted it and it's disappeared!

Oh, well. The gist of what I said was...

Thank you all for your advice. It's much appreciated. I won't be able to do it until the weekend, but I'll take note of what you say, experiment, and upload some images for you all to give your opinions.

I scanned at 720 dpi because I don't know what I'm doing. :blink:

I thought of the trade-off between resolution and speed but the prints are made by different processes (mezzotint, stipples etc) and I thought the better resolution might show the different ways they were made. Anyway, I hope you'll give me some more info and advice when I've uploaded something worthwhile for you to look at. I'll try and find what the art sites do.

Thanks again. ;)

Pete

Mr Mouse. Good idea about the two image versions. Thank you.

[Guest whizwrinkly]

150 dpi is more than enough for a web pic. :)

[Snec]

Got a free booklet (140+pages) with Internet Made Easy mag a couple of week ago. Booklet is called The Beginners Guide To Building A Website. Was reason I picked mag up really, thought it would be interesting!

For your interest page 24, item 13 states:

"When scanning images for the web, try setting the resolution at 150dpi and then reducing it to 72dpi in a graphics package. Some web designers swear this process yields better results."

May be helpful to you.

Regards, Snec

[peter e]

Thanks everyone. I've got plenty of experimenting to do. Get back to you when the site has got something worth looking at. The advice and opinions are much appreciated.

Thanks, Snec. I'll try 150 dpi reduced to 72 dpi. Also I'll try to get a copy of the mag. I understand the new tips and tricks has info on images, too.

Once again, thanks all. ;)

Pete

[HARDCORE]

Good info, I have been scanning at 300 dpi and then "saving for web" in Adobe to reduce the size. Alot of the time the size doesn't come down far enough, and if I chose a small size it looks like crap. I must be starting with too high kb image in the first place.

Thanks

HARDCORE