How to Work with Photos On Your New Business Website

Use compressed images.
Whatever you do, never upload a BMP, or bit mapped photo. Every single pixel in the image is mapped individually without any relation to another. These photos, which are used by the program MS Paint, take forever to upload and download. If the image is a simple logo or a shape, you can get by with a GIF. Most of the Internet uses JPEG's.

Choose the right image size.
Most web pages display photos at 72 DPI, dots per inch. Anything past that is a waste. If you have 2x3a?? place holder on your page for an image, you should scale the photo to fit that space at 72 DPI. Adobe Photoshop has a handy image size function that allows you to directly choose the resolution and size. It will scale it appropriately. MS Picture It will do the same, but the function is less intuitive to use.

Don't put too many pictures on a page.
The more photos or graphics you have on a page, the longer the page will take to download. If you're in business, I hope you've invested in a high speed Internet connection. Many potential customers still have dial up. Also, if you keep working with your own page, it will become cached in your machine's memory so after a while you'll have no true sense as to how long your own page takes to download. Don't get lulled into complacency. If a page takes too long to display a potential viewer will go elsewhere.

Crop
The are many differences between amateur and professional photographers, one of biggest is framing. Today with digital images you get a second chance. Remember, your business site is supposed to sell your company, so get ruthless with the pruning and only upload the heart of the image that's essential to sell. Compare this photo with its source below. Which works better?

Not Cropped