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Home » Tools
and Training » Photography on the Web
When war photojournalist Robert
Capa was once asked the secret to great photography, he replied, "If
your pictures aren't good enough, it's because you aren't
close enough."
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Before cropping
 After
cropping
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Capa's advice was given decades before the creation of the
World Wide Web, but its message is perhaps even more relevant
to this medium. Photos often compete with several other eye-catching
elements on a Web page, including text, graphics and a variety
of animation.
Add impact to your photos by cropping
tightly, either in the camera or on the computer screen. A
photo with a simple composition and an uncluttered background
will communicate more effectively than one with many details
that are too small to see. Closer is always better.
On the more technical side, JPG
is the preferred file format for photos because it provides
a wider gamut, or range of colors, than the GIF. GIFs
are restricted to 256 colors, whereas JPGs can reproduce millions
of colors.
Photos often are the last items to
load on a Web page only because the designer forgot to size
them correctly and the files are unnecessarily large. Adjust
photos in your photo editing software (Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia
Fireworks, etc.) so that they are the exact size needed for
your page layout. Using Web layout software (Dreamweaver, Frontpage,
etc.) or HTML to reduce large photos doesn't affect the original
file size, so although the photo may fit your layout, its tons
of extra bits of information will cause the page to upload
slowly.
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