How To Optimize Digital Photos For The Web

Well, let's find out how do we correct for these issues by using a free photo editing program such as IrfanView to optimize a digital photo for the Web.

IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative freeware graphic viewer and editor for Windows.

You can download IrfanView 4.10 (file Size 1.1MB) at

 

Let's start by reviewing what we know about digital photos and how they're displayed on the Web. Remember, our goal is to make sure that our photos load as fast as possible without losing its image quality. And that the photos are displayed in their full sizes on the computer screen without the need to scroll.

Digital photos are made up of pixels. A pixel is a dot of color and one million pixels equals one megapixel. A digital photographic image with more megapixels has better quality and can be printed at a larger size.

However, if we plan to get digital photos primarily for online viewing rather than for printing, keep in mind that photos of smaller size and quality download and display faster on your browser.

Even though computer monitor sizes and resolutions keep improving all the time, not everyone has the latest top-of-the-line monitor. So, your photos for the Web should be of smaller sizes that will display full-screen on most monitors without the need to scroll.

To ensure your photos don't exceed most screen sizes, resize them to 640 x 480 pixels or 800 x 600 pixels. Remember, you have only reduce the display sizes of your photos while the file sizes are still the same.

By default, the resolution used by most computer monitors is set to 96 dpi (dots per inch; another school of thought prefer to use ppi or pixels per inch). Web images are usually set to a low-resolution 72 dpi because that is all your computer monitor can display at full scale. So, there is no reason to use anything higher for your online photos meant for viewing as this will increase download time.

Next, you reduce the file size by saving your photo in a format that works best for its intended use (in this case for the Web) because the format can somewhat determine the final image size and quality.

Most digital cameras usually allow you to save your files in JPEG while some higher-end digital cameras enable you to choose between saving JPEG, TIFF or RAW image files.

JPEG/JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is a compression method and is the most common and ideal photographic image format for storing and transmitting photographic images online.

JPEG images produce best colors and details of photographs with smooth variations of tone and color. But they may lose some quality after compression compared to TIFF format. However, the quality loss isn't detectible to the eye and the resulting JPEG file takes up much less media storage space.

TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) images don't lose any image file quality but do take up a lot of media storage space compared to JPEG.

RAW is raw data and this format is favored by professionals because it provides the greatest range of photo-editing possibilities. It is a true digital negative unaffected by the camera's processing but the file size is huge.

Once a photographic image is compressed using JPEG compression, data is lost and you cannot recover it from that image file. Remember always to save uncompressed original files of your photos as backup.

When saving edited photos with InfranView, the quality level of JPEG images is set at 80 which is fine for most images. Some editing programs allow you to select the resolution quality level from low to maximum. Lower settings take less space because of the small file sizes, but they deliver less quality. Higher settings are better, but take more file space. You have to try out the various settings and select the one that suits you best.

IrfanView Resize Dialog Window
Steps 1 to 5 to resize/resample your photo for the Web