Tips for Preparing Product Photos
Web Commerce Today, Issue 10, May 15, 1998
Photos are vital in retail online stores to motivate a shopper to press the order button. So preparing photos for your online store shouldn't be an after thought. Here are answers to some common questions:
What Picture Format Is Best?
Both JPEG and GIF images display well over the Web, but download time is the biggest factor. Here's a rule of thumb:
- Photographic images nearly always compress to a smaller file size using JPEG format.
- Clip art, line-drawings, or computer generated drawings are usually smaller in GIF format (unless you have extensive areas of color gradients).
For most catalogs your pictures will be photographic, so JPEG is probably the best choice overall. When in doubt, save the image in both formats and select the format with the smaller file size for the catalog.
What is the best size for product photos?
This depends upon how many product photos will be displayed on a single page. Don't exceed 50K for the total product photo graphics load on a page. I usually set the longest photo dimension at 175 to 225 pixels, for a rectangular photo, and at 150 to 175 pixels for a squarish photo. If you need a larger photo size to see detail, you can use a "clickable" thumbnail, giving the customer the option to view the larger size only if needed.
How do I make thumbnails for linking pages?
If you just have a few, use your standard graphics program. But if you're doing dozens or hundreds of photos, use a program such as Ulead Photo Explorer (Shareware, $29.95), which will make thumbnails of all the photos in a subdirectory in no more time than it takes to swat a fly. Maybe two flies, if you have a lot of pictures.
Should a company prepare product photos in-house?
I've found that preparing photos for the Web is sometimes new to company graphics departments. The most common problems I've seen are:
- Trying to reduce the dimensions of a GIF image without changing it from "indexed color" to "RGB" mode first. The result is a very grainy image. GIF images don't reduce in dimensions well at all. Change to another format such as TIFF or PSD to make the reduction, then change back to GIF.
- Repeatedly saving the same photo in JPEG format. Since JPEG compression loses pixels of color content every time you save it, you could make your JPEG image progressively blotchier and not know why. JPEG should be the final work product, not the format you normally work in as you manipulate the image.
- Not cropping closely enough. We're constantly fighting low bandwidth on the Web, so photo sizes must be kept as small as possible.
Unless you really know what you are doing -- and are using top-flight software such as Adobe Photoshop -- you might let your store developer prepare your photos for the Web. That way you'll get clean, sharp pictures which sell products.
