Not only is it important to take good photographs for your website, it is equally important to make sure that your pictures load quickly. In this article we will cover a number of important issues:Photography set up Camera settings Editing for Website Other Important Resources
Photography set up:
Your backdrop is your first concern. Where will you take pictures of your product, craft or object? Outdoor light seems to be
most recommended background. The outdoor lighting helps to create beautiful pictures. For jewelry, this option is not best. It is harder to photograph jewelry than other crafts. For jewelry there are many other options for setting up a small photography studio.
How to Make My $15.00 Photo Studio http://www.home-jewelry-business-success-tips.com/jewelry-photography.html
Lapidary Art: Basic Jewelry Photography http://www.lapidaryart.com/projects_2.html
Photographing Jewelry for Print and Web http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/lessons/vault/index.html
Camera settings:
Each camera comes with their own terms. You will have to read your manual to decide what term they use for each of these settings. There are a few settings that you need to make on your camera.
Quality - I use middle setting. This takes really nice pictures, but does not use up as much disk space.
Picture Resolution - My camera has either High (1760 x 1168 pixels) or Standard (896 x 592 pixels). Use Standard setting.
Using a scanner to take pictures - Use highest setting for you scanner to scan your pictures. Then edit as you would pictures that you have taken with a camera.
Editing for Website: Before we begin editing your photos there are a few things that you should know:
Do NOT save your photos in JPEG format until you are DONE editing. JPEG files do not take any changes very well. If you save it as a JPEG, then change size, picture quality goes down. Each time you open and change it, quality keeps getting worse. Save all of your original files in your photo editing programs format such as .psd for Photoshop.
Save all of your website pictures in size that you will use them on your site. Do NOT change size of them once you get them onto your website. This will cause them to lose their quality. I like my "thumbnail" pictures to be 125 pixels x 125 pixels. The smaller picture, quicker it will load.
When you use "thumbnail" tool, you are VIEWING picture smaller, but your file size is still large. This causes your pictures to load just as slow as when you put large picture on that page. This is why you save your picture the size that you want it to appear on your website. If you want a "thumbnail" sized photo, save it that size.
