If you’ve noticed that the images that you have placed on your website seem to take a long time to download, this is probably because you’ve failed to OPTIMIZE these images.

Image editing programs such as Photoshop and GIMP.org allow you to reduce the size of the image file considerably for quick download on the web.

Computer screens display at a screen resolution of 72 d.p.i (or 72 pixels per inch). A PIXEL is the smallest unit that can be viewed on a computer screen. Standard photos that you print out display at a much greater density (usually 300 d.p.i.) than is needed on the web. An optimized image at 72 d.p.i. looks the same on a computer screen as the same image at 300 d.p.i.; so it’s possible to reduce the density of the images for display on the web so that the image downloads much more quickly (because there is actually less information in the file).

The difference in size between an image that has not been optimized and an image that has been optimized can be considerable. For example, a standard photo that you might take with your digital camera could be 3,000 K before optimization, while the same image optimized could be 60 K.

If possible, it’s best to keep images to a size of 60K or less.

Tags: image optimization for the web

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 10:35 am and is filed under General Web Design Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.