Hi there,
Selecting good quality images for your website can make a very positive impact on the site and how customers perceive your business.
Some general advice in picking images:
Choose images that relate to the content. Obviously if it’s a product or specific place/object that makes things easier, but in the case of information pages, try and select something that helps a user identify the purpose of the page.
Try to be consistent in picture choice – having the same background colour, size or composition are all ways to achieve this. If you have mainly subtle, subdued choices then a bright, colourful image can look at odds and vice versa.
Background and lighting – having a plain background can help deliver consistency and make a picture look more professional. An image shot against a white background will speak volumes over one shot on a kitchen table! Lighting also has the same effect with bright, clear lighting being a sign of better composition.
Size – images can be very large (in file size and physical space) and it is often better to resize them so that web pages load faster. There are various applications that you can use to do this a couple of free ones are Picasa from Google and Photoshop.com from Adobe.
Sourcing quality images is also tricky for many businesses that don’t have access to photography, but there are options available. Firstly, it’s important to respect copyright and not just take images from search engine searches. There are various stock image repositories available at no or nominal cost, many with great quality images; these include Stock.xchange images and iStockphoto.
Message Edited by WebConsult on 27-10-2009 09:13 AM
