As both a photographer and web site designer, I work with photos on web sites everyday. Some I take myself, but often, the client supplies the photos for their site.

Whether you have photos of products you sell, your office location, or employees, you want the images on your site to be of the best possible quality.

The bad news is, I see a lot of poor photos on web sites, and have often had to work with less than satisfactory images. The good news is, it is easy to improve the images you take for your site. Here’s how.

The Basics. When you take your photo, get close, eliminate background clutter, hold the camera still, or better yet, get a tripod.

Exposure. The most common problem I see with web photos is underexposure. Under exposure makes the image look dull and flat. Whites turn a dingy gray. “But,” you say, “I bought an $800 digital SLR that has automatic exposure! Is it defective?”

No, but your digital SLR is easy to fool. All electronic exposure systems are calibrated to produce a “good” exposure of an “average” scene. But many web images – particularly product images – are not average. Often, product images are shot against white backgrounds. This looks great to you, but your camera is thinking, “Wow, this is much too bright, I’m going to underexpose until it is ‘right’” - Your camera has just been fooled.

How much too bright? Pure white (like white paper and snow) is two stops (that’s four times) brighter than “average,” so your camera will try to underexpose by two stops. To get a proper exposure you will need to overexpose what your camera says is right by up to two stops. Yes, I know, it sounds backwards. To do this, your camera will need one of two features – exposure compensation or the ability to shoot in manual mode. (Unfortunately for my fellow males out there, this involves actually reading the manual (RTM) that came with the camera.)

If you shoot outdoors, you’ll have the same problem if you include too much of a bright cloudy sky, or take photos on bright beaches or snow. And, the opposite – overexposure – will occur if you shoot against a dark background.

Flash. Every consumer camera today has a built-in flash, and most SLRs have a pop-up flash. Don’t use it unless you want to create horrible web photos. For product shots, they create deep shadows and raging highlights that obscure the detail in your product. And they are disaster for photographing people.

The basic problem is that in-camera flash is too harsh, too small and too puny. The obvious solution is to make your light source larger and softer. You can spend a lot of money on lighting gear and product tents. But you don’t need that to take good web product photos.

Simply set up your products on a table with your background where there is lots of natural light coming in. Position some white foam board as reflectors to minimize shadows. If you have a detachable flash, try bouncing the flash off a white ceiling or foam board. Set your camera on a tripod, set the exposure as described above, and take pictures!

If you take photos to show the interior of your latest home listing or remodeling work, don’t use the built-in flash. Use available light, and set the camera on a tripod if you have to. The use of flash in this circumstance invariably results in a bright, white reflection from a window or mirror that reminds me of the scene of the Millennium Falcon going into light speed.

You might think I’m hard on built-in flash, and I am. But there is one situation where it can be handy. And that is for fill flash (RTM).

Sizing Images for the web. If you’re doing your own web site, want to post images on the web, or simply want to send images by email, you should know how to properly size images. It is actually quite easy. Here’s the most important rule: Size your jpeg image to the desired size before adding it to your site. The jpeg image from a 6 megapixel SLR will be about 2000x3000 pixels and about 3MB in size. Your customers will have long since clicked off your site before that image loads.

The first step is to decide how big the image needs to be in pixels. If you want to put it in a column 200 pixels wide, an image about 175 pixels wide will work fine. If you want to email it, 400 – 600 pixels work well. Next, go into your photo editing program, pull in the image and resize it (RTM). Remember, the only thing that matters is the pixel dimensions. (For the web, dots per inch (dpi) is irrelevant.) While you have it in your photo editing program, you may want to tweak contrast, brightness, and sharpening.

Finally, save your jpeg. When you do, you will be asked what quality level (or how much compression) is to be applied to the saved image. Jpeg compression is lossy, meaning pixels are lost in the process. Too much compression, and the image looks awful, but it loads fast. Too little, and the image looks great, but is slow to load. Discounting thumbnails, keep web jpegs to around 10k - 25k and you should be OK.

There you have it. Modern digital cameras are marvelous devices, but good photography still requires some effort. Don’t be satisfied with less than great images on your site!

For further information, contact Web Design Partners (770-664-0848)