Some Photo Basics
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| Instead of using thumbnails directed to larger images, as I usually tend to do when a page has many images, I decided to simply place the large images on this page for easier reading in a manual style, which could perhaps be printed out. The result will be a much slower loading of this page for those using a dial up modem, as I do -- those with broadband will probably not notice the slow page loading quite as much. |
You now have a domain registered in your name -- it is in your directNIC or other virtual host provider account -- you have decided on what you will include on your web pages, how they will be organized, and more or less how you want to present them -- you have been checking out some of the basics of Adobe PageMill, which is on the CD I sent you, or you may wish to use another newer web building app, and you may have noticed the Adobe Photo Deluxe program on the same CD. You have always collected pics and animated gifs as you surfed the Internet over the years, and hopefully saved the ones you like in a folder on your computer. You have a folder containing all of the pics and text pages that you will use on your web site, and a pile of hand written notes in front of you as guidelines.
This section of the general domain guides is dedicated to some basics having to do with the graphics you will have on your web pages -- what is it, exactly, that you should think about when taking your pics, gathering them together and processing them? There are two main sources for these illustrations --
1) things which you have scanned from books, other objects, or photographs taken by roll film cameras, and
2) photos which you have taken using your digital camera.
The end result of either method is a digital file having some name, one you gave it or a sequential file code number automatically given to it by the scanner or camera/flash card -- this file I call my ORIGINAL. It is usually only a starting point, and must be processed in some way. They say that pictures are worth a thousand words -- pics also make any web page more inviting and interesting, if done correctly. The final result which you are striving for is a more or less clear picture that has a file size which loads easily, thus making your web page faster to view in its entirety -- denizens of the Internet hate waiting minutes for a page or pic to load -- either it is instant satisfaction or they go elsewhere! This is especially true when the web page attempts to offer them something to buy.
I save all of my ORIGINALS in a Pic/Date Files folder on my desktop because they can be reworked into what I call HEADERS, BANNERS and BACKGROUNDS for different pages -- you can see examples of these reworked ORIGs on this page in the HEADER and BACKGROUND. You will see more about how to rework images on the next page of this series.
Photo Sources
There are several main sources of illustrations for web pages --
1) specialized CDs containing libraries of photos and/or animations which are FREELY DISTRIBUTED / FREEWARE and may be used on any personal web site -- they are usually grouped into themes / topics, and are easily added to your web site folder by dragging and dropping them into the site folder on your desktop where they will be duplicated automatically when dropped into it. Many CDs of applications, such as Adobe PageMill, will include some respective graphics which may be used -- some suggest adding an acknowledgment of their source/copyright owner, such as PageMill and the PageMill logo are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated.
2) existing web sites -- BUT, in MOST cases, they are COPYRIGHT © by the Webmaster of the corresponding web site and may NOT be copied / used without PRIOR permission. My pals know that they may use any of my photos as long as they give me some credit as the one who made them. On many Beanie web sites we often note, somewhere at the bottom of the page/s in small print--
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Beanie Babies(®)
is a trademark of Ty Inc. |
3) scans of your own material, photographs, books, other printed matter, or even objects -- each scanner handles the resulting photo in its own particular way, and many of the corresponding details may be found in the PREFERENCES panel tool bar for the model scanner you are using -- these prefs may be accessed and changed when the application is booted / active -- it is part of the software program.
4) photographs taken with a digital camera have become the norm over the last few years, and many who have only used film cameras in the past have completely switched to using these electronic marvels. I have 3 top-of-the-line single lens reflex 35mm film cameras in a desk drawer right behind where I am typing this, and have not used them in at least 5 years -- that is when I got my first digital camera, an early Kodak DS50, and have progressed through several makes and models since then.
Digital cameras do not need film, you can process the photos almost instantaneously on your computer, cropping, resizing, changing from color to black and white, adding special effects, morphing, lightening / darkening and many other processing options -- the main purpose of which is to place the resultant pic on your web site, in your eBay item description, to include in a special CD scrapbook which you will send to family and friends, or to use your printer to make copies of to send as greeting cards or whatever.
Professionals may want enlargements to use in the media, newspapers and magazines, and in rare cases for posters and even billboards -- for these specialized purposes the camera will need to be capable of a maximum number of MEGA pixels in order that the enlarged version is crisp and clear, with little or no graininess. Each of these photos would also occupy a much larger amount of space on the memory device associated with the camera they are using -- the lower the pixel rating, the more pics will fit on the FlashCard or other memory card/stick -- the MORE pixels you want your photo to have, the more space each takes up on the memory. For normal photography even 1 MEGA pixel is more than sufficient -- and a lot less expensive than the most recent highly exaggerated pixel capacity models -- and should I mention, probably much simpler to use.
5) drawings and sketches done on a TABLET, a really kewl computer accessory to have handy for those creative moments. There are many makes and models available -- one simply uses a stylus to draw an image on a flat electronically sensitive surface and the included apps allow you to add color and do many other creative things. I saw some experienced artistic geeks using them at the Apple Expo in Paris in 2002 and was totally amazed at the results, some of which were the same as actually drawing on a paper sketch pad or painting a watercolor, only these could be changed or altered in any way at the touch of a mouse!
Photo Basics
OK, you scanned something or you took some digital photos -- now what? Now the real work begins! Actually there are only a few things that you have to take into account with any still photograph -- each will be discussed below.
This is my main *PHOTOS folder in my Apple Menu, and aliases of each of the apps is found therein -- the original apps are, obviously, all on my hard drive --
to start the editing you just drag and drop your ORIGINAL pic file into the icon for the application program -- it then opens in that application and you can then begin.
I regularly use from 3-4 apps to process or edit each and every photo, and could probably find a single application that would do the same job -- it just takes some experimentation.
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I may usually start with either
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or |
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then onto |
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1) CROPPING -- unless you are a genius, just about any photo that
you take will need some cropping to remove whatever from the thing
you primarily want to show -- it could be a Beanie sitting on your kitchen
countertop, but you also can see the toaster and microwave, which
is not really what you might be selling, so you CROP the
pic around the Beanie.
I do not think that this needs a lot of explanation -- I do this
with -- 
-- or -- 
--
2) RESIZING -- how large do you want your pic to be? I use a couple standard sizes -- these are horizontal TOP measurements --
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primary, front cover eBay book images 5" |
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secondary, back cover eBay book images 4 - 4.5 " |
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thumbnails linked to larger images 1" |
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large, sometimes linked images 7-10" |
I may do this with -- -- or --
-- depending on which of the two apps I start out with first.
3) TWEAKING -- making the colors lighter/darker, varying the brightness/contrast, and sharpening the image are the basic things I do at this step --
usually done using -- 
4) FORMATTING -- for simple text, such as in screen shots, I usually
make a GIF format pic from a JPEG image, using
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-- curiously PageMill 2.0, an early version of the application program, compresses
the files more than the later version, --
(1998) -- so I have both on my computer
and I usually boot them separately, as needed -- PageMill 3.0
is what I use for my web site and eBay pages
and the older version exclusively for photo compression -- and
YES,
I know there are other, newer apps, and have 2 or 3 of them, but
find that they are somewhat more convoluted than PageMill
and I always prefer something simply simpler!
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the color photo of my background image for this page was taken to my usual last step to compress it as much as possible using Adobe PageMill 2.0 -- we get a 28k jpeg file as the result |
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to illustrate the difference in compression ability, I now used Adobe PageMill 3.0 to compress the exact same file (I changed the name changed slightly to differentiate them in my main folder) and we get a 48k jpeg file as the result -- almost twice as large! Needless to say I used the one shown above continue |
Let us now take a step-by-step look at what I did with just a single photo, that of Tasha, which I took in West Trenton on 3 October 2003 at 13:49h -- remember that I am working on a Mac, although the concepts are the same for Macs and PCs --
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P h o t o |
A p p l i c a t i o n File Size + Format / Notes |
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changed from pict in millions of colors to thousands of colors which reduced the file size from the original by about 15% |
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this is a ColorIt pict MASTER on which I have different sizes/versions of my Copyright logos and other text, which I COPY and PASTE onto new photos |
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Now you can do some special fun processing
of your pic, if so desired 
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Finding a Domain |
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File Transfer |
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WebMaster Info Newsletters |
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Flags, Animations + Backgrounds |
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Graphics File Basics |
P H O T O S |
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Graphics File Fun |
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Open in New Window Code |
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Animated GIFS |
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Adobe PageMill v.3 |
I am working on it |
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